MY wedding ring was 12k white gold and was 5.1 grams. My first foray into refining white gold was done with it since I figured I wouldn't need it any more what with no longer being married. I tried to sell it off once I was separated but was never given anything close to a decent price and so it just sat in a drawer. But when I finally got around to working with it I am proud to say that I managed to recover 2.49gm of Au and 2.47gm Pd. I melted the Au into 2 1gm beads and one gave them to one of my daughters who made a pair of earrings from them. The Pd I still have in powder form and one day I hope to make something from it. Oddly enough as much as I don't miss the ring I don't feel right selling off the metals and it did my heart good to see my daughter use the Au as she did.
Fascinating & informative. I never knew about those colored golds having alloys. Your one of my top favorites on You Tube. Thanks for the great videos!
You have made me a hobbyist... it's still just vicarious, but I will be ready. You would love this video I saw where someone had, essentially, mined the sidewalks of 5th Avenue, outside of every jeweler he vacuumed up all the silt in the cracks of the sidewalks. Sooo much was recovered. I can't even imagine what the storm drain would've had in it!
very coincident! i stumbled in this white gold video by chance. now I will the composition and better understanding on white gold. thanks Sreetips, bob
Another amazing video. Ive actually been saving my white gold until i saw a video on the subject. If i had the cash to buy that bar of gold I definitely would. I just wish there was like a tip jar for videos or something. Id be happy to tip a few bucks your way anytime one of your videos helps me out, which come to think of it, might come up to the value of that gold bar.
Fantastic video, I really appreciate them. Keep up the good work! If you ever get around to casting your 999 silver into bars to sell them, I would probably buy a few!
I've got lots of silver, but I'm saving it for my chess set. Plus the spot silver market is just too low to be selling a whole bunch of silver right now. Thank you for watching.
Some day it would be nice to have you show your safety equipment to show what is required to do these process's refining gold and silver safely. Really enjoy watching your videos!
Well for sure I know now why you use the first method as this one here is very much more work time-wise and what do they say TIME IS MONEY lol thanks mate great Vlog
Question: This might be a noob question...At 23:20 you "called" it and said you have all the base metals dissolved, leaving you with the the final product, gold. At 24:13 you add Sulfuric acid to dissolve led along with the HCL solution to dissolve gold. Should these two steps not be done separately so led could be precipitated out of the solution before adding HCL to dissolve the gold to provide an even purer gold button? I understand this question would make me sound like a complete noob, but for me to understand I need to know. Thank you for all your high-quality videos, it is really informative....never mind, answer is at 31:10
As a gemologist, I can tell you a diamond tester will never indicate a natural ruby from a synthetic. You have to look at the stone under 10x magnification and look for curved striations and or flux and two phase inclusions.
The best way to tell is to examine the Ruby under high magnification. A natural Ruby will have imperfections inside. If no imperfections are present then it's 99.99% probability that it's a lab-created stone, or 0.01% chance it's a very high quality natural Ruby. I think the gemologist can use a refractometer to tell the difference
A refractometer will only tell you if it is natural OR synthetic corundum (ruby and sapphire are corundum.) The ONLY way to distinguish between a natural or synthetic is like I said in my previous post. Examine the stone under magnification (preferrably a dark field illuminated microscope) and look for curved striations which would indicate a flame fusion grown synthetic, or look for fingerprint like flux inclusions which would indicate a flux grown synthetic. A natural ruby can be flawless, so just because it has no inclusions in the stone doesn't mean it's a synthetic.
In the past a ruby has been any sapphire with more intense color than a pink sapphire. Because of this ambiguity, the international organizations now consider all the chromium bearing reddish corundum to be rubies. Most rubies contain rutile crystals - known as silk. Apparently some are heat treated to make the rutile become invisible to the naked eye. But stones with a bit of silk are far more valuable than one that is "flawless".
Another phenomenal video from start to finish... very informative and interesting to watch. I am always learning something new watching your videos. Question, I’ve watched you do these gold refining videos a few different ways. Is there be a difference in the purity of the gold if you just dropped the gold with just SMB as apposed to using copperas or oxalic acid to drop the gold? Which method do you prefer to use to drop the gold (SMB, copperas or oxalic acid) or do you just go with what you have on hand when your refining?
Eric, three nines gold can be produced all day long with just SMB. For some refinings, such as Gold Filled, where some junk tends to follow the gold, it may be best to use a different precipitant for the second refining. For example, SMB will drop platinum, if present, with the gold. But oxalic acid or copperas won't. But oxalic will drop copper and tin if present, SMB won't. Copperas could contaminate the gold with iron, but SMB won't. Each precipitant will selectively remove contaminants that the others may not remove. But refining straight yellow gold, inquart with silver and two SMB refinings usually gets the gold very clean. Oxalic acid is like a polishing step. It's used when the gold is already quite pure, like in this video. You can see by the color that the gold is already high purity after parting with nitric before the first aqua regia treatment.
