that was some great info Jason ...... will have to use the Sulfuric acid for specimen clean up next time we get more Gold from our mine....... you are right ....every ore is different and not one way will work for them all.....would love to see a video of you parting the silver out of the buttons. Thanks for coming out to our mine and making it one for the books,. See ya soon and take care.
I know of one dude who uses a continuity detector to see if the gold veins are connected to each other in the rock . If they are, he sandblasts and acid treats to get the specimen on matrix.
jason, you absolutely right about trial and error in regards to learning the craft, and teaching the craft as well, even though i have 13 years experience under my belt, i'm still learning and watch your videos to learn even more, your work is appreciated, regards
When he's not repeating the Slave Book rubbish and observes things... Then records what he finds. He mainly just repeats the crap he learned. Nothing more. Copy and repeating aren't improving anything. Just making you all blind and stupid to stuff you ignore.
It's good to see you do all these experiments, as lots of people don't have the money or resources to get everything to do them. Thanks to you and all involved!
It has been great to follow your work with Jeff's Ore. As an old retired engineer, it never gets old to see what the slag will look like on the different ores and different flux recipes.
What a great opportunity that was for both of you . Thank you for taking us along on the original journey , that brought you to this end result , I love watching you do your thing . Especially for the convection cells that always trap my eyes into watching the formations . Great job Jason , see you soon . Cheers
Thanks for sharing your experiments Jason! I'm really enjoying learning about smelting and hard rock mining, both things I've never done! Keep up the good work!
I still can't get over how good of a sample those are. Huge specimens! Even for a hard rock mine, for today's day those are some beautiful specimens. Great stuff!
It's been a LONG time since High School Chemistry (50 years). I'm enjoying the process, even if I'm rusty on all the chemicals and their reactions. The failures are just as important and educational. Thanks.
Your experiments are worthy of the effort. I learn so much from your trials and errors. Keep them coming. We really get excited when we receive a notification of a new video.
Always fascinating to watch. We're so used to seeing the final product when it comes to gold. I would best most people think gold just pops out of the ground 100% pure and smelted.
Ain't that the truth. I couldn't tell you how long I was even begining to think I was crazy. Or my eyes /ears /hands/nose/ and tongue/ were just plain off or different than every ones. Cause I'd see it in the rocks and feel it. Sense it with all of the senses and people I'd show wouldn't do anything but glance and say. You got gold fever. There ain't no gold in there. And at first I'd argue and most of them really didn't believe there was any gold in the rocks. But then one day it clicked. There ain't no gold in any rock. There ain't no gold in trees. There ain't no gold in water and there definitely ain't no gold your shit there ain't no gold in anything. So I should have just gave up looking I suppose. Lol. Report via comment next week with some that has gold in it though 🤪
The type of cleaner you use depends on your ore type. Sulfuric acid is a strong oxidizing acid while muriatic/hydrochloric is just a strong acid and vinegar is just a dilute acetic acid. Your standard bleach is a weaker base than sodium hydroxide. Some metals will complex with hydroxides and redissolve or the hydroxide interrupts the passivation layer so that the sub-material can be oxidized. Sodium hydroxide is also one of the few things that can dissolve glass and by extension quartz. Side note, a lot of chloride compounds end up being a yellowish to green. My guess is when you exposed the sample from the muriatic to air, you were getting some additional oxidizing of the surface that had become passivated creating a mineral that was green. Hydrogen peroxide is also a strong oxidizer but it’s also unstable. So if there was a mineral in the ore that worked like a catalyst, you’ll get a lot of oxygen formation as the peroxide breaks down, but no real progress is made. Long story short, based on the results you have, my guess is that the ore needs additional oxidizing. First try swapping your sulfuric and Drano samples a couple of times to see if they work together to take away the unwanted material. If that doesn’t make much difference, I would try a stronger oxidizing acid like nitric. Even though you have the materials, I would advise against Caro’s acid, there’s a reason why they call it piranha solution in the lab environment.
