I found this to be maybe the most relaxing refining video you’ve ever made. The colors in natural light were amazing. That and the clear sounds of glassware, the sizzle of the heater…man, that’s about as ASMR it gets. I’m sure it wasn’t as relaxing to refine in this manner, but I greatly appreciated your dedication to your craft and your viewers.
Been watching for years, LOVE seeing the solution colors outside! Got my popcorn ready for the liquid gold part! I hope to see my favorite golden Sreetips ice tea!
Want to let you know I feel I have learned significantly from viewing your refining's. I am getting better at predicting the next process and the chemicals involved. I doubt I will ever do a refining but knowledge is good. Really want to see you crack the Rhodium and iridium you run into when doing the Platinum stuff. Thank you for sharing. Keep em coming and Ill keep liking them.
My first job working in the jewelry industry was working for a neighborhood jeweler. It was a great education of how to do things (and how not to). Every year or so, he refined small batches (1 ounce or less) in the bathroom with the exhaust fan going. The fan didn't stand a chance and quit one day early on in the process. I'm surprised we're both still alive!
Something to consider Sreetips: I built a large Venturi valve using a 6” outlet diameter on my blower motor tapered down to a 4 inch Y shaped pvc pipe from Home Depot. Using the “straight” part of the Y piece, I have the blower connected to flow straight through, then the curved Y piece is connected to my fume hood. This creates a large vacuum flow, allowing me to also have my blower unit outside (nice and quiet in the lab) hooked to a variable speed controller, and the fumes never reach the motor or any metal inline to the exhaust, preventing ever having issues with corrosion etc. When I looked into the cost of a true acid resistant industrial motor, I decided to design it using the Venturi concept, which works great and I’m still on my original motor years later. I wish I could upload pics, but hopefully my explanation does well enough for you to understand and implement.
I get exactly what you mean, I have set up several extract systems in the same way to remove very explosive gases from process chambers.😀 Not as efficient as a direct fan, but very safe. We use a pressure sensor to control the motor speed so the extract from the fume hood stays constant. I hope this helps 😁
Love the fact that you filtered out the precipitated gold so you get every bit of it in your bar instead of pouring off into a waste container,I know you recapture it later but for some reason it just bugs me 😂 probably because I want to see a bigger bar or my ocd or something, great video 👍
I'm sure most of us appreciate the lengths you go to in safety concerns. Better to listen to you, than learn these lessons the hard way. Thank you for sharing your craft with us. ..it really is so cool. Thanks!
That's very upsetting for sure Sreetips . Thanks for staying safe with no real issues with the refining process . You just replaced that motor a few months ago , even though it was a great tutorial video on replacing yours . That sucks . Hopefully the new one will last a long time ! Cheers
Not having a fume hood this reminds me very much of this past summer when I did a good deal of silver recovery in the back yard. I had a bit of a laugh at having to explain to my neighbour what I was doing to assure him I wasn't cooking meth. There's a meth problem where I am so I could understand his concern. lol But this then lead into a nice conversation about the hobby and he was honestly fascinated to find out that a person can do this in their back yard. For me I find that a large part of why I enjoy doing this is in encountering an issue, thinking about it and applying logic to work my way through it. I like looking at a problem and asking myself "What is the end goal? What do I need to get there? What do I have to do it?". from there I find I can almost always come up with a plan. Glad to see you did this and just kept on going at it.
What does very diluted nitric oxide smell like in a backyard area? I’m planning on running a diy fume hood exhaust through multiple activated charcoal canisters. Will that be detectable by close neighbors?
@@jamesjoy8866 Honestly the best way I can describe it is the way it smells outside after a lightning storm. It's sort of a cleaning chemical/electricity scent. really hard to describe but unless one knows what it smells like they'd never guess that is what it is. Unless you are generating copious amounts of NO2 no one is going to smell it. My neighbour just happened to be up on his deck which allowed him to see over the fence. NO2 is highly soluble in water so passing the gasses through a wet medium will pull almost all of it out. Chlorine will be the one that neighbours would notice first so if you, or someone nearby, has a pool you could always blame it on that.
I can definitely sense, feel and hear the serious and focused tone in your voice sir. I can promise you that I will never do some stuff like that without the proper safety equipment because I thought about doing something similar with my placer gold refining “outside” like a normal army grunt would think. But I definitely know when someone respectable as you is really serious by the tone change from all your other videos. Lol, You definitely stopped my butt from doing something stupid In the future.Thank you for this lesson today Mr Sreetips. Scouts Out!!! Go Army!!!
@@sreetips I just recently found your channel, and have been watching your back catalog, some time back you were using a melt dish with a small hole drilled into the bottom to make small shot, is there a reason you stopped doing it that way? (I know it's likely in a video I haven't seen yet)
I was figuring that you were trying to enjoy the weather but I understand about your vent Hood I seen your last video where you had changed it out so it did not last very long hope you get up and running soon be safe love you Channel thank you so much for everything
Side note: Have you ever considered using a large reaction vessel for your nitric treatments? I’ve used a 10L I got from eBay that can separate in half, going to a condenser I’m running cooled water circulating through an old refrigerated water machine, going into 2 denatured water flasks. I’m able to recapture a damn good amount of nitric acid, and use it for the same reaction or a later one.