Hello, I have Gold Bars & Diamond Stones for sale, Can you help us to look for Gold bars/Diamond buyers in your country and i promise to be giving you 5 % ofany sale please ?. ganddmininggroup01@gmail.com Peter.
@@sreetips; Thank you for your prompt reply.i very much appreciate that, i didn't know there was a specific reason for the oxalic acid until now. and makes perfect sense for producing the upmost quality and purity that can be obtained.thanks once again, your vids are very informative and interesting
I have seen other refiners on youtube just throw the filter paper(s) in with the final melt, would this effect your final purity if you would have included them?
Thanks, Legend! Didn't you forget white gold holds most often Silver? Which might nearly not need that much addition of Silver? I know this video is old but since then the same?
Professor oxalic acid is to precipitate gold, as well as the metabisulfite? I thought the oxalico was to purify the royal water to eliminate impurities. Thank you very much I am from Brazil and we speak little English, I do not understand what you speak, I will translate on gogle. Thanks.
Hello, I have Gold Bars & Diamond Stones for sale, Can you help us to look for Gold bars/Diamond buyers in your country and i promise to be giving you 5 % ofany sale please ?. ganddmininggroup01@gmail.com Peter.
hello my friend congratulations on the videos, is oxalic acid a reducer to precipitate? and to neutralize it can be sulfamic acid? before precipitating with oxalic acid can i neutralize with sulfamic acid? Thanks.
I add those sweeps a spoon at a time to the cement silver when I melt it. Then run it through my silver cell. Any precious metals get trapped in the silver cell anode filters. Then I process the anode filters for the precious metals that they contain.
I would think the Platinum Group Metals in solution would almost certainly at least in part be rhodium but were you ever able to determine what they were exactly if they were present?
Sreetips Is there a way I can contact you privately? I have a friend in the demolition business and am wondering if it may be profitable to collect electronics from the buildings. Thanks and awesome videos!
@@alienrocketscienceshared8454 I’d be cutting that pavement up and putting it in a rock crusher to get that back. Ugh how heartbreaking. Thankfully I’ve never had any major losses like that when refining. 🤞 fingers crossed I never do.
@@alienrocketscienceshared8454 dude, thats why you gotta have a large bin or kids swimming pool or something in n event like that, hell lay out towels everywhere so you can just dissolve the whole towel.... I would have had a pickaxe and or a jackhammer so fast, and would have just thrown the damn asphalt and concrete in some aqua regia!! how much was lost?? I feel that pain even now...
@41:16 adding spoon of powdered oxalic acid and spoon of soda ash until the solution loses its yellow tint will be easier than making a whole new batch of oxalic solution IMHO
If it's going to the refiner then yes. But the gold from this video will be sold. I could see trash in the filter, some colored fibers and some dirt. While probably OK to add the powder, I'd rather be safe and keep any unknown contamination out of the process. I watched your video last night, very nicely done.
Excellent point, I'm using lab grade reagents so I didn't take reagent contamination into account. Thanks, for most of my videos I've used yours as reference.
Owl Tech used potassium hydroxide in his video with good results. I don't think the soda has the power to do it. Ammonia is not the best choice. I hate using it but that's what the book called for: refining precious metals waste by cm Hoke.
How important is the color of the white gold alloy if it's rhodium plated? Does rhodium plating cover any other colors like yellow or Rose or does the true color bleed through the rhodium plating?
How can you tell if the white gold has lead cause I got tons of white gold I find nuggets everywhere and it all passes 18 k gold test but I'm afraid it may have lead well some of it cause some is very heavy and some light for the size
Soo good work as alwaya I have a qust Afrend disove alloy of gold and ather metals by adding sulferc and nitruc All metals disolve and gold is purifid Can the solution have any pgm,s in it or silver or gold And how can I presitate all that metals Hope you anser me becuse its about 400lLiters of solution
Hello Sreetips,this is Jesse Few. Have you ever refined keyboard mylars? If yes could I get the link & if no would you mind maybe try to make a video to refine some mylars.
Yes, no problem. They “color” gold by adding different portions of base metals to the gold alloy. For example, “rose gold” has the same exact amount as “yellow gold”. But it looks more red because they add more copper and less zinc to the “rose gold.”
No, my jeweler friends dad used cyanide. He said some of it escaped into their shop. He said that it made his tongue and lips swell and start tingling. And he saw a fly fall out of the air mid flight over by the reaction. The stuff o work with is harmful - but nothing like cyanide.
I sold that bar for about $1200. So far I've been able to keep a food over my head and some food on the table. Plus, I love doing it. So for me, it's worth the hassle
What tips would you have for a beginner that wouldn't have all the lab equipment and chemicals. Anything that could be done with household stuff and old coffee pots and mason jars?
Back when I first started I used a coffee pot because they could be heated. I used 3 liter jars from the thrift store (still use them to decant my stock pot). Pyrex measuring cups work good to heat things in as well. I have clear glass saucers that I use as cover for my beakers. Good luck.