If I'm not mistaken, sufluric acid is a strong oxidizer only in concentrated form. In dilute aqueous solutions it dissociates, and can't form sulfurous acid and nascent oxygen (which is the actual oxidizer). It looks like he's using a concentrated solution as it comes from drain cleaner though, so I guess you're right.
HCL alone cannot dissolve gold, but if you have some oxidized manganese oxides in the ore, you can make chlorine in the juice and actually dissolve gold.
@Terrence You are correct that sulfuric is a strong oxidizing acid. I think there’s some additional uses in this case (like the swapping between acid and base). A couple things to note when working with sulfuric acid: There are inhibitors in drain cleaning sulfuric acids so that it doesn’t dissolve your pipes, that has me wondering if they’re at work here. You do need some water to dissolve any salts that form, which is why you typically don’t see fuming acids used very often (besides their other dangerous side effects). Lastly, most sulfate salts aren’t very soluble and sulfuric acid is used in high purity gold refining to drop out heavy metals, which might be decreasing its effectiveness here. I’m curious about nitric acid as all nitrate salts are soluble. One thing I left out in my original comment is that you should start with dilute solutions of nitric acid as I believe it can dissolve or create a fine dispersion of your gold if the karat is low.
Take your time. It's not at all Rare for a professional REE fossicker Like myself to sit a bucket in multiple Natural chemicals for months. These morons are in a hurry to lose heaps so they rush like fools would. Hence the so small amounts they get. Facts. But the re-tards called me crazy...??? lmao, Autistic isn't crazy. It makes me a genius in my specialized field. Earth.
@@jakuborvos1575 I use that, the gold runs out with the water. There is a mix of 3 natural chemicals that do the same but takes longer. I discovered it. Less toxic.
It seems to me that a good method would be to combine mechanical methods (grinding / smelting) with chemical methods. Once you smelt and get all the metals into a cone, you could use pure chemistry. Nitric acid will dissolve all the copper, lead, silver, and perhaps other metals leaving the gold (and perhaps platinum group metals) behind as solids. Then using aqua regia (hydrochloric plus nitric) you can put the gold and PGMs in suspension. Adding a few drops of sulfuric acid will precipitate the lead, and after filtering you can use sodium metabisulfate (SMB) to precipitate the pure gold. If you are interested in getting into the chemistry side of things, pretty much the entirety of my armchair-expert knowledge comes from sreetips channel here on youtube. I enjoyed watching your video, what are you planning for next time?
I was also going to suggest sreetips possibly as another joint venture with these guys. Jeff dig it, Jason smelt it to a cone, and sreetips to chemically sort the metals out. Would be fun video series for all.
Jason. not many people would show a failed experiment so i commend your honesty and integrity. Everybody makes mistakes. Anyway, you fixed them and pressed on. Great job and great video
Nice work Jason. I’m getting ready for some testing using pay dirt (high grade sample) I want to do exactly what you did to see if I recover additional gold by smelting the entire sample vs sluice running and panning. Thanks much sir! ✌️PT
I like how you share both your success and your mistakes on video. I have a larger, DIY channel where I often show my mistakes or ask questions and get help from my viewers. We can all learn together this way.
Always interesting, wish I knew more about the chemistry end of what you do. I'm constantly researching something and just dont have enough megabytes left to fit much more in my cranium right now. But I'll get there, before I need to do my own smelting. Thanks Jason
To keep it from turning green you need to neutralize the muriatic acid in the specimen by rinsing and putting in a solution with baking soda. Should neutralize all of them with appropriate agents.
He probably just rinsed with water, which would be enough to protect from burns but isn't enough to fully neutralize the acid in the rough rock surface.
If you’re dealing with quartz matrix you’ll have to use hydroflouric acid. It dissolves quartz but is nasty and dangerous to work with. It also dissolves glass.
