Making purple gold 

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I showed this video to my godfather who owns a large jewelry company and he told me he had tried to make this about 5 years ago and this was some of the finest work he had ever seen

I love how the chemistry in this video isn’t complicated, it’s just Nile learning that casting metal is complex.

Nile: "there was still one problem though, and that was how ugly it was" the bar: 😢

Imagine being a medieval king and some alchemist walks up to you, pulls out a bunch of bubbling, color changing liquids and transmutes your gold into purple gold jewelry. It would blow your mind.

"Im not usually into jewellery" *Nile casually making himself grillz a few months ago*

One month on, Singaporean here and I just happened to stopped by Lee Hwa for some jewllery shopping. Asked the staff about purple gold and would you know it, the staff informed that this video was shared all over the company internally. Staff shared that Lee Hwa actually experienced a spike in international sales right after this video dropped, so they have Nile to thank for!

As someone who uses sandpaper a lot, I can almost guarantee that the gold that you lost simply just got stuck in the sandpaper. Soft metal is very good at clogging sandpaper grit and with as much sanding as you claimed to have done, I'm genuinely surprised you didn't lose more than you did lol

I love how dedicated Nile is to making these videos like $5700 to $7200 on just one ingredient is crazy

The beaker drop had me in shambles until I realized it was just a bamboozle

Nile: "I have no idea where all the gold went!" Also Nile: *sanding, grinding, hammering*

As a retired manufacturer of alluvial gold extraction plants in Australia, I was dumbfounded at your experiment, and ecstatic at your result. Congratulations, you did extremely well.

Hi NileRed, Nice video. I have three, probably important, comments for you :o) I hope you will like it (at leat it may interest scientific peoples, enginers and chemistry educated peoples, or readers). 1°) About your gold amount disappearing; you are right gold when heated vaporizes and some is lost not only litteraly but effectively into fumes... so you are "totaly sane" and absolutely not crasy; your results show this effect quite obviously (and yes dramaticaly). Not many knows this but gold is a "noble" metal; and as such molecularly despite its weight and density; it ressembles by many aspects to mercury metal or noble gases; when heated; it sublimates partly thus long before melting point is reached some is lost in the air. 2°) Annealing at 600°C is one thing; but often in industial processed it is made several times in sequential mode; so heating, cooling, reheating, recooling, etc.; I'm quite sure that your pink-lilac colour will improve upon cycling more (not a single time (like what you did), but several times) and also by checking the form of the cyle (speed of heating, time of plateau, speed of cooling). 3°) The bubbling of Ar gas into the melt (or N2 gas - that is cheaper) a bit like what is done in chemistry with fluids to degas them is a good option; just like the ultrasonic (or vibrations like some cements, plaster, plastic for molding)... but Did you consider reducing the overal pressure; it also degas things more and faster; some use a depressurization chamber for cements, plaster or plastic molding; of course taking into account the volatility of some ingredients or solvents; here despite aluminium and gold are metals and melting point should remain almost the same; the oxidizibility of aluminium should be reduced in lower pressure; but volatility and loss of gold will be worse under reduced pressure than your 5% loss :o(. Kind regards PHZ (PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)

Whats crazy is you've advanced a field. no one makes cast purple gold jewelry because of the complications. You are now one of the best in the world at that specific task and made it look like a college students term project.

Fun fact: in the semi-conductor industry, this alloy is known as “purple plague” because it’s extremely detrimental to parts. Basically, if gold and aluminum contacts touch at high temp, some purple alloy naturally forms. This alloy is both brittle and a poor conductor, leading to electrical or mechanical failure. It was a big issue for a while, and Al and Au are some of the most common contact materials in chips. So yeah, fun facts for ya. Edit: Wow, this blew up, haha. Glad to start some cool conversations and learning!

What makes this ring particularly cooler than most is how genuine it is. The design and process was obviously based on techniques already used but to source it all yourself and go through the process as you did (imo) is what makes that ring so precious. fallowing your own ideals of what you feel made your product worth casting was a sight. the random mistakes that inspired the design and helped the process. truly one of a kind. thanks for sharing this yo!