Hey Mr Sreetips, just a question.... what if instead of inquarting, you dissolved everything in Aqua Regia at the start, then precipitated the gold and god knows what else out with the bisulphite, washed off the chlorine, then treated with nitric acid to dissolve the base metals, leaving the gold behind ????
Michael, the test strips have tin. Tin is a refiners nightmare. When combined with nitric it forms metastannic acid or tin paste. It will cause a filter to completely stop up. Like trying to filter elmers glue. I just toss them in the waste bucket.
Thank you for the video and insight. I have actually watched several years of them now and various experiments. There is an aspect that I don't understand though, and that is why the gold is first diluted to appox 25% with the silver, and then the silver is chemically extracted back out? Is this just to make it easier to get the small pieces when cooling in the water bucket from the pour, or is there another reason? I am really just curious, not planning to do this but it is fascinating since I was a chemical engineer a long time ago. Thanks
@@sreetips I wonder if the items could just be melted into a bar or thin sheet. Made into an anode of a nitric acid bath to accomplish the same thing? Maybe bubble oxygen or ozone through it as needed. I am familiar with how to do ultra high purity / semiconductor grade analysis for measuring material purity but not sure how it is done in consumer level purity.
@@sreetips It is just an idea, but if the voltage is kept relatively low, then the silver would plate onto the cathode, the copper will remain in the acid bath and the high purity gold will remain at the anode. The nitric probably should be as concentrated and hot as feasible, close to 80 C if that can be done safely. The solubility of the copper nitrates will be nearly 2x at this temperature vs at room temperature, so in theory the excess will precipitate out during cooling and you can keep reusing it. Maybe. It might disintegrate during the process so using your dacron bag around the anode might be useful to capture it. The bubbles coming off of the cathode will be quite strong, I believe that if dissolved in distilled water they would produce fresh nitric acid. Of course this is just an idea, and a lot of things don't work in the real world.
She buys bags of junk and broken stuff. It sells for about $30 at the thrift store - sometimes there is nothing, but she usually finds some over-looked karat gold and silver
Derek, the red fumes that evolve during dissolution could contain some fine mist of gold bearing solution. That's why it's important to keep the solution from boiling.
Once the gold has dissolved then there is a possibility of gold bearing solution spattering out of the container if it's allowed to boil vigorously. But I used a tall container with lots of room to compensate.
Great video! not sure if this was meant, but you've put your eBay listing under ( Coins & Paper Money>Bullion>Silver>Bars & Rounds ) Surely it should be under gold? Forgive me if wrong, my knowledge isn't the greatest. I just enjoy watching the videos and the detailed process. Thanks
whens the next time you'll be doing another gold refining video? (subscribed on this video btw) watching the different amounts of acid react with the gold and the repeated process of refining and expelling all the base metals/other unneeded precious metals from the gold is satisfying to watch.
There should be no trash or impurities in that BRAND of Oxalic acid,, I called the company 3 years ago and asked what the purity of their product was and they said it was 99.8 - 99.9 ,, He went on to say that they take great integrity with their work and product
@@sreetips I am still learning. In your other videos I have seen you say that the chlorine would affect your filtration i believe. At this point in your process it does not?
When working with silver in solution it is important to use distilled water only because chlorinated water will react with the silver nitrate solution to form silver chloride. The gold solution is already a chloride so adding chlorinated water matters not.
***SreeTips*** Do you process gold for others? If I have 665 Grams PC fingers and pins already separated from cards and melted using scrap metals flux and borax would I get most of the gold and majority of impurities out?
This is my hobby, I don't refine other people's material. Melting causes metals to alloy together. They don't separate. Refining is the only way to separate the metals from each other.
The contaminants are measure in parts per million. Not enough to report in the assay of the gold. There are some particulate in the tap water. Hold a glass of tap water up to the light and you'll see junk suspended in the water. But filtering before precipitation should get it all out.
Thanks. I was just wondering about the possible chlorine dissolved in there (less after freezing) causing a problem. At some points you (and other refiners) are very particular about using distilled to avoid chlorine so was not sure if the ice had to come from distilled as well as it is mixed in and not in an external ice bath.
Burning the filter during the melt hurts nothing. But there are some folks, not familiar with these techniques, who may consider burning paper with the gold as a source of possible contamination, even though it's not. Since I was going for high purity and will be selling this bar, I decided to not include the filter paper in the melt just for the effect. It's also the reason I used a fresh melt dish.
Would it be OK to use cold AR to extract gold from a big 15kg bach of industrial scrap in a teflon barrel? It would take ages to do it in a beaker. Did 1.000g test and it gave 1.38%. So cold AR and just let it sit, possible?
It sounds like a lot of work, a lot of waste that must be treated, for a small amount of gold recovered. These are the reasons that I don’t do much escrap these days.
im curious what this process would do to white gold with a bit of rhodium polluting the PGM or rhodium plating. The hot nitric shouldn't dissolve rhodium, but the aqua regia should, right? So if i understand it right, any rhodium would pass through the filter with the gold. I'm not sure about the rest of the process, but with rhodium being over $10,000 an ounce im very curious.