I agree with Lothar but it is commonly used in mineralogical specimen preparation to dissolve guartz matrix around specimen gold and the rare showing of Pt. Pt almost never occurs in non ultramafic rock hence rarely associated with quartz.
I once had a quartz-and-gold nugget just under 1/4 oz; I placed it into a bottle of HF (Hydrofluoric acid) for several weeks. All the quartz was eaten up and left a beautiful gleaming gold nugget with tiny spires where it had penetrated the quartz. Even though the final weight of the gold was just a little less than 1/8 oz, I sold it for the price of 1/4 oz because it looked so nice. But yes, HF is nothing to fool with. Get it on your skin, and not only will you NOT feel any pain, it will continue to react with fat, muscle, and bone. People who have spilled it on themselves have had to had limbs amputated because the flesh and bone is dead and gangrene sets in. Unlike other acids or strong bases, it never lets you know when or what it is destroying until it’s too late.
Knowledge or research and due caution and lab skills are much more important than setting. In other words don’t be stupid. No hold my beer and watch this. There are numerous chemicals that for safeties sake need to be used in a fume hood for instance.
Hi Jason, Great video thanks! I've cleaned up a few specimens with acid and you really have to scrub them with warm water to get any acid residue off, to prevent yellow discolouration, soaking in a cup of water for 24 hours afterwards also helps!
I love your investigatory methods, and lessons learned, very insightful. See, that right there is an issue I now know how to resolve, or begin to resolve. Loved the specimen cleanup with all the chemical varieties, learned all kinds of stuff. Keep up the good work, loved the cooperative work with Jeff and all, but love your channel all on its own as well. Keep it up!
You really should spray some rigidizer on that exposed Kaowool. Those fibers get torn and blown around your shop when you fire your crucible, and can do some severe damage to your lungs.
You could dissolve some of the cornflaked lead in muriatic to see how much lead it takes away. Love all your video's and the one with Jeff. I've learned so much from you. Keep 'em coming! 👍
I love the experimenting and problem solving. And the explanation for each process. I understand the learning and your always open to suggestions. Love watching especially after a long day at work.
That's not counting the gold in his specimens. Bear that in mind. Outstanding analysis and a great video. Jeff has a killer mine and I hope it just gets better and better for him.
You can put in old cupels with some charcoal to new smelts whenever you would add lead as collector metal. A great inline recycling method beneficial on many points. No waste to take care of, no additional lead needed, saves money, time, labor... awesome!
Hey Jason, awesome work!! When using Muriatic Acid, it works much better 1:3 Muriatic: Hydrogen Peroxide (normal 3%). Muriatic also needs to be at room temperature (around 70°) to work efficiently. During the etching process, get a tooth brush or scrub brush, and brush each sample every now and then with hydrogen peroxide to remove the sediment it etched off, then put your sample back into the stainless steel bowl full of 1:3 solution (plastic will melt). This will give a new clean surface for the acid to keep working effectiently. The reason it turned green is possibly because it wasn't neutralized well enough. Neutralize it by letting your samples soak in a baking soda/water mixture or Windex (blue window cleaner) for at least 30mins. I love following your channel, keep up the amazing content!!! 🙏
Give oxalic acid a try! I've used it to clean iron oxides off of quartz points before, worked great....everything was completely white/clear when it came out after an extended soak.
Hi Jason, what a learning process... my first ever cupelling yesterday was... a disaster... I made a "cupel" out of MgO in small clay flower pot, MgO inside the pot cracked, gold microbeads are diffused in bismuth oxide cake... Well... I need to buy some good cupels... no so easy to make a good cupel...
A trick that I found works well for stopping crucibles from sticking is putting a piece of cardboard or poster board under the crucible when firing it. The resulting ash creates a non-stick layer under the crucible.
Jason, thanks for sharing your investigations. I have to say I really enjoy watching the slag freeze in the cone mold. I suggest a super slo mo of that in the future as a short. Keep the videos coming. They are some of my favorites.
