Polycarbonate is stronger than acrylic btw, although both are carbon based polymers. Not the same thing. Awesome idea! I like how you can see what's happening in the sluice. Very cool.
Thanks mate although I don’t believe I mentioned acrylic. Lexan/polycarb. Was considering using acrylic to get the ultra clear finish after flaming but can’t beat the strength of polycarbonate.
Awesome! PLEASE do this with a clear regularly shaped pan, so we can see just how fast the gold drops to the bottom. I have a feeling the gold drops to the bottom much faster than most people realize and that they are over stratifying and wasting time. A clear pan will settle this!
You can polish out the opaque machined sections of your sluice using a few different methods. The easiest is Flame Polishing where you use a propane torch held at a distance to heat and partially melt the polycarbonate. It turns it back clear, but can be a little bit tricky to learn as your first use it. It is easy to burn the poly, so practice is required. Another method is to use a acetone and MEK (methyl ethyl ketone) vapor chamber. It's really just a box with a container of acetone and MEK mixed together. It creates a vapor that partially melts the poly and turns it clear. Pretty effective and has great results.
Thanks mate! Tried to heat it with a torch and burnt a bit of the front just because of the large areas. Don’t know if I’ll get as fancy as the chamber but thanks I’ll keep it in mind for V2.
I don't think you would want to polish anything....if anything, you would want to rough everything up...otherwise, the gold has less of a chance to get caught up, and just blows on thru...
I know you're pain about 1st attempts in the end to melt my silver i got a map bottle and oxygen with torch melted like icecream. Great video congrats and don't stop
Nice work for your first time. I was super nervous using gold on my first attempt, so I used silver. My first attempt with gold I couldn't get it to melt with propane, I did some research and learned map gas (yellow tanks) burns plenty hot to melt gold, and it did just fine with one torch. I haven't tried to pour yet, I just make buttons. Once I get the equipment to purify gold I will try to smelt my buttons into bars.
You are supposed to burn the borax in the dish first until it glazes the dish. I will be trying my first silver melt in a few days and I thank you for this video. What is the big pan that you set up the fire bricks in? I think I'm going to use this idea like you did. ❤@@picketgoldprospecting1133
Thanks! About half way through melting process I went to Bunnings and purchased a better torch with hotter burning gas. That did the trick rather quickly.
Hi Ed, as written in the tag this was my first melt and a big learning curve. Like the above comment I am more then happy to take on any positive feedback or help. If you yourself have ever spent over a year panning and exploring to find this small amount you would know that this is very rewarding and exciting time, why not video it even if it’s not perfect. Positive comments only please. Thanks
Nice Gold Smelt ! You might pre coat the inside of your ceramic dish with borax first before adding the gold powder in, so less stick.This video shows exactly how to coat your ceramic dish with Borax First ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KcNAfplWuJw.html Between 2:50 to 5:40 Time Frame
That’s a bit of a tricky one, even if you had the base held on with a form of L bracket you would have to put fixings in it which would get in the way of the crushing process. Maybe try a local welder/fabricator, before I had my own welder I went to a fabrication place and they were happy to weld it up at minimal cost. Cheers