Yoda, there’s rhodium in my filters and in my stock pot. I’m sure of that. I just haven’t figured out how to get it yet. But I will and then make a new video
Rhodium plating wears off and has to be dipped once in a while. Sterling silver is much softer metal and not usually suitable for setting diamonds. Some folks can't stand the look of yellow gold. They prefer the look of the white metal. White gold, made with palladium, is very beautiful. But most cheap white gold contains nickel. Some folks suffer allergic reactions to nickel. I like the look of pure yellow gold.
MY wedding ring was 12k white gold and was 5.1 grams. My first foray into refining white gold was done with it since I figured I wouldn't need it any more what with no longer being married. I tried to sell it off once I was separated but was never given anything close to a decent price and so it just sat in a drawer. But when I finally got around to working with it I am proud to say that I managed to recover 2.49gm of Au and 2.47gm Pd. I melted the Au into 2 1gm beads and one gave them to one of my daughters who made a pair of earrings from them. The Pd I still have in powder form and one day I hope to make something from it. Oddly enough as much as I don't miss the ring I don't feel right selling off the metals and it did my heart good to see my daughter use the Au as she did.
Bravo - keeping it in the family will sooth you. Nice job, you did a refining on the palladium? No easy task
I have to say that you are very thorough with your refining prosses. Thanks for sharing
Fascinating & informative. I never knew about those colored golds having alloys. Your one of my top favorites on You Tube. Thanks for the great videos!
I love watching and learning from all your videos!
Wow, how your setup and equipment and skills have changed and improved. Bravo!
I would love to see what comes from your box of ash and other recovered “waste”
same ! please make a video next
Me too.
Me Three
Agreed!
Did 2do
You have made me a hobbyist... it's still just vicarious, but I will be ready. You would love this video I saw where someone had, essentially, mined the sidewalks of 5th Avenue, outside of every jeweler he vacuumed up all the silt in the cracks of the sidewalks. Sooo much was recovered. I can't even imagine what the storm drain would've had in it!
I love watching the old vids as hou can see how professional you have become my friend. Love your work.😊😊
Thank you
@@sreetips thanks be to you kind Sir for supplying hours of educational viewing...🤓👍
I knew you would add to it to make the Troy !! Brilliant shiny purity as always Sreetips great learning and entertainment
Wondered about white gold for a while now. Awesome video and very well explained thank you
Great video! I'm really looking forward to your refining of the melt table sweepings. Thank you.
very coincident! i stumbled in this white gold video by chance. now I will the composition and better understanding on white gold. thanks Sreetips, bob
Excellent!
Very comprehensive! Thanks!
I see a sreetips video, I click like, I watch :D Always informative!
same here!
You guys are awsome!
A very knowledgeable person. Thanks for sharing.
Another amazing video. Ive actually been saving my white gold until i saw a video on the subject. If i had the cash to buy that bar of gold I definitely would. I just wish there was like a tip jar for videos or something. Id be happy to tip a few bucks your way anytime one of your videos helps me out, which come to think of it, might come up to the value of that gold bar.
your work is driving me crazy, i really enjoy what i see ...thank you for sharing 👀
I've always wondered what made something white gold, excellent video.
Fantastic and instructional. Great vid.
Very cool video. I love to watch all these reactions. See ya in the next one.
Never new there was such thing as white cold, very interesting!
Great video, as usual very informative.
Fantastic video, I really appreciate them. Keep up the good work! If you ever get around to casting your 999 silver into bars to sell them, I would probably buy a few!
I've got lots of silver, but I'm saving it for my chess set. Plus the spot silver market is just too low to be selling a whole bunch of silver right now. Thank you for watching.
Brave man drain that over the sink with no strainer! ...though the p-trap should catch it...
So fascinating watching your videos... do you teach workshops on gold refining? Also; How do I buy one of your gold bars??
Hello, I've never done any workshops, only the videos. I will list a gold bar from videos I do from time to time.
Some day it would be nice to have you show your safety equipment to show what is required to do these process's refining gold and silver safely. Really enjoy watching your videos!
First item is the fume hood. No way to do these reactions safely without one.
Another excellent video my friend!
Well for sure I know now why you use the first method as this one here is very much more work time-wise and what do they say TIME IS MONEY lol thanks mate great Vlog
Question: This might be a noob question...At 23:20 you "called" it and said you have all the base metals dissolved, leaving you with the the final product, gold. At 24:13 you add Sulfuric acid to dissolve led along with the HCL solution to dissolve gold. Should these two steps not be done separately so led could be precipitated out of the solution before adding HCL to dissolve the gold to provide an even purer gold button? I understand this question would make me sound like a complete noob, but for me to understand I need to know. Thank you for all your high-quality videos, it is really informative....never mind, answer is at 31:10
As a gemologist, I can tell you a diamond tester will never indicate a natural ruby from a synthetic. You have to look at the stone under 10x magnification and look for curved striations and or flux and two phase inclusions.