Wow I love your passion, tenacity and perseverance. Very engaging, well done fella. You inspired me to buy a gold pan to try my luck in some streams around my house in West Wales. I'll let you know how I get on. Good luck and all the best 🙏
Good job brother i am now a subscriber of your channell ..picked u up at Mr. Dan Hurd the gold guru...he gave u a thumbs up for a reason ...God Bless both of you and all of us..
Really interesting collaboration with Jeff, Jason , excellent. I am aware that Jeff is very productive,so maybe we can hope to see more sometime soon. I figured any day now he'll be calling out for a jackleg , hopefully,lol. All the best regards Jason from here on the West Coast side of Australia 🌏🖖🙏🤟🇦🇺
I needed this exact video! Thank you! Love this channel. :) Been prepping to hit some of my own ore and trying to figure out what chemical is cheapest and easiest.
Definitely sodium hydroxide/caustic soda/lye (all the same thing) works, but you need to BOIL it. If you get a speci with multiple shows of gold, test it with a multimeter to see if one show connects to another show. This give you an idea if it's something nice worth dissolving or it gets chucked in the crush bucket. Stick your speci in a zinc pot and bury it in lye. Slightly dampen the lye with water to make it boil easier. Boil it for an hour(ish) and the quartz will be gone. If you're lucky, you'll get a pristine nuggy or at least a much more attractive speci.
I was shown round a rock analysis lab once. Each sample coming in was crushed to about 2 mesh then coned and quartered, then one quarter was crushed again, coned and quartered again twice more, then the final quarter was analysed. All to make sure that the test sample was representative of the sample from the mine.
I use aluminium brightener to clean my gold. Alubrite. It is a mixture of various acids including 1% HF. It cleans the gold up perfectly and the gold retains its shine as well. I find that HCL takes away the golds shine so I prefer not to use it. Good video Cheers.
I have had bad experiences with K-Wool, Cer-Wool or Ceramic Wool Fiber (pick your name for it). Got it in my clothes and it found its way in the wash where it wound up on my underpants! No washing didn't remove it! It did a fantastic job redistributing it!
If I had a nice sample of quartz with visible gold like these samples, I think I would have them sliced and polished for jewelry. Also, silver is a strong catalyst to make hydrogen peroxide release oxygen, so that's probably why the H2O2 cup had such a violent rection. Great video, as usual.
Your Experiments Help You to Know what works better, as well as what doesn’t. Through Your Experiments Sharing saves Viewers a lot of Money and Time. “ Thank You “
Hey Jason! My husband and I are huge fans! We have been prospecting for over a year and we appreciate your experimenting and showing your adventures through your expertise! We live in Colorado and have come across some very rich ore, and veins that look abandoned. We would love to send you some of our materials, and see what you think about it. If possible, do you have email or other contact information you can share with me so we can get your expertise on what we have come across? Thank you for all you do for us to learn from! Lisa and Lee
My auto shop teacher had a mine at Cerro Gordo California, he taught me Muratic acid method, I find it fascinating the different waysyiur covering. Hello Mr Robert Desmarais if your out there
Hey there! I'm not sure if anyone else has made this suggestion or if you have tried this yet, but my husband and I put one of our specimens in apple cider vinegar overnight and WOW!! Cleaned up crazy nice 👍 and took any iron sulfates clean off! Hope everyone has a great day! 😁
Coat your steel mold with a clay/graphite/alcohol wash. It’s super thin. Foundry supply place has it. Soda ash is your friend to make silica slag and grind your test material as fine as you can. Bigger grind takes longer and you might want to melt it hour or more longer. Hence grinding it smaller for faster melt. I had a glassblowing shop and made a lot of glass from the many raw materials that go in to it and find your metal recovery fascinating as anyone who’s run a glass furnace has seen just a little metal , couple grams, maybe bb size,will sink to the bottom of the crucible and start to eat a hole in it. You might find greater results if you start crucible say 1/4 full, let melt, then add more to kind of combat the foaming issue. your oxidation technique is intriguing and I want to see more. You have great videos!!!
