Would this be classed as payable gold

I use borax all the time its great when you want to smelt all your fine gold down that may have a bit of quartz or hot rocks materiel attached to it but I was talking more like the iron you get at contact zones between the quartz vein and the host rock and when you say put a kg or 2 of it in a crucible and heat it the borax just wont and cant cut it and you are left with tiny beads of gold sprinkled throughout the end result that can be seen under a microscope and probably in the slag as well. I have seen on documentary's where they have uncounted the same situation and they finally got a bloke in to give and show them how to use his recipe and one key ingredient was sugar as for the rest of the recipe and how much of what with how much material is the unknown but they started getting beads that were in the grams from the same material they previously used with the borax and seen no gold and that's the type of recipe I had in mind Cheers GC

just google chapmans flux mate, very cheap combo works well. you can but it on ebay for bugger all and you only use a teaspoon to melt 10 grams or so.

G0lddigg@ said:

I

most of my mates want to mine all my spots... causes the odd argument

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and that's why I stay quiet as you may know with some past experiences I've had witch I won't go into

greencheeks77 a bit of advice if your finding those type of grades don't trust anyone unless your more than happy to let the whole prospecting community know exactly where it is and then flog it with several other people and groups and have unfilled detector holes around the whole place

not to put a damper on things but i can second that...

still share things but just don't tell anyone the location

:lol: My name is Billy Hunt not silly #%@t .. As for the Chapman's Flux it was the first thing I came across after I failed though I have never used and will not criticize it I believe its just another type of borax as in it is a set formula and I am led to believe that each time you change the type of ore E.g. more quartz less copper more silver less tin and so on.. that you are smelting you also have to tune those ingredients to suit different smelts and I spose that's why gold smelting or refining is an art and an art I would personally like to learn ... Cheers GC

hey mate refining and smelting are two very different beasts. Smelting is what you do when you have nothing left but trace elements and the metal you are refining i.e. gold.

normal chapmans is i believe
40 % Borax, 20 % Soda Ash, 20 % Manganese Dioxide with 20 % Silica

I use 70/30 Borax / soda ash it works well for me

this will burn anything away other than gold and a bit of silver and sometimes copper traces but i get around 97-98% pure gold when i sell it.

one of tehse little bad boys will set you back about $200 from memory, works a treat comes with plenty of flux too

Thanks for posting the mixture golddigga.. I couldn't for the love of gold remember what it was. If you need manganese dioxide its in batteries.. the black goop.

When it comes to ore you would process it in several ways. Youve gone and done step one and panned out the obvious or smelting the raw ore. Don't forget you can 'bake' the rock to soften it for easier crushing if needed to make your 'dore'. Gold that couldve still been within this rock is probably too hard to do anything with as it becomes slag.

This is in any way not written with ratios as a self disclaimer.. if you play with it, you gotta know how to deal with it first. All below is highly dangerous and needs thorough detail on safety and each process.

For further refining of small missed particles invisible to the eye, I'd reccomend using mercury almalgam and then retorting. For full recovery, dissolving the quartz using hydrofluoric acid, then the iron with hydrochloric acid and the rest with aqua regia. Nearly same chemical and reaction and one or the othrr might not be needed. Once everything is physically dissolved into so lol utions you then want to bring the gold salts from the solution using a precipitate like urea and after filtering / cleaning many times you will have you full gold content or 'mud' to smelt. In doing this you will gain every other element you can isolate from the solutions such as tin, silver, copper as well as your gold product

Even though the cyanide technique is considered 'safer', I won't discuss that here though

I've only had glass and slag as a product when I tested it out..no gold for me with smelting ore yet

The only problem with acids AR that I personally dealt with as for instance when I used hydrochloric acid it was great for dissolving the quartz and iron ore to leave a great looking nugget but it seems the more material you put in the acid the more diluted it becomes leaving one with an going cost of buying more and then you have dispose of waste acids as for hydrofluoric acid I don't think it would be very different scenario from the hydrochloric.. now I have looked into the aqua regia although it looks like the perfect acid for any prospector trying to obtain the nitric acid is impossible without the right licences and permits as it is used as a precursor in drug manufacturing so straight away it is a huge hurdle, if you have got a small batch of aqua regia its great for jewellery and other small stuff so I have been told even when i have done it on a larger scale I used the bleach or chlorine mixed with vinegar it was a lot cheaper and will only dissolve the gold leaving all of the stone behind then I got espresso filters and you are left with just the gold dissolved in the acid but if you don't control the ph constantly at I think it was 7.5 you will loose dissolved gold and then you precipitate it with ferrous sulphate and then smelting the mud that is left over and buying Ferro gradumet needed isn't that cheap so I scraped that idea too and was left with sulphuric acid and electrolysis but as much as I tried to make it work I failed though I know it does work though and would very much like to learn that as well if anyone can help.. And cyanide sounds like a great way but as close as I came to obtaining it was being advised that some rat baits might contain cyanide and was told you could give that a go lol so I reckon I will give the rat sack a miss until I can find where to buy it the cyanide that is and perhaps be taught how to use without killing everything regard GC Can anyone tell me what products contain liquid mercury that is need for collecting gold and everyone knows about old thermomotors but even they have red liquid now and I don't think its mercury any help is better than no help so I am open for ideas ..