Which one means a true ruby Ken?
A synthetic Ruby will send it up towards the diamond range also. I should have said that in the video.
The best way to tell is to examine the Ruby under high magnification. A natural Ruby will have imperfections inside. If no imperfections are present then it's 99.99% probability that it's a lab-created stone, or 0.01% chance it's a very high quality natural Ruby. I think the gemologist can use a refractometer to tell the difference
A refractometer will only tell you if it is natural OR synthetic corundum (ruby and sapphire are corundum.) The ONLY way to distinguish between a natural or synthetic is like I said in my previous post. Examine the stone under magnification (preferrably a dark field illuminated microscope) and look for curved striations which would indicate a flame fusion grown synthetic, or look for fingerprint like flux inclusions which would indicate a flux grown synthetic. A natural ruby can be flawless, so just because it has no inclusions in the stone doesn't mean it's a synthetic.
In the past a ruby has been any sapphire with more intense color than a pink sapphire. Because of this ambiguity, the international organizations now consider all the chromium bearing reddish corundum to be rubies.
Most rubies contain rutile crystals - known as silk. Apparently some are heat treated to make the rutile become invisible to the naked eye. But stones with a bit of silk are far more valuable than one that is "flawless".
Another great show thanks Sreetips
👉🏼✊👈🏼
That bar is a beauty!!! I am checking your ebay store for future stuff
Another phenomenal video from start to finish... very informative and interesting to watch. I am always learning something new watching your videos. Question, I’ve watched you do these gold refining videos a few different ways. Is there be a difference in the purity of the gold if you just dropped the gold with just SMB as apposed to using copperas or oxalic acid to drop the gold? Which method do you prefer to use to drop the gold (SMB, copperas or oxalic acid) or do you just go with what you have on hand when your refining?
Eric, three nines gold can be produced all day long with just SMB. For some refinings, such as Gold Filled, where some junk tends to follow the gold, it may be best to use a different precipitant for the second refining. For example, SMB will drop platinum, if present, with the gold. But oxalic acid or copperas won't. But oxalic will drop copper and tin if present, SMB won't. Copperas could contaminate the gold with iron, but SMB won't. Each precipitant will selectively remove contaminants that the others may not remove. But refining straight yellow gold, inquart with silver and two SMB refinings usually gets the gold very clean. Oxalic acid is like a polishing step. It's used when the gold is already quite pure, like in this video. You can see by the color that the gold is already high purity after parting with nitric before the first aqua regia treatment.
Amazing video, sir 🙏 I have learned a lot. Thank you so much
Hello, I have Gold Bars & Diamond Stones for sale, Can you help us to look for Gold bars/Diamond buyers in your country and i promise to be giving you 5 % ofany sale please ?. ganddmininggroup01@gmail.com
Peter.
@@gdmininggroup4308 give me ur number pz yargu
@@gdmininggroup4308 hi
Thank you. Very informative.
I always wondered about white gold
great vid sreetips, i very much enjoy watching, personallly i do prefere the smb precipitation it seems cleaner and not so risky ,thanks!
I agree. Oxalic acid works best with gold that is of high purity to begin with. Its a "polishing step."
@@sreetips; Thank you for your prompt reply.i very much appreciate that, i didn't know there was a specific reason for the oxalic acid until now. and makes perfect sense for producing the upmost quality and purity that can be obtained.thanks once again, your vids are very informative and interesting
i have some oxalic acid on hand. does this substitute the aquaria step? great video and very useful to melt my nuggets. thanks, bob
Oxalic acid is used to precipitate the gold. Aqua regia is used to dissolve the gold.
love the educational value of your vids :)
I think a work bench sweeps video would contrast nicely after your 25 oz gold refining video.
Thank you for teaching me
I have seen other refiners on youtube just throw the filter paper(s) in with the final melt, would this effect your final purity if you would have included them?
I've melted many ounces of gold sopping wet with liquid and still in the filter paper. Assays three nines fine every time.
What do you use for a vacuum regulator? Great videos
www.ebay.com/itm/PIAB-EVS-100-Vacuum-Switch-/265316459955?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m2548.l6249&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0
Thanks, Legend! Didn't you forget white gold holds most often Silver? Which might nearly not need that much addition of Silver? I know this video is old but since then the same?
No I didn’t forget
Amazing.
Professor oxalic acid is to precipitate gold, as well as the metabisulfite? I thought the oxalico was to purify the royal water to eliminate impurities. Thank you very much I am from Brazil and we speak little English, I do not understand what you speak, I will translate on gogle. Thanks.
im happy to see ur interesting vedio.. i have some of white gold but i dont know how to refine into pure gold.
Refining white gold is the same exact process as yellow gold - they both contain the same amount of pure gold in their alloy.
Sreetips, can you please enable remote playing on this video so I can cast to the TV? Thanks!