I always love to watch your videos very interesting and informative . Sorry about your fume hood you've had a lot of problems with it , and I thought you bought a new one recently too .
@sreetips, Sir why didn't you try to blow away the fumes using a fan ? Wouldn't that have helped? I do my processes outside since i don't have a fume hood and it actually helps redirect them in another direction
Excellent video thank you!!! The wife was like guess your heading too The lab as I just smiled and said my fume hood still going strong lmfao!!! I use a passive radon fan in my fume hood from Amazon for 78.00
Last thing; have you ever considered heating the AR to around 120*F, adding smb solution for the drop (smb and water), and then turning up the heat to boil after the drop? I’ve noticed significantly faster drops, and providing all nitric is consumed, you’ll get the remaining hcl to clean up your gold and clump it up a bit on the bottom before performing a rinse and fresh hcl boil. Food for thought 😊
Setting a fan up on the table on the left side blowing across could help deal with the fumes by forcing them in one direction away from you to the right, or downwind.. would be interesting seeing the difference in weight of ~1000ml of water compared to ~1000ml of super saturated gold baring aqua regia.. engraving your mould with "sreetips"(protruding) will polish the bars appearance, like they do in large refinery's. Love all the vids you share, I have learned a lot and someday soon will be putting it to practice when I go to recover gold from all the pins, fingers, CPU, IC & trackpad e-waste I have collected.
The backyard is how I have to do all my processing until the dismantled '72 Triumph GT6 gets out of the garage and I can build my lab space. I only do small batches in the most simple way, and let the chemicals react on their own while I'm off doing something else. It's slow, but also means fume release is limited.
Good luck with fixing your fume hood. I recommend to add to the exit hole of fume hood channel one more (emergency) cyclone fan (made of electric leaf blower). 24:00 Ingot looks almost like (faceless) golden idol from "Indiana Jones" movie. You may make nice tribal style pendant of it.
An experiment in itself Kev. I think you could easily that be put back through the refining process when your fume hood is working. Cinderella is guaranteed to appear. 👍👍
I wish the manufacturers of those motors could come up with a better way to keep the acid from eating away at the bearings. You might have to start doing a preventive coating of silicone every couple months to make it last longer. Awesome video tho and the rainbow in the shot after you extracted all the silver was surprising, but also a scary reminder of the hidden vapors that where around.
In a case like this it might be good to build a portable fume hood or fume box. I built something like that, plywood box with a flip up visor and strong but lightweight fan on top attached to ducting. You could place the ducting up and far away from yourself. Not 100% ideal and not needed in the case where you have an actual fume hood, but can be handy.
If you have to do this outside again, put the wind at your side. Never at your back as you seen what happens. I have to do this with reclaiming lead. A fan or the wind at your side will stop the air from circling back on you
Tomme, the fumes must be drawn away. They can’t be blown away. Wind currents change directions unexpectedly at any time giving a face full of concentrated refining fumes.
Well done and absolutely tremendous both warning and demonstrating the dangers of doing this stuff outside a proper fume hood. I see quite a lot of videos on RU-vid which use a fan at best and no extraction at worst. Please everyone reading this take special note. The risks sreetips talks about are absolutely real. There's a reason nitrogen dioxide gas is known as red/brown death. When ingested into lungs it combines with the water to form nitric acid again, and it makes short work of your bronchioles and alveoli. That's before any heavy metals get near you. And I loved the "gold at the end of the rainbow" with that light refraction at 12:55. Very cool.
Ahhh...The great outdoors! Nice change. Although the fume hood breakdown is unfortunate. You did everything safely. Even with having my fume hood I still do my reactions outside on my covered patio. Have you ever seen the videos of them guys doing their reactions old school. I mean they are dealing with everything involved with out any protection. I don't understand how they do it or how they live through it. I've gotten a few whiffs of the gases produced. Instantly backed me up away from it. Like smelling salts on steroids! Thank you for another excellent video!
It’s the repeated exposure/damage/healing, exposure/damage/healing, over and over, that causes significant problems. A whiff here, and slight smell there. The affects are cumulative. If you can smell it, the unmistakable odor of concentrated acid fumes, then you can be assured that it’s gotten into your lungs. The only way to avoid it is with a system that draws the fumes away and exhausts them outside and completely away from your work area. Even then, from time to time, after reaching into my hood, some of the gas will cling to my clothing and be drawn out into my work area. I can smell it. Doesn’t happen often. But every time it does it means that I’m sacrificing a tiny bit of lung function. This is part of being involved in this kind of hobby. The trick is to minimize this contact. Platinum group metals - forget about it. That’s off the charts dangerous.
@@sreetips So well said Master Sreetips! After the first time I got a whiff of it, my whole being said dangerous. Stay away! Being outside did absolutely nothing but what you exactly explained in the video. Being outside basically just engulfs the entire area we are working in. So I knew it was time to build a fume hood. Mine is outside and vented up and away about 20 feet. My fume hood also closes completely. It has plexiglass doors that close completely. I haven't smell anything since building it. Even when I'm refilling my Silver cell, I have a fan to the side of the vessel. So it is blowing across and away. Yeah, no thank you on the PGM's! I'll leave that to the experts! Strictly Gold, Silver, and Copper here. Thank you for your time in the reply and all you do!