The solid substance made of more gold than aluminum is truly lavender. If light reflects the thing, it is fuchsia. The jewel looks so beautiful! Even more beautiful without holes!

i am a jeweler and goldsmith apprentice and seeing you drop the beaker "full of gold" game me heart palpitations and i almost started crying in Italian

You’re not going crazy about the gold loss - in my workshop, we call it ‘Fairy Tax’ - a tax paid to the fairies for good luck on the piece. Works every time 😅

The fact you just keep going and never gave up, for such a simple yet satisfying outcome, I absolutely love it

I can't even imagine how happy excited and proud you must have felt during this process but at the same time devastated, hopeless, sad, confused, etc. Congratulationssssssssssssssss

7:50 As soon as the gold was completely dissolved, I thought to myself, man, the worst thing that could happen is if he spilled this beaker of $5,700 orange soda. I basically yelled out loud when I saw it slip.

Man really just spent $8000 on gold, bought a CNC machine, and spent days purifying and re-smelting metal just to make a ring he doesn't think he will wear all that often. Legendary.

Jewelry companies hate this man, he's showing us the secrets and the methods so we don't gotta pay for overpriced rocks

That beaker drop was such a cool joke. My jaw dropped temporarily.

I'm a jewellery maker, and I just watched this whole video utterly fascinated. The chemistry, the complexity of casting metal, and the artistry, all combined into an absolute thriller. When I studied jewellery making, I never got to cast gold for budget reasons, and I only know in theory how gold can be dissolved in aqua regia, and I'm just mindblown right now.

Can we just appreciate the fact that this guy took an arcane process only known to a few specialists and made an entire YT step-by-step that everyone can now see. Congratulations, man!

I’m watching this as a foundry man (you are a reason I chose to do this) and I 100% think I could have helped you on this project and saved you from a lot of pain 😅

Blue gold would be so cool if it were ever made

The part with the Aqua Regia is exactly how George de Hevesy hid 2 Nobel Prize medals during WWII. To the soldiers who looked around his lab for valuable things, it just looked like a beaker of orange chemicals. After the war, he precipitated the gold back out and the Nobel Committee recast the medals from that gold.

This has to be one of the most well deserved patents. Not only figuring out how to make purple gold but refining the process so it can be strong and once it’s set into a shape then annealed into the crystal structure that gives it the purple colour. It must be near impossible to rediscover this without a deep, deep understanding of metallurgy.

My uni major was chemistry (53 years ago) and we worked with different solutions. At one point, I had to salt out gold from a liquids as part of my final exam. They were extremely alert when we worked with precious metals.

I always watch your videos on Facebook and love them. I never knew you had a RU-vid channel. I am a huge fan of precious metals, and saw TraxNYC's purple gold Jesus pendant and him shouting you out in the comments. I'm glad to now be a member of the channel. When my finances are better, I will become a patron. Much love from Chile.

I feel like this man single-handedly expanded the purple gold community from almost nothing to something in the eyes of the people

Dude just completely reverse engineered, fully documented, and probably even improved a deeply proprietary jewelry process based on a one line recipe in a patent, what an absolute beast. I'm thinking most of your gold loss was in the sanding and grinding, especially if you didn't chemically extract the gold from the used sandpaper.

Imagine a random guy melted gold and put purple coloring in there and there it is. Perfect purple gold.

seems like a good time to have found your channel. dope videos man. thanks for droppin em.

I'm from Singapore and i grew up seeing Lee Hwa's purple gold ads and shop displays. I didnt know the purple gold was legitimate gold! My husband also thought there was a coating of purple substance, not actual gold. This is so interesting. Good job Nile on replicating it so perfectly.

It's absolutely fascinating that you ALWAYS include processes that went wrong or produced unexpected results. It makes me appreciate the hard work, time, and patience that you put into all of your projects even more.

my favourite part about this video is him learning both that casting metal is hard and lighting can make things look different colours

Brother salute to your resolute dedication! I really take interest in your work and never ever forward any part as it's the details that make it more interesting especially the chemistry! Love

This is legitimately some stuff that may have never been recorded on camera let alone documented in this way. Fantastic work, NileRed. You should be very proud of this one.

My immediate first thought of seeing a beaker full of dissolved gold is "What happens if he drops and breaks it", and without missing a beat Nile trolls the viewer with exactly that lmfao. Mindreading content creator.

I stumbled upon this on You Tube. Young man you are a very bight spark ! Your laboratory is well stocked & supplied. Well done, very informative & highly educational presentation. You presented information concisely & accurately , the chemistry is faultless & suburb . Thank you for sharing in the Cosmos. Keep up your continued scientific interests. The World needs more of your mould type .❤🎉

It is a very beautiful color. More subtle and toned down than natural gold, a color that never struck me, yet this is as nice as white & rose gold. Awesome vid.

