Dummies Guide to GOLD bullion refining at home as a long term precious metal investment - made EASY

Flagged it. Nice thread. However I am not sure how easy it is to obtain some of the chemicals and ingredients used in the gold extract process. Atleast in the US, the rules are strict against buying/selling such chemicals. I know the process has existed for a long time to extract precious metals from electronics. Infact there are legitimate companies doing just that for years not just gold but Silver, Platinum in addition to Gold.

Do you have a way to get Platinum out of plates, lol.
Man your are the man. McGyver for sure.
My silver alchemy is doing good I destroyed 3 potatoes, and my wife is hiding everything that has silver in it. However I am not going to tell her about the gold...this will be our secret......

I think,

And this is only an idea...

I think that this thread, and it's silver partner, should be stickied to the top of the forum!!

They're two of the most well presented and fully informative threads on ATS that aims to actually help people!

This froum is about global meltdown...these two threads are about metal meltdowns.. or meltups, if you prefer..

So, what say you?

To sticky or not to sticky? Let them remain at the top for all to see..

As an example, last week I purchased a total of 10 gms of gold nuggets. Each nugget will usually contain 95% or higher amounts of gold with minor traces of impurities such as quartz grains. Sure beats trying to find them yourself and dig them out of the ground the hard way !
Here's 2 of them:

Depending on the gold mining district the gold come from the gold could have anywhere from 50% to 90%.gold,
the Fineness of gold in any mining district is usually between 2 to 10 points higher then the hard rock ores in that district.
by the way any gold under 50% is many times called silver or copper nuggets or native copper or silver.

if you find quartz grains in nuggets that is a sign they are not water worked and there is still a lot of silver in them.
these nuggets will be within a point or two of the fineness of the district.

when i fire assay Calif gold nuggets or gold ores i can tell within 10 miles of where the gold came from and in some cases the name of the mine by the percentage of the gold silver and copper in the gold.
the federal government used spectroscopy testing back in the 1930s at the mints to tell what mine gold came from to prevent highgrading of gold from mines.
if you tried to sell gold from a mine that had been highgraded you would be arrested.

Mine promoters still get arrested for taking money from investors by showing gold samples from another mine and claiming it from there mine

I was at a mining equipment show one time and had some one show me high grade gold he claimed from his mine in the calif desert.
I knew where the gold can from just by looking at it and i told him it was from the sixteen to one mine in Alleghany Calif he all of a sudden had he needed to go and left.

reply to post by ANNED


D you use the Butler torch method?

Really nice Instructable. Shouldn't this be in the 'Metal Meltdown' forum.

That was a joke by the way

reply to post by tauristercus


PLEASE post some more sources for gold - wich parts can be used...like in mobilephones or computer parts (maybe there are also other sources)...

and how can i see that its really gold and not copper or something...

reply to post by tauristercus
Bloody Awesome!
Another treat bookmarked!

I really enjoy these threads. Good job, very detailed. I had read your post on Silver refining and have since collected quite a bit of scrap silver, and some scrap gold awaiting this post. Very excited to give this a try, and love that the process for Silver and Gold are so similiar. Who would have thought this could be so easy. As a note, the best luck I've had in finding scrap for this has been old jewelry at flee markets for gold, and old Silverware can be found really cheap at yardsales, kijiji, etc. I've found ebay yeilds less results as the bidding sometimes gets a little out of hand. No sense buying scrap over spot!! Thanks again.

is it worth it to refine jewelry?
or would it be more cost effective to just sell it as is?

you've really got me crunching the numbers on this, i will give this a go if it all adds up to a decent profit.

love both threads, but i think you missed out a section explaining how to go from the diluted yellow neutralised liquid to getting the gold powder, i think in the other thread you used copper wire to drop the silver? what do you use to drop the gold ?

Once again I can't say thanks enough!! You are a true help and put together once again a very informative thread!!

Excellent job!!

Platinum and Copper are coming next??

reply to post by Equ1nox


My guess would be zinc. However but that may only be for a different method. It may have something to do with the sodium metabisulfate.

Out of curiosity.
What is the start up cost of supplies?

I have a cousin that's a microbiologist. I might hit him up for some flasks and chemicals.

Every now again on this site there is that one thread that stands out among all the others. This thread is definitely a diamond in the rough. I appreciate you taking the time to educate us and look forward to finally finding a use for the piles and piles of computer parts I have accumulated but will probably have otherwise never did anything with.

S&F

Thanks. I've been waiting for this one. In grade nine we did a unit on mining for gold. Panning can be surprisingly easy if you know where to look...which reminds me the method that a guest speaker in class told us used mercury. It was explained that the gold flakes within a mass of dirt and debris (after initial panning) would be dissolved in the mercury. Then the mercury was evaporated with a hot-plate into a potato (hollow out a pocket in the flat side of a half potato to make a "cover" for the puddle of mercury) the resulting piece of gold was then melted into an ingot just like your final step. The potato can later be broken and mashed up within a bowl of water to recover the mercury for re-use. I dont know what other metals may also dissolve in mercury, and it is of course highly toxic. I also don't know how easy it is to get hold of these days. Just throwing that little bit of trivia out there to see if you or any other members had any thoughts.

playing with chemicals is dangerous:

Man Dies Trying to Extract Gold From Computer Parts

I didn't realize you had posted up the gold tutorial until someone mentioned in in the silver thread.

Thanks for these awesome threads, now I just need to find a good source of scrap gold and cheap too.

reply to post by tauristercus


I just realized I haven't asked.
What molarity acid are you using or if you are going off of pH what pH?

Edit:
Did I miss the post on how SMB is used to drop the gold.
It goes straight from yellow water to the torch phase.

reply to post by Hessdalen


And that is why I never tried it. Also why the OP said to do things like this outside.