Thank you if you did. It is casting now.
Hello, I have Gold Bars & Diamond Stones for sale, Can you help us to look for Gold bars/Diamond buyers in your country and i promise to be giving you 5 % ofany sale please ?. ganddmininggroup01@gmail.com
Peter.
@@gdmininggroup4308 pretty sure sreetips just sells his stuff on ebay.
hello my friend congratulations on the videos, is oxalic acid a reducer to precipitate? and to neutralize it can be sulfamic acid? before precipitating with oxalic acid can i neutralize with sulfamic acid? Thanks.
It’s best to use just enough nitric so you don’t need to rid excess nitric.
@@sreetips thank very much my friend👏👏👏
have you ever done a video on your melt table sweeps
I add those sweeps a spoon at a time to the cement silver when I melt it. Then run it through my silver cell. Any precious metals get trapped in the silver cell anode filters. Then I process the anode filters for the precious metals that they contain.
Just unique work done.
I would think the Platinum Group Metals in solution would almost certainly at least in part be rhodium but were you ever able to determine what they were exactly if they were present?
I don’t know a thing about rhodium
Pardon my ignorance, but what, exactly, is the diamond tester testing? Refractive index?
It uses heat, that’s all I know.
I watch so many Sreetips videos that I should get a lab coat as an honorarium.
LOL
Have you ever done, violet gold ?? would like to see that.
I've never even heard of it.
So, since both yellow gold and white gold are refined exactly the same is it safe to refine both colors together? Love your videos.
Yes
Sreetips Is there a way I can contact you privately? I have a friend in the demolition business and am wondering if it may be profitable to collect electronics from the buildings. Thanks and awesome videos!
My email is kadriver2011@yahoo.com
Nice job Sreetips, not sure I'm comfortable with messing around with the Oxalic Acid as of yet though :)
It's not my favorite method for producing pure gold. Especially when it can be accomplished with SMB.
@@alienrocketscienceshared8454 I’d be cutting that pavement up and putting it in a rock crusher to get that back. Ugh how heartbreaking. Thankfully I’ve never had any major losses like that when refining. 🤞 fingers crossed I never do.
@@alienrocketscienceshared8454 dude, thats why you gotta have a large bin or kids swimming pool or something in n event like that, hell lay out towels everywhere so you can just dissolve the whole towel.... I would have had a pickaxe and or a jackhammer so fast, and would have just thrown the damn asphalt and concrete in some aqua regia!! how much was lost?? I feel that pain even now...
@41:16 adding spoon of powdered oxalic acid and spoon of soda ash until the solution loses its yellow tint will be easier than making a whole new batch of oxalic solution IMHO
If it's going to the refiner then yes. But the gold from this video will be sold. I could see trash in the filter, some colored fibers and some dirt. While probably OK to add the powder, I'd rather be safe and keep any unknown contamination out of the process. I watched your video last night, very nicely done.
Excellent point, I'm using lab grade reagents so I didn't take reagent contamination into account. Thanks, for most of my videos I've used yours as reference.
That's even better
I wonder how many times the chemicals can be reused? And what happens to them after use? how do they get properly disposed?
Waste treatment
are you talking about platinum or the alloy white gold????
ahhhhhh
great video like always .i have a qustion , can we use another thing to drop the ph insted of amonia
can we use sodium bicarbonate or costic soda
Owl Tech used potassium hydroxide in his video with good results. I don't think the soda has the power to do it. Ammonia is not the best choice. I hate using it but that's what the book called for: refining precious metals waste by cm Hoke.
thanks ...and i hope to see a video of cyanide leaching
How important is the color of the white gold alloy if it's rhodium plated? Does rhodium plating cover any other colors like yellow or Rose or does the true color bleed through the rhodium plating?
I’ve never recovered rhodium. I’m not sure.
How can you tell if the white gold has lead cause I got tons of white gold I find nuggets everywhere and it all passes 18 k gold test but I'm afraid it may have lead well some of it cause some is very heavy and some light for the size
The cold beaker was an endothermic reaction
Soo good work as alwaya
I have a qust
Afrend disove alloy of gold and ather metals by adding sulferc and nitruc
All metals disolve and gold is purifid
Can the solution have any pgm,s in it or silver or gold
And how can I presitate all that metals
Hope you anser me becuse its about 400lLiters of solution
Hydrochloric acid will precipitate silver chloride. The PGMs, if present, can be cemented out with copper or zinc.
Hello Sreetips,this is Jesse Few. Have you ever refined keyboard mylars? If yes could I get the link & if no would you mind maybe try to make a video to refine some mylars.
Jesse Few sorry, I’ve never done it
What about Blackhills gold? It's green and rose colored. Have you ever tried to purify it?
Yes, no problem. They “color” gold by adding different portions of base metals to the gold alloy. For example, “rose gold” has the same exact amount as “yellow gold”. But it looks more red because they add more copper and less zinc to the “rose gold.”
Have you ever tried using cyanides to do your refining?