Your videos are very informative you're smelting of sulfides has helped me very much as well as the dissolving of high grade iron ore to get to the gold. In one of your videos you used potassium nitrate as an oxidizer so I figured 🤔 high nitrate fertilizer would work the same and it did appreciate the info. Someday I'll have a way to thank you I have some major things in the works😁.
I've seen meminer get some good results on dissolving calcite with various methods. Stuff like white vinegar may take a couple weeks to do the job, where muriatic acid might take a few days to a week.
Awesome work you guys have shared with all of us! Colorado here and thank you for the videos. I appreciate you guys. I could definitely use a small scale shaker system from you guys.😯
Its amazing that you find the right solution every time you face a trouble,, For such ores, why dont you try leaching process with a non-toxic reagent (like eco-goldex super agent)? It will get more gold with far away less effort .. good luck Jason,, all your videos are fascinating !!
i've used a propane torch on super high grade gold ore from california to heat and quench the quartz into shattering off of the gold without harming the gold veins, another thing i do is take a wet saw and slice thin slabs off of high grade samples, then polish the slab/s on one side to expose the precious metals, then i sell, gift or trade them usually to collectors and jewelers for making jewelry.
Hey Jayson I know I said this before but I love you channel dude. Also I've just bought a load of books to do with smelting and gold and silver recovrey it's so interesting
enjoyed watching your video great work nice to see you try different methods of bring out the best specsmains of gold. I glad to see your explanation and experience and excitement working with gold ore.🤗
I wish I could give two thumbs up, I love the E&E (Education and Entertainment) Thanks! A big part of life is messin around trying to figure things out and having a good time doing it, thanks for sharing your adventures :)
Your process always seems very accurate, with lots of measuring and knowing where "lost" gold went to. But then at the end you use round percentages like 50% or 66% based on the colour of the metal bead which arguably nullifies much of the previous carful calculations. It could very well be that you know what you're talking about, but I'd like to see a more scientific confirmation. I understand this is often difficult because you have tiny beads weighing fractions of grams, but now you had over 6g. I hope you do some sort of test with these beads (test stone with acid or even x-rayed) to confirm your 66% purity estimation.
My friend used muriatic acid heated slowly over a low fire to completely clean the rust off his crystals. We are from Arkansas. We have some of the best clear quarts.
Wow that was so cool have you tryed to desolve the lead with sulphuric acid that would reduce the amount of lead and make it easier to smelt the gold out
I'm getting ready to meet Jeff Williams and do some work with him. Sure do love these videos. You should come on his mine rehab tour be cool to meet you. Spokane Washington
My suggestion is this: remember that I am a curious soul as well. I lack the basic necessary equipment and most generally use borax, a potato, a pair of wide pliers, and a little handheld MAPP tank. While all is melted kill flame allowing flux to cool to its waxy state and then press with pliers. This forces hot molten metals out of flux . Restart fresh with collected metal and borax. Don’t crush. Use less borax each time. Keeping your beads more manageable until they can find their way to each other. By now, lead has been burned off or just lost due process. It works for me on about 5-7 gram scale of collected gold
Interesting video, I'm not certain about the use of another acid to remove the lead as if you were to use Nitric you would then have a solution that is extremely high in lead and silver which is a real pain in the butt to deal with chemically. Maybe after the recovery with lead take that lead and then treat it like you did when recovering silver from galena and use zinc? I'm not as knowledgeable about the Parkes process in regards to if it would also collect the gold in the zinc removing it from the lead however you could always zap the lead left over with an XRF to see if it carried over any precious metals after the Parkes process. might be something to test. keep up the great work!
Chris from VoGus prospecting boils specimens in caustic soda and water neutralises the caustic soda in tartaric acid, although this more dissolves the rock rather than cleans them up for display, but the gold does keep its form.