@@sreetips Oh yeah, I forgot to ask this. Trying to figure the right way to ask is the hard part. I've noticed that after 8 days of running my power supply on my silver cell it will go from adjusting by amps to adjusting by volts. Does yours do this? Also, How do you know when the nitrate is depleted? Does the current lessen as the silver is depleted from the solution? I hope these are understandable questions the way I asked.
I keep my power supply in constant voltage (CV) and let the amps fall where they may. I use 150g per liter silver concentration for electrolyte. I use the same electrolyte for two, 10-day runs. I augment the electrolyte with about 200g more silver for the second run. I never use electrolyte more than twice.
Nothing ventured nothing gained! I absolutely intend on having a a beer with you one day. Love seeing shipmates be their own proprietor. Don't die from those fumes! Maybe with all the receding water levels a fortune in scrap jewelry is to be had. What is a reasonable rate you would charge if someone sends you material?
I remember that blower motor cost a good buck. Might be worth it to try tearing it down and see what failed. I feel like the fumes may have got to the bearings and caused corrosion and seized them. I don't know if they make sealed bearings that are proof against chemicals and whatnot but if you have a guy that deals with bearings he might be able to help you out. If those are just shielded or open style bearings in that motor that's probably why it failed so quickly.
I remember you saying. The next time the motor dies. You would buy a new hood. It seems only a few months ago. It made wonder why these hoods don't have redundant motors.
I will say that inspite of all the dangers in refining without the safety of a fume hood, you had some REALLY clean audio from it all! Maybe you could splice together some of the audio from the 2nd nitric boil onward, then create a 1 hour loop- maybe get some of those ASMR views!
I did notice that the gold sponge was darker in color because of the steps you couldn’t complete without the fine hood. But it was a great vid for those who don’t have a hood yet
Your fan motor only makes a humming noise and does not rotate. That could indicate that you have a defect starting condenser. This only is the case if you have a one phase motor . Three phase motors normally do not have starting condensers or capacitors. Try start the fan by spinning it by hand and see if it will run. If so, you are sure to replace the capacitor.
Here's idea for a video sreetips, how much silver can be recovered on a quadruple plated item vs a normal plated item? Literally cannot find the answer to that anywhere. Love your content.
@@themyceliumnetwork Grainger (or some equivelant) has them for pretty cheap. I am assumming that his fan motor is one that is less the size of a loaf of bread, anything larger can get rather spendy. A dryer fan replacement motor should be sufficient. The trick to a good fume hood (I rebuilt one when I worked in a feed lab, the acids and bases we worked with ate blades and motors on a near anual basis, or so I was told) is to put the motor on the outside, and run the fan through a sealed bearing on a shaft, so you only have to replace the fan periodicly, unless you use a nylon shaft and fan blade setup. Also, having a horribly drafty lab helps, the drafts follow the path of least resistance to exit the building.
It’s silly but I had to cheer at the lowes food distilled water is from Winston-Salem where I used to live, but now I’m east in Greensboro. Thanks for the videos!
The very first time I tried refining silver I attempted it outside. I figured since the first attempt was on such a small scale it would be ok. I was wrong. Like Sreetips said, the fumes follow you, just as the smoke from a campfire follows you around the fire. Later that day I built my fume hood. Your health is not worth any compromise folks. Stay safe.
thank you for going to the extra trouble to give us a refining video. did you not do the fume hood motor not long ago? might want to get your money back ;)
as an avid outdoor refiner I can attest there is nothing quite like the smell of NO2 chasing you around the yard! In all seriousness I find opening 36% HCl or a bag of SMB far more unpleasant...
I’m not a chemist and have no idea how it would end up reacting,,,,,, after you dissolve the gold in the aqua regia could you add chlorine to precipitate any remaining silver and pgm’s and be left with a pure gold solution? I don’t know how it would react with the smb when you precipitate the gold but if it worked it could save you further refinings. Granted you would probably have to filter the solution multiple times through the same filter but would save on time and chemicals. Just something I thought of while watching. Keep up the awesome work. Love your videos and I try to watch them as soon as you put them out.
Throw some ice cubes into the pot with water that you pour the alloy into. Not so much to cool the water but rather to divert the stream of molten metal in random directions
Thank you for pointing this out.... these vapors are vicious! This is no joke... we're talking fumes that will kill you... Even the minor ones.... Safety first lads... :)
Wow, there is so much more noise without the fume hood fan going. Well, different noises. clinks and clanks that you don't hear when the loud fan is blowing.
That sound your fume hood makes is the sound of a burned capacitor. Try replacing the capacitor on that motor, rotate it manually a few turns and then switch it on. It should be up and running again
Have you ever tried recapturing the NO2 gas through distilled water to reclaim some nitric acid? Might that be a safer way to attempt what you are attempting outside? Though it would require a slightly different setup, it would seem the cost and safety benefit may be worth it.