No, my jeweler friends dad used cyanide. He said some of it escaped into their shop. He said that it made his tongue and lips swell and start tingling. And he saw a fly fall out of the air mid flight over by the reaction. The stuff o work with is harmful - but nothing like cyanide.
As always u r great may Allah bless you sir waiting eagerly for next video thanks a lot for sharing ur knowledge love u sir
Jesus loves you too.
@@fatnindja so does Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.
@@Smokey420Greenleaf LOL ... deal wit it
@@fatnindja huh? deal with what? your comment makes no sense.
@@Smokey420Greenleaf Ummm ...
How much is a small piece like that would sell for. Is it worth the hassle.
I sold that bar for about $1200. So far I've been able to keep a food over my head and some food on the table. Plus, I love doing it. So for me, it's worth the hassle
sreetips yeah for 1200 dollars definitely worth it.
I wonder how do you get the metals ( do you buy it as scrap silver ? )
because i would like to try this aswel at home in my workshop .
Please see my video titled; how to make a profit refining precious metals.
What tips would you have for a beginner that wouldn't have all the lab equipment and chemicals. Anything that could be done with household stuff and old coffee pots and mason jars?
Back when I first started I used a coffee pot because they could be heated. I used 3 liter jars from the thrift store (still use them to decant my stock pot). Pyrex measuring cups work good to heat things in as well. I have clear glass saucers that I use as cover for my beakers. Good luck.
have you seen purple gold aluminium mix
I have not
Hey Mr Sreetips, just a question.... what if instead of inquarting, you dissolved everything in Aqua Regia at the start, then precipitated the gold and god knows what else out with the bisulphite, washed off the chlorine, then treated with nitric acid to dissolve the base metals, leaving the gold behind ????
It makes a very dirty solution
What do you do with your test strips? Add them to the stock pots?
Michael, the test strips have tin. Tin is a refiners nightmare. When combined with nitric it forms metastannic acid or tin paste. It will cause a filter to completely stop up. Like trying to filter elmers glue. I just toss them in the waste bucket.
Yep. The amount of gold on a test strip after the precipitation is mostly completed is in the milligram/microgram range.
Thank you for the video and insight. I have actually watched several years of them now and various experiments.
There is an aspect that I don't understand though, and that is why the gold is first diluted to appox 25% with the silver, and then the silver is chemically extracted back out?
Is this just to make it easier to get the small pieces when cooling in the water bucket from the pour, or is there another reason? I am really just curious, not planning to do this but it is fascinating since I was a chemical engineer a long time ago. Thanks
Inquartation: adding silver to create a 6k (25%) gold alloy so the nitric can penetrate.
@@sreetips I wonder if the items could just be melted into a bar or thin sheet. Made into an anode of a nitric acid bath to accomplish the same thing? Maybe bubble oxygen or ozone through it as needed.
I am familiar with how to do ultra high purity / semiconductor grade analysis for measuring material purity but not sure how it is done in consumer level purity.
I don’t know, I’ve never tried that.
@@sreetips It is just an idea, but if the voltage is kept relatively low, then the silver would plate onto the cathode, the copper will remain in the acid bath and the high purity gold will remain at the anode.
The nitric probably should be as concentrated and hot as feasible, close to 80 C if that can be done safely. The solubility of the copper nitrates will be nearly 2x at this temperature vs at room temperature, so in theory the excess will precipitate out during cooling and you can keep reusing it. Maybe.
It might disintegrate during the process so using your dacron bag around the anode might be useful to capture it.
The bubbles coming off of the cathode will be quite strong, I believe that if dissolved in distilled water they would produce fresh nitric acid.
Of course this is just an idea, and a lot of things don't work in the real world.
I've been thrift shopping for about a year now.Are thrift stores the best places to find metals? Thanks keep up the vids
She buys bags of junk and broken stuff. It sells for about $30 at the thrift store - sometimes there is nothing, but she usually finds some over-looked karat gold and silver
Is there a possibility that the fumes can contain some metals?
Derek, the red fumes that evolve during dissolution could contain some fine mist of gold bearing solution. That's why it's important to keep the solution from boiling.
Once the gold has dissolved then there is a possibility of gold bearing solution spattering out of the container if it's allowed to boil vigorously. But I used a tall container with lots of room to compensate.
Thanks for the reply! Very interesting video's, keep up the good work!
Your the best stay safe thanks.
Great video! not sure if this was meant, but you've put your eBay listing under ( Coins & Paper Money>Bullion>Silver>Bars & Rounds )
Surely it should be under gold? Forgive me if wrong, my knowledge isn't the greatest. I just enjoy watching the videos and the detailed process.
Thanks
I changed it, thank you.
No problem, glad I could help :)
Thank you sir
whens the next time you'll be doing another gold refining video? (subscribed on this video btw) watching the different amounts of acid react with the gold and the repeated process of refining and expelling all the base metals/other unneeded precious metals from the gold is satisfying to watch.
I'll be making some new videos now that the holidays are over.
