This was cool Ralph! I’ve never heard anyone do a zinc video!! I watch a RU-vid series called “ghost trails and gold towns” about a historian who tells amazing stories of old time prospectors running into lodes... he mentions multiple stories of huge veins of zinc Or galena that were seen but lost by old time prospectors... The stories take place in Canada where there seem to be lots of those sorts of deposits.. It was very informative to see you explain where to find zinc in modern machinery :D Thank you for such a great video and look forward to seeing the zincs relationship to becoming silver and gold 🤔
Hi Chris, this video is very helpful especially in my case because I wanted to re-plate my very rusty motorcycle bolts and other metal brackets. Thank you for helping me identify the zinc metal and also how to melt it. Great video!
Chris Ralph, Professional Prospector . We’re doing good. Shop slowed down a little with this stay at home order but not much different, I’m usually a stay at home person anyway.
Wow, this was so interesting and informative. I follow you with my prospecting channel. Every time I look for something there you are. Lol. I am going to be casting metal soon and was looking into zinc.
Hi Chris. Nice videos. Have you heard of using Glacial Vinegar to separate gold from black sand? Vinegar has some weird properties when used at nearly 100%, like being highly explosive and corrosive. You really have to read, understand and follow the MDS data sheet to be safe with this stuff. A fume hood and PPE are a must? The resulting gold is 95% pure though. If you're interested, I will share the second step to complete the process on another venue to be safe.
I've used glacial acetic acid for other things, and no, its not explosive. So I am not sure what you are talking about. Not really interested, but I am glad you enjoyed the video.
This was SO helpful. I needed 1/4 pound of zinc (112 g) and now I can identify literally 10's of pounds of it in my garage in fence parts alone. Thanks man, great video.
tin has a much lower melting point than zinc-at only 232 degrees Celsius compared to 419 degrees Celsius for zinc. Zinc reacts with lye to liberate hydrogen while tin does not.
I need zinc for my upcoming project of electro plating all of my workshop tools, I have several old col war era wrenches and would like to make them nice and shiny !
As you know, but maybe some of your listeners don't, is that Zinc being heavy is one reason it is used to replace lead in wheel weights. It also rings if you drop it on concrete. And, even though it's against the law, you can get a bunch of it from 1982 1/2 to present cents. Commonly known as Zincolns. Although there is the copper wash to contend with.
Forgot to mention, and you probably know this too, zinc wheel weights will float on lead if you don't melt the lead at too high of a temp. Zinc melts at 787 and lead at 622.
@@ChrisRalph I hope so I want to get out and meet up and film and find some Gold !!!! I have just the place but it's still under Snow so Know hurry !!!!
Very informative. I keep getting crystalizing when I pour zinc alloy into molds. I see that your bars are nice and smooth. Any idea how to stop the crystalizing?
How does electrolosis/electroplating seperate impurities from the main metal(or would it be called an element for this purpose?) If one uses gold for the positive(cathode?) and i guess ill say steel for the negative(anode?) , the steel becomes gold plated. How would it lose impurities during transfer and not just particals of all of the types of material being transferred ? If I used a u.s. gold eagle as my cathode material And used .99999 fine gold as the anode , wouldnt I get 90% pure gold plated 24k gold or would it be somewhat purified? I am fairly sure steel would be plated with that 90%gold with the copper/silver they use for gold eagles. .how would the copper and silver get left in the plating solution with a gold anode ? I was watching a video on roughly how four and five or even more pure gold is made.they showed the process and gave little information . but it started by melting the gold sponge , chemically purifying it with the lead oxide/ boneash crucible technique to get 99.5% gold. They then used a dilute acid to turn it into solution and added more chemicals to make the gokd drop out of solution which is washed and remeleted purifying it to .999 fine gold. This is made into ingots , those are rolled and sheared into thin plates and then become cathodes in a huge elctroplating tank. This is supposed to make .9999 fine gold. Its been bugging me. I appologize for being so over the place with my question . I am trying to get it to make some sort of sense.
You are getting into some really technical questions on plating which is not really something I plan to do on my channel. What plates from one side to the other depends on the type of solution you have, what your impurities are and what the electric voltage potential is. There are books, websites and channels that focus on plating.
@@ChrisRalph while I didn't realize this was out of the scope of what you are teaching us about , and if i had I wouldnt have asked so as not to take up your time. Thank you for any answer .mentioning what you did actually gives me a better idea of what I should be looking for in said books and webpages ,ect.