One thing I’ve seen other smelters do is periodically while smelting take a big metal spoon and skim off the top layer separating it in a pile next to where there’s smelting then continuing their smelt. I was just watching how you poured it into the reversed pyramid mold and there’s chunks in it.
Nice video! Awesome tests. I haven't cleaned up much specimen gold, but have used the ultrasonic cleaner in combination with powerful cleaners to clean up copper parts and gold plated parts - the agitation really helps, maybe give it a go? May be risking the specimen breaking up?
Brother I learn more from your mistakes, than I do your successes 💪 I'm in the trenches with you so I understand how failures feel. I'm a gold miner refiner out of Cripple Creek Colorado. And I just wanted to say I appreciate you keep trying keep going thank you for your time and for your attention
With the muriatic acid as soon as the rock is out of the container you must dip it in vinegar to neutralize it and it won't turn that yellowish color I've been in masonry for a long time and its the number one best technique we use
I wonder if using the chemicals for the fine powder stuff would be more cost effective than smelting? And perhaps cleaner product. I liked the video and thanks for the experiment on our behalf.
Thanks for taking the time to make and produce this video. Now, please add up all the costs of the expendable items, Borax, lead, lead absorbing crucibles, fuel, and any other expendables. Add up an accurate number of man-hours involved to produce the final grams of gold. Then we can try to determine what you actually "earned". The potential costs of operating the mechanical crushers per/hour would also need to be figured in, wouldn't it? Thanks again. Stay safe!
that was some great info Jason ...... will have to use the Sulfuric acid for specimen clean up next time we get more Gold from our mine....... you are right ....every ore is different and not one way will work for them all.....would love to see a video of you parting the silver out of the buttons. Thanks for coming out to our mine and making it one for the books,. See ya soon and take care.
Check out SREETIPS on RUclips for info on chemical gold refining. Very useful information 👌
@@chaz2785 it would be very cool to see sreetips finish those buttons off.
@@signsofthetimes2971 yup sure would!
@@chaz2785 love sreetips
I know of one dude who uses a continuity detector to see if the gold veins are connected to each other in the rock . If they are, he sandblasts and acid treats to get the specimen on matrix.
jason, you absolutely right about trial and error in regards to learning the craft, and teaching the craft as well, even though i have 13 years experience under my belt, i'm still learning and watch your videos to learn even more, your work is appreciated, regards
When he's not repeating the Slave Book rubbish and observes things... Then records what he finds. He mainly just repeats the crap he learned. Nothing more. Copy and repeating aren't improving anything. Just making you all blind and stupid to stuff you ignore.
This is exactly what I appreciate your work Jason…. It’s real learning and evaluation in process. Thank you for the honesty of the learning process.
It's good to see you do all these experiments, as lots of people don't have the money or resources to get everything to do them.
Thanks to you and all involved!
It has been great to follow your work with Jeff's Ore. As an old retired engineer, it never gets old to see what the slag will look like on the different ores and different flux recipes.
What a great opportunity that was for both of you . Thank you for taking us along on the original journey , that brought you to this end result , I love watching you do your thing . Especially for the convection cells that always trap my eyes into watching the formations . Great job Jason , see you soon . Cheers
Thanks for sharing your experiments Jason! I'm really enjoying learning about smelting and hard rock mining, both things I've never done! Keep up the good work!
I still can't get over how good of a sample those are. Huge specimens! Even for a hard rock mine, for today's day those are some beautiful specimens. Great stuff!
It's been a LONG time since High School Chemistry (50 years). I'm enjoying the process, even if I'm rusty on all the chemicals and their reactions. The failures are just as important and educational. Thanks.
Jason, you and Sreetips are very informative! I think a collab series with you and him using both of your methods would be beneficial for sure!
Your experiments are worthy of the effort. I learn so much from your trials and errors. Keep them coming. We really get excited when we receive a notification of a new video.