Remember that aluminum immediately passivates into aluminum oxide, so all bulk "aluminum" contains surface layer of aluminum oxide. You need to use chemistry magic to add PURE aluminum to the liquid gold with no surface layer. Perhaps suspended in a liquid. Add the liquid to the crucible with bubbling argon and slowly warm up the crucible evaporating the suspended liquid. Now you have pure aluminum you can add gold to. You're also sanding / polishing with aluminum oxide. This is why it remained silver. Do this: mix pure aluminum with no aluminum oxide, pure Gold. Bubble some argon. Pour into a mold, and put DIRECTLY into a furnace and do not let it cool below 600C. Let it sit at 600C for 24 hours, and cool down to room temperature over the following 24 hours. Then polish with stainless steel, stone, or some non aluminum compound. I am going to do my own work with my goldsmith friend but you have much more resources. Finally, you say you don't knowing where the gold went... But you were sanding for 10 hours (!) multiple times (!) and you ONLY lost 5 grams?

2:06 “But for some reason, I really felt that I can do it” *50 minutes remaining* Nile, you’ve done it again

I really like the fact that for the big part of this video you are surprised by the outcomes same as we are all there

The dedication to this is amazing

I truly believe that purple gold will become much more popular in jewelry after this video.

The loss of Gold was almost certainly connected to the Sanding portion of your working with it. You likely have a significant amount that is still in the matrix of the sandpaper you used, and there is also a loss of gold in dust form through air movement. I would suggest using a wet sanding method in a container or water where the gold dust will be collected in the water of the container. I also saw when you hammered earlier pieces of purple gold, small pieces flew off due to the brittle nature of the metal. and because gold is so heavy it doesn't take much gold loss to amount to 5 grams. but it is still a lot of gold to lose. so, if and when you decide to work with gold alloys again, make sure you are using a vacuum with a filter that can collect the gold dust or better yet just sand the gold inside of a water filled container to that all of the abraded gold can be kept from being lost. Also not go hammering any of those pieces anymore because metal does form into crystals when freezing and if it is brittle like the purple gold, you made hammering it will cause the crystals to break apart and some of them will shatter. to get an idea of how to keep all of your gold in a form that will minimize loss you should watch Sreetips and his gold refining videos, but it does little to show how to keep your dust to a minimum. Work your gold in a different medium than air, work it in water, or rather sand it in water. Your Dremel can be hooked up to a flex shaft and you can do your shaping of the gold in water as well. this will prevent loss but may not stop it all. when working with precious metals, jewelers have to accept a certain amount of loss, and this loss is figured into the price of the Jewelry being made. Sure, jewelers collect as much dust and granules of the precious metals they work with but it can never be truly all accounted for This is just the nature of the world we live in.

Incredibly interesting! Metallurgy is a complete mystery to me. This was fascinating. Thanks!

38:04 probably what was left in the sandpapers. The ring is amazing, congratulations sir.

I love the premise of Nile coming into the jeweler space with his chemist perspective and finding a more convenient way to work with a difficult alloy.

Never in my life have I made it through 53 minutes of chemistry, but this channel is gold… pure purple gold

I love the nilered video where he makes smurf turds for 40 minutes and then makes purple gold In all seriousness though i really enjoy watching him learn and try near-impossible tasks

It is impressive how much hard work you have put into making this video. Well done! The purple sunset is very beautiful

I like that you don't just act like you researched and got it right first try. Showing your trials and errors along the way, and bringing us all on the journey with you is what makes this channel truly special.

Dude this is huge. You just provided a production process to small independent jewelers all over the internet for a really cool thing that the greater jewelry industry has dismissed as unprofitable. I have several ideas for how to improve your processes, based on my own past jewelsmithing experience as a hobby, and once I get my garage workshop set up, I can definitely see myself making some purple gold jewelry. Big thanks for sharing the info!

I imagine the gold that was lost was impossibly stuck in the sandpaper. 🤷‍♂

This is my favorite kind of project and where my mind really shines, I can ALWAYS find a solution with enough tinkering and they are always shockingly simplistic. Less is ALWAYS more! Remember this

As a Singaporean, I knew about Lee Hwa Jewellery's purple gold. I thought it was just a gimmick. But I had no idea that purple gold was such a rare metal, and that it was such a hard and tedious thing to make!

I honestly like the gap in the ring, it's unique and looks way nicer than I thought it would.

Really cool video. You should season your crucibles with borax and also sprinkle in borax powder when melting it helps stop oxidization.

As someone who aluminum tig welds, this was a struggle watching nile learn the hard way.

Nigel being surprised at losing a few grams of gold with the B-reel of him sanding off 10% of the mass of the casting got a chuckle out of me.