I was wondering about some of this, too. Like how to remover mercury from amalgamated gold. Or, conversely, how did prospectors use mercury to extract gold from ore. Not electroplating, but very interested in how purification works. Thanks for asking!
Zinc has bluish white colour and brass has yellow colour like gold...and yeah brass is combination between copper and zinc...and gold more shiny than brass...
Nope, not manganese. Manganese melts at a high temperature, comparable to iron. Zinc melts a very low temperatures, and these all melted at low temperatures as showing they were zinc or mostly zinc alloys.
Interesting. I used to work for Olin Brass / Winchester Ammunition. The shot towers were quite tall. Lead is pour in sieves and allowed to fall a long distance. The air pressure and surface tension of the metal would allow it to form the ball before hitting the water to cool. Different size shot was made based on the sieve used to pour the lead through. Thanks for sharing. Joe
What I learn over my years of scraping Metal and casting, is that you have to be careful on some zinc has Cadmium used as corrosion resistance plating which is very Poisonous
On another subject but the same in a sense, how do you know when you've added enough zinc and is their a way to rinse the zink out of pgm's? Thanks in advance.
@Chris Ralph, Professional Prospector My zinc bars crystalized in the center and look pretty interesting but aren't what I'm trying to do. Am I pouring too hot or cooling too fast?
Have enjoyed all your videos. Learned a great deal. Have you ever thought ablout doing the history of mining in the old west with a tie into the railroads. Really enjoyed this one. Going to look at some more if time allows. Thanks!
Of course the railroads are not my thing, but I take it that they are something of interest to you. I did two history videos, one on Tonopah, Nevada and the other on Goldfield, Nevada. The introduction to my video on silver ore has a lot about the history of Virginia City.
My dad was into reloading and when i was younger we watched a programme on how shot gun shot was made. In it the molten lead was pored from over 20 meters high and into water 10 meters deep. This was how they got nice round shot. maybe next time you could try poring into a section of drain pipe lower down (might need a splash gard). I cant wait to get my fourge up and running and will definatly give zinc a go. great informative video. Thanks Eric
Chris , I checked into die casting, it involves molten metal. The process of using powdered metal is called Sintering - the metal never reaches a fully liquid state and in some cases isn't heated at all, simply pressed into the mould under extremely high pressure. Otherwise, a great help in sourcing cast zinc for use as anodes in electroplating. Thanks
After the melting process I made to obtain silver, another metal is formed between the slag and the button. what is this or is there still precious metal in it
Thank you very much for your feedback. I guess because I did not roast the sulfide ore before processing, a worthless metal of iron, arsenic and antimony was formed. I solved my problem with different methods. Thank you again.@@ChrisRalph
What is the purpose of boron or borax in the melting of gold? I know boron acts as a flux, but what are the reasons for using it in melting gold into ingots? At what part of the gold processing is boron used? Does it purify gold nuggets while its melting? Or is it to allow the gold nuggets to fuse together while melting or is it to not let the gold stick to the molting pot? I find this interesting. And boron is non toxic to work with too. Thanks for you advice.
Most gold has impurities with it, including iron oxides, black sand and quartz. The borax captures those and gives a purer gold button or bar. It cleans the gold and helps the gold stick together to the rest of the gold.
I feel the weight and strength if its something that a piece has broken off i look at the texture on exposed area. Than final quick test small blowtorch. It starts melting quickly it defnetly zinc.
Love the posses on braking down medal type into liguid and how much heat and what type eguipment is needed specialy how to exstract real gold keep up the good work im learning alot with these videos
Not yet! I am, going to leach some silver ore with non-toxic chemicals and then recover the silver from the solution using the zinc. It is coming soon, maybe in a few weeks.
@@ChrisRalph How do you solve the problem of selling the gold dust, I mean people must have the certificate for their gold, or otherwise they would be accused of illegal mining, or worse stealing, and so on. The elites controls gold, they make it hard for people to mine the gold without license. Is it legal to prospect gold at river, beach ? Thanks
My zinc was just picked up here and there. there is a process called anodizing for zinc, but its wildly different from Aluminum anodizing. It's radically different--done at 90 to 200 AC volts. It is not a decorative finish and colors range from green through grey to brown, but dyeing for specific colors is not really possible.
Perfect, I was looking for inspiration as to what places in my shed to look for zinc. That pulley wheel hit the spot, I've got a couple spares/surplus. Need some during lock down with an electroplating project!
