I really appreciate you doing and showing all these experiments. It's true that not a whole lot equipment is required, but it's not exactly a casual undertaking, what with the toxics and the high temps. It's great to see the whole process(es)
Good Video, excellent work. Going to be doing some tests along this line with gold / silver ores from Nevada. The contained galena should make for a self fluxing material with its own lead. The old assay methods along this line used nails for iron.
My mother's first father-in law was an Englishman, trained as an assayer in the USA and worked on the Croyden goldfields in Far North Queensland , Australia in the 1890s to 1910's. Guess he would have done much like you do today. As a side-line for the community, he would make fireworks for New Years eve celebrations.
I made the furnace per your instructions it works great I have followed all your tests closely and I am now able to retrieve precious metals from my one man lode mining op.thank you your info has changed my game.
Good morning, just to inform you that when you are going to generate a basic slag in the foundry, you must use basic crucibles to prevent the attack of the slag to eat the crucible, you must use magnesia - chromite crucibles with the following characteristics: MgO 62.5% - Cr2O3 17% - Al2O3 6.5% - Fe2O3 11% - SiO2 2%. As a general rule, if the foundry generates a basic slag, basic crucibles should be used (magnesia - chromite) and for foundries that generate acid slags, acid crucibles should be used (High alumina - silica) which has the following characteristics: Al2O3 70% - Fe2O3 2% & SiO2 28%. In the particular case of sulfide ore smelting if you are going to generate basic slags, just make sure that the crucible is basic base (magnesia - chromite) or if you use acid crucibles (Alumina - Silica) you must change the formulation in such a way that you generate an acid slag, I recommend the following formula: sulfide ore: 130 grams Borax: 80 grams Soda ash: 124 grams Silica: 7.12 grams Lead: 38 grams o 41 grams fo litharge. Charcoal: 2.5 grams To determine the amount of iron I suggest weighing the iron bar before and after melting, the bar should be cold at the time of weighing, the difference in weight would be the amount of iron to add for that mineral. I hope you find the information useful, thank you for your attention and have a nice day.
I enjoy watching your videos and watching you smelt the ore and stuff and seeing the little beads I'd like to be set up to be able to do it but I don't have enough material to run keep making the videos and we'll keep watching thank you
Would just like to see you twist up a proper crucible handling tool to get it out of the furnace. Would hate the thing to crack while your holding it with only some multi-grips. Great info though, I'd love to give it a shot one day when I can afford all the equipment. Thanks for posting
The filters with an absorbent part in the cartridge are very short lived. Most are only rated for 1, 8 hour shift. You can stretch it by pulling the cartridges and taping the in and outlet. Put in a ziplok with desiccant packs. Most are worthless after a week.
Betcha that white halo seen in the cone mold is quartz bloom, from the silica sand. I'm a glassblower and neon bender- when i work quartz, that stuff gets everywhere and you have to basically chase it off the work with more fire.
Fun fact re: lye and silica/glass. A strong lye solution will etch most grades of glass in a short time! Lye will 'spoil' over time, absorbing CO2 from the air to become sodium carbonate. Still pretty basic stuff, not sure if it would work as a lye replacement.
Nice technique it's pretty good I'm going to try it and I'll get back to you see how it works as you know all the soil is different so be testing out this New Mexico soil ...... I'll let you know how it goes by the way I need price on your turn key system or whatever you were calling it through the day anyway cool beard bro later keep in touch this is Joe with New Mexico gold and later
Thanks for this video Jason. How does this 'roast' sulphide, what does the iron bar do and other chemicals act during this process? How much precious metal is lost to the slag? I've got a large quantity of pyrite and quartz vein ore and since there's probably very little precious metal in it, wondered if this method would be efficient or am I better off roasting first?
Best route is to concentrate your values and then roast and smelt the concentrates. This is a good way to gain some info on your material. Thanks for watching!
I have a question: If you put a slab of Kaowool over the Cupels, when you heat them in that electric furnace, will that absorb the fumes that come off and help prevent them being released into the air? (Not to mention your lungs), and for that matter dirtying up the inside of the furnace also. Thanks.
The lead needs access to the oxygen for the reaction to take place. When I open the door it looks like lots of fumes because the furnace is flooded with O2, but when the door is just cracked no fumes come off because there isn't enough O2 for the lead to "burn". Over 99% of the Pb goes into the cupel during this process if done correctly.
You could see the crucible failing as you pulled it out of the furnace on the first pour. I was expecting it to dump the contents on the bench or floor.
Any suggestions for a flux to help get the fe out of our gold smelts ? We are a small mine and use CN vat leach loads onto carbon. But when we strip the carbon and plate the gold /silver onto steel wool it is making the Dore magnetic suggestions?
Yes, good question. They weren't from the same source, it was just stuff I had laying around :) The head ore was low grade and the tailings had more gold than they probably should have :)
Is the lead you use adding something to the final bead? Those two small beads were tiny and silver, and that one sample seemed pretty devoid of anything but quartz.