really big thermal switches mate thats where i got mine, about half ounce per bulb

H Greencheeks,I refine about a couple time a year,but reading how you do it,you make sound so complicated.
You need to buy a good book that lays out the method.
Regards Frank

Hey frank was hoping you'd chime in mate heres s bloke who knows his stuff

normal chapmans is i believe
40 % Borax, 20 % Soda Ash, 20 % Manganese Dioxide with 20 % Silica

70/30 Borax / soda ash it works well

Thanks for that golddig@ could anyone explain to me the mechanics of the ingredients as in what they do to what and so forth so one has understanding how and why one needs to adjust the formula

Hi Dustin
I think the best thing is what I said above get yourself a good book,and digest it.
I do not like telling people on a forum how to refine gold and other things that involve acids,mainly because they might hurt,or loose some gold.
The book that I found heaps imformation in was "Recovery and refining of precious metals" By CW Ammen.
He explains a lot methods of testing for various metals and how to process them.
There is a couple copies on Ebay,but hold your hat Aud$175.00 but they are in the US,but they a book will increase in price,as they have been,97 was the last print.
But if you are serious about playing with refining,imformation is your best friend,do not take what is told to you.
Over time you will hone your skills,with refining,and the other important thing is it will make your look at the hunt for gold in different ways.
I hope this helps
Regards Frank

try these links

http://webpages.charter.net/kwilliams00/bcftp/bcftp.htm

and

http://www.miningandmetallurgy.com/gold/html/roasting_chemicals.html

they should help you decide on how much of what you need to put in your own flux.
Borax is available cheaply at Bunnings.
Soda Ash is also cheaply available at Bunnings.

Hydrochloric acid isn't a hard one to produce at home, and it isn't that expensive compared to the yields your seing. I make small amounts of nitric on the fly when needed but its no where near enough that I really need. Not too sure if you do need a licence, blacksmiths use it freely from what I know, but I've still gotta peek into it.

Always wanted to get those books mentioned above

Thanks kurrajong for the links they are perfect cheers for that

As for the book Frank I can value a good book as much as next bloke or my wife for that matter lol but sometimes the information like in the book mentioned are out-dated and as much as it would be priceless to read sometime the practices that are laid out in these type of books are unable to be carried out by the average commoner due to restrictions and so, its a bit like mercury and cyanide as an e.g. I to believe information is your friend but when one is going to start working with acids they will try regardless if they use the correct way or not and the lack of information such as what we all look for on forums will turn out to be their foe, I am a strong believer of the saying don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see... But at the same time your knowledge is no good unless your going to pass it on, unless someone's one of those (Knowledge is power) blokes which never benefits anyone little own on a forum.... All said I do still value your opinion and I am grateful for your post Cheers GC

greencheeks77 said:

normal chapmans is i believe
40 % Borax, 20 % Soda Ash, 20 % Manganese Dioxide with 20 % Silica

70/30 Borax / soda ash it works well

Thanks for that golddig@ could anyone explain to me the mechanics of the ingredients as in what they do to what and so forth so one has understanding how and why one needs to adjust the formula

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with my formula it quite simple, Borax creates the right environment to melt gold i.e. heat and fluidity the soda ash works by creating a protective layer which holds back the atmosphere which forces oxidization which you don't want whilst smelting. Think of the surface of your melt constantly being attacked by cold molecules which shatter on the surface.

really its something you need to have a play with, my first few melts where with propane and a ramekin, then i discovered map pro and borax if you ahd nothing else these two items will get you to 98% but you will still need to catch that fine stuff before you can melt it.

as has been said above read read and read some more, nonone here will be able to summarize it for you

Yep, I certainly dont give out exact detail and miss information because of this. Takes years. Everytime I conduct an experiment / synthesis, I'm surrounded by textbooks and all safety well prepared before even sniffing step 1. Reading every single chemical msds is such an essential need as well.

If all safety and precautions are payed attention to of well more imprtance than the experiment itself, nothing should be able to go wrong or at least you will be safe from harm. This is an issue for me as I recon my neighbours probably think I'm making my own eppisode of Breaking Bad. I have pre written disclaimers, full sheets of all my documented chemicals and nothing is ever premade and left in storage apart from general chemicals, always on the fly.. just in case. I keep the chemical activity minimal, the neighbours all know I'm just interested in everything.