Can you process the yellow and the white in the same batch?
Yes
Wondering why you used oxalic acid in the second refining rather than BSM?
White gold could contain platinum group metals. SMB can drop PGMs if present and could contaminate the gold. Oxalic acid won’t drop PGMs.
There should be no trash or impurities in that BRAND of Oxalic acid,, I called the company 3 years ago and asked what the purity of their product was and they said it was 99.8 - 99.9 ,, He went on to say that they take great integrity with their work and product
It looked very pure. But I have seen fibers and dirt in the filters before. But tiny amounts only.
What about your ice does that contain chlorine from tap water?
The ice was made from tap water.
@@sreetips I am still learning. In your other videos I have seen you say that the chlorine would affect your filtration i believe. At this point in your process it does not?
When working with silver in solution it is important to use distilled water only because chlorinated water will react with the silver nitrate solution to form silver chloride. The gold solution is already a chloride so adding chlorinated water matters not.
@@sreetips Ok now i see that i missed this the first time. Thanks for the info and the great vids
***SreeTips*** Do you process gold for others? If I have 665 Grams PC fingers and pins already separated from cards and melted using scrap metals flux and borax would I get most of the gold and majority of impurities out?
This is my hobby, I don't refine other people's material. Melting causes metals to alloy together. They don't separate. Refining is the only way to separate the metals from each other.
Couldn't you use sodium hydroxide to lower the Ph of your Oxalic solution? Thanks! Cool video🖒
The bible says to use ammonia. Owl Tech used potassium hydroxide in his video with good results.
@@sreetips after some head scratching I said "Oh, Hoke!"
Yes, I should have said Hoke.
Would it matter if tap water is used for the ice making? Is there any negative at the point when you cool the Aqua Regia with gold in solution?
The contaminants are measure in parts per million. Not enough to report in the assay of the gold. There are some particulate in the tap water. Hold a glass of tap water up to the light and you'll see junk suspended in the water. But filtering before precipitation should get it all out.
Thanks. I was just wondering about the possible chlorine dissolved in there (less after freezing) causing a problem. At some points you (and other refiners) are very particular about using distilled to avoid chlorine so was not sure if the ice had to come from distilled as well as it is mixed in and not in an external ice bath.
How do you assay the product bar purity? You say ".999" Is there a common test?
XRF test. I've refined hundreds of ounces of gold. They assay three nines every time.
So it’s the combination of hydrochloride acid and nitric acid that puts gold into solution?
Does the nitric act as a catalyst in that case?
Correct, I’m not sure how it happens.
@@sreetipsin the uk I may have issues with getting hydrochloric acid. But I can make the nitric I think from wood.
Why didn't you just burn the filter with all the gold in it this time? Usually you just melt the gold with the filter?
Burning the filter during the melt hurts nothing. But there are some folks, not familiar with these techniques, who may consider burning paper with the gold as a source of possible contamination, even though it's not. Since I was going for high purity and will be selling this bar, I decided to not include the filter paper in the melt just for the effect. It's also the reason I used a fresh melt dish.
Would it be OK to use cold AR to extract gold from a big 15kg bach of industrial scrap in a teflon barrel?
It would take ages to do it in a beaker. Did 1.000g test and it gave 1.38%.
So cold AR and just let it sit, possible?
I don’t have any experience with that much, type, or cold aqua regia. Sorry
It sounds like a lot of work, a lot of waste that must be treated, for a small amount of gold recovered. These are the reasons that I don’t do much escrap these days.
Rhodium is the platting that is on gold. It's more common then making an alloy. I bet you have a ton of it.
We see it from time to time at the repair shop.
Is there a diamond tester you would recommend that cost less then $100? what one would you recommend at any cost?
I've had the one in the video since 1997. It cost about $100 back then. It has served me well and is still going strong.
im curious what this process would do to white gold with a bit of rhodium polluting the PGM or rhodium plating.
The hot nitric shouldn't dissolve rhodium, but the aqua regia should, right?
So if i understand it right, any rhodium would pass through the filter with the gold.
I'm not sure about the rest of the process, but with rhodium being over $10,000 an ounce im very curious.
Yoda, there’s rhodium in my filters and in my stock pot. I’m sure of that. I just haven’t figured out how to get it yet. But I will and then make a new video
Could we get a refining on silver contacts,tungsten & cadmium
Jesse, I wouldn't know what to do with tungsten
@@sreetips its all silver weathet its tungsten or cadmium contacts,just one has less of a percentage of silver than the other
I still don't quite get the point of white gold? What is the benefit over rhodium plated sterling? lol
Rhodium plating wears off and has to be dipped once in a while. Sterling silver is much softer metal and not usually suitable for setting diamonds. Some folks can't stand the look of yellow gold. They prefer the look of the white metal. White gold, made with palladium, is very beautiful. But most cheap white gold contains nickel. Some folks suffer allergic reactions to nickel. I like the look of pure yellow gold.
Fantastic!