My mom is a jewelry lover, specifically gold jewelry, and she was absolutely fascinated at the thought of purple gold. She told me that you should make chocolate gold and green gold next, since she can’t find it online anymore. 😂

45:40 yeah this is why jewellers usually use a long thin strip of gold, bend it around a ring sizer, cut it to size and solder together the edges

i make gold & silver jewelry in my free time and this is the first time ive felt smarter than NileRed

There's no way that this doesn't spark a whole bunch of people to start companies making solid purple gold jewelry.

Hello, metalsmith and jeweler here! This process looked BRUTAL, especially as someone who consistently works with metal to shape it into something new. You did a fantastic job, though, and your resilience is insane!

26:30 “based on absolutely nothing” really made me giggle

Except the fact that I suffer everytime you say "aluminum", this was a great video. Incredible chemistry as always, very metallicy.

A whole very valuable gold bar just disappearing into a liquid is a wild thing to watch. And the dropping prank made me jump out of my chair. I keep forgetting how cool chemistry is. Luckily there are few creators like NileRed here on RU-vid that can keep reminding me.

NileRed videos are honestly a perfect example of why “if at first you don’t succeed, try again” is a common phrase for a reason. Seeing how he continues to deal with problems as they arise and the suffering as more and more problems mount is pretty inspirational.

You are just amazing, the very knowledgeable and competent person making amazing work. God bless this channel.

Watched the entire thing without skipping... that ring looks fantastic around your finger..👏🏼

I didn't think I would spend Christmas watching a one hour documentary about making purple gold, but here we are. Amazing work documenting all of your progress!

The fact that he could be a chemist, carpenter, alchemist ( because he can make anything from the most weirdest things) and now a jewlery maker makes me think that this guy is a more multiple-job guy than Johnny Sins

Well done, you just like a smart professor and love your work which shown in this video.

that was recommended to me and enjoyed it very much !!

I think you've advanced the field of purple gold metallurgy by several years

I come from a family of Jewelers with an over 50 year history of being in the business. Purple gold is not the only interesting color you can find the alloy in. In the early 2000s Green Gold suddenly became very popular for a brief time. Rose gold has been very common place for a long time as has white gold. The most striking color of it in my opinion is an alloy of either gallium or indium. It looks kind of like Cobalt. When I heard you wanted to break that bar down with a hammer my heart skipped a beat. Gold is incredibly mailable, the purer the bar the soft it is. You can also get a Jewelry Workers Kit for very cheap and it should have all the tools you need except for the for maybe the Manual Rolling Mill Machine.

imagine him proposing to someone with this ring and saying “i made it myself” no hesitation 100% agreement

Thanks for sharing. It took me back to my jewelry days. I remember I had a similar issue and we used a controlled environment I believe we used ammonium in some way

The missing gold is likely from the sanding and polishing. Even if you got all the fine dust that piled up, there was still probably some left on the sandpaper, especially with the finer grains.

I think we need a NileGold channel where Nigel does metalworking like this. I love the new kind of thing with his usual style.

Thanks, I needed help figuring out how to smuggle all the gold.

as purple is my favourite color.i really enjoyed watching you getting to the purple ring you wanted.

Oh my god, nilered. Having been a hobbyist Goldsmith for nearly 6 years, I have never even known about having a metal be coloured like this. The closest unusual colors I could work with were blue titanium, chrome/soapy titanium, pink or green gold (which is an even bigger pain to work with than this), but this, this is so amazing to see. I love how your chemistry path has somehow crossed into what is my passion in a way that inspires me further.

The amount of times he calls these little trinkets 'ugly' or 'trash' - I did not expect to feel bad for an alloy today! 😂

ring reflects itself inside itso it looks more purple, more contrast,.. beautiful!.. well done!.. genius!.. 💕

man this is so nice to see dude, enjoy your sweet new ring

As a chemist who is way older than you, I am floored by what you accomplished.

The missing gold is likely caught between the grains of the sandpaper you used. If you carefully burn the sandpaper, collect the dust, and then extract the gold, you'll likely get it back. At least, that'd be my guess.

Wow it's brilliant job! I never thought, being an mechanotronic engineer, that I will watch something like this with such a satisfactory level! 😮 It's amazing. You're the Best! 🎉

All of humanity’s strides can be summed down to one simple origin; How Hard Can It Be?

NileRed is the definition of "learning from your mistakes"

NileRed is the chemistry equivalent of a dad building a dresser from scratch because he couldn’t find the perfect one.

now time for green, red, blue, and black gold