I'm just wondering whether I understood correctly that you added 50 g of lead on each smelting and then converted to lead to lead oxide fumes. So for the eight smeltings you converted 500g over a pound of lead in to lead oxide fumes that settled down in the area around your burnout oven. Is that correct or did I misunderstand something
Hey not to complain to much ,but when your writing things on your platform can you move it to the middle of screen so everyone can read what your trying to say thanks .jim
Why did you move away from the sodium carbonate for this method? The sodium carbonate has a pH of 11.6 and caustic soda has a pH of 14.0. They are both very basic and should work the same right? The sodium carbonate would be a safer method and looked like it worked in your previous video on this method.
Good question. I have a video coming out soon describing the difference in detail, but essentially with the soda ash a bunch more material needs to be drove off and it tends to boil and froth in the crucible. The lye melts quick, doesn't boil, and doesn't require as much weight for the same amount of ore. More info in an up coming video, thanks for asking
A bit worried about that respirator description. A P100 is just the particulate part of the filter. It does protect from fumes, not vapors. SO2 is considered a Vapor. The difference is apparantly how the metal or chemical behaves. Is it still particles or not... Your filters are pink so i assume they are 3M's 60929S P100 combined filters for Mercury Vapor/Chlorine/Sulfur Dioxide Gas and particulate. Not just P100 filters. Please guys be safe, do not use a normal P100 filter for this. It will not stop any gasses unless it is a combined filter made for the task.
@@mbmmllc i crushed a lb. & roasted it, the put it in hot aqua regia, it released shiney floaters that turned the solution oarnge but no drop , nothing.
Can you do cupelling gold plated computer pins please. I know lots of people who would love to know how to do it properly. I will share on a Facebook page.
@@mbmmllc THE DESIGN I'M WORKING ON IS ROTARY, USING A MUCH MORE AGGRESSIVE AND ROBUST SYSTEM OF IMPELLERS THAT VARY FROM RIGID TO SWINGING. RUN IT OFF BELTS WITH A SMALL CAR DIESEL AND FEED IT WITH A BACKHOE OR LOADER. IT ALL GETS DOWN TO BURNING ROCK AFTER THE FREE GOLD IS OUT. USE A REVERSE-SCALED MULTI-SCREEN SET-UP SLOPED AT BACK OF CRUSHER VESSEL WITH FINE SCREEN FIRST, THE LARGER GRADES FOLLOWING IN ORDER, PUT WALLS BETWEEN SCREENS DOWN TO CATCHMENTS, AND BOB'S YOUR UNCLE. CENTER SHAFT IS A 3" SCREW-JACK LEG, HAS HOLLOWS FOR WELDING PRIMARY ROCK CHUNK BLADES FROM TRUCK LEAF SPRINGS. BLADES ANGLED TO PROPEL ROCK THROUGH CRUSHER, CRUSHER TUBE IS 16" WELL PIPE FROM A SCRAP YARD, 4 FT. LONG. (WHOLE UNIT BUILT FROM SCRAP YARD STEEL). INTERESTING, CREATIVE, AND VERY HARD THINGS SPINNING IN GRADUATED PROXIMITY WITHIN. FINISH WITH NICHROME CHAIN MAIL CURTAINS JUST BEFORE SCREENS FOR ULTRA FINE SMELT DUST OR TABLE WORK.
Bit of both. Each cupel can only absorb a certain amount oxides, once it hits that point its done. But a single cupel can be used for multiple small amounts until it becomes saturated
Exactly Monty, I have used one cuple several times for small batches of 10 grams of lead at a time, but they do become saturated and then a new one is needed
Good stuff, I've learned a lot binge watching your videos over the last week! Just to be clear, this method does not work with iron pyrites, they would just be absorbed into the slag along with the FeS created by the iron bar+sulfur from the copper, lead and arsenic sulfides, right?
Actually this does work well for pyrite. The iron bar does release some metallic iron to convert everything to FeS (iron pyrite is FeS2) any gold will be released and collected by the collector metal
@@mbmmllc I'm still trying to wrap my head around this in the case of iron pyrite, could you explain the process a bit more. What is happening to the FeS2 during this process? Is it decomposing thermally into FeS during the start of the smelt, or is it being oxidized by the Lye or somehow snagging an O atom from the Borax? If it thermally decomposes to FeS, how does it release any gold contained before being absorbed into the slag? I can see the iron bar taking up the spare S atom, but wouldn't gold still be locked up in the sulfide if it wasn't oxidized by something during the smelt?
Thank you for the video suggestion! You can search our channel by going to the channel page and typing in keywords to find a video similar to what you're talking about here, but it is from 5 years ago so maybe we should do an update!
Thank you my friend, but when you are speaking, I do not understand what you are saying. I translate English but Arabic. I hope that you will explain to me through the scribes for me so that I can translate as an example
Not exact chemistry, bro. The amount of chemicals u add for a 100% recovery is to be calculated based on the exact amount of sulphide in ore...if take in cosideration ONLY slphides... but you have interesting ALCHEMISTRY experiment, like!