Always fascinating to watch. We're so used to seeing the final product when it comes to gold. I would best most people think gold just pops out of the ground 100% pure and smelted.
Ain't that the truth. I couldn't tell you how long I was even begining to think I was crazy. Or my eyes /ears /hands/nose/ and tongue/ were just plain off or different than every ones. Cause I'd see it in the rocks and feel it. Sense it with all of the senses and people I'd show wouldn't do anything but glance and say. You got gold fever. There ain't no gold in there. And at first I'd argue and most of them really didn't believe there was any gold in the rocks. But then one day it clicked. There ain't no gold in any rock. There ain't no gold in trees. There ain't no gold in water and there definitely ain't no gold your shit there ain't no gold in anything. So I should have just gave up looking I suppose. Lol. Report via comment next week with some that has gold in it though 🤪
Loving the science and evaluative math involved here. Of you aren’t experimenting we aren’t learning. Great job
The type of cleaner you use depends on your ore type. Sulfuric acid is a strong oxidizing acid while muriatic/hydrochloric is just a strong acid and vinegar is just a dilute acetic acid. Your standard bleach is a weaker base than sodium hydroxide. Some metals will complex with hydroxides and redissolve or the hydroxide interrupts the passivation layer so that the sub-material can be oxidized. Sodium hydroxide is also one of the few things that can dissolve glass and by extension quartz.
Side note, a lot of chloride compounds end up being a yellowish to green. My guess is when you exposed the sample from the muriatic to air, you were getting some additional oxidizing of the surface that had become passivated creating a mineral that was green.
Hydrogen peroxide is also a strong oxidizer but it’s also unstable. So if there was a mineral in the ore that worked like a catalyst, you’ll get a lot of oxygen formation as the peroxide breaks down, but no real progress is made.
Long story short, based on the results you have, my guess is that the ore needs additional oxidizing. First try swapping your sulfuric and Drano samples a couple of times to see if they work together to take away the unwanted material. If that doesn’t make much difference, I would try a stronger oxidizing acid like nitric. Even though you have the materials, I would advise against Caro’s acid, there’s a reason why they call it piranha solution in the lab environment.
If I'm not mistaken, sufluric acid is a strong oxidizer only in concentrated form. In dilute aqueous solutions it dissociates, and can't form sulfurous acid and nascent oxygen (which is the actual oxidizer). It looks like he's using a concentrated solution as it comes from drain cleaner though, so I guess you're right.
HCL alone cannot dissolve gold, but if you have some oxidized manganese oxides in the ore, you can make chlorine in the juice and actually dissolve gold.
@Terrence You are correct that sulfuric is a strong oxidizing acid. I think there’s some additional uses in this case (like the swapping between acid and base).
A couple things to note when working with sulfuric acid: There are inhibitors in drain cleaning sulfuric acids so that it doesn’t dissolve your pipes, that has me wondering if they’re at work here. You do need some water to dissolve any salts that form, which is why you typically don’t see fuming acids used very often (besides their other dangerous side effects). Lastly, most sulfate salts aren’t very soluble and sulfuric acid is used in high purity gold refining to drop out heavy metals, which might be decreasing its effectiveness here.
I’m curious about nitric acid as all nitrate salts are soluble. One thing I left out in my original comment is that you should start with dilute solutions of nitric acid as I believe it can dissolve or create a fine dispersion of your gold if the karat is low.
Take your time. It's not at all Rare for a professional REE fossicker Like myself to sit a bucket in multiple Natural chemicals for months. These morons are in a hurry to lose heaps so they rush like fools would. Hence the so small amounts they get. Facts. But the re-tards called me crazy...??? lmao, Autistic isn't crazy. It makes me a genius in my specialized field. Earth.
@@jakuborvos1575 I use that, the gold runs out with the water. There is a mix of 3 natural chemicals that do the same but takes longer. I discovered it. Less toxic.
It seems to me that a good method would be to combine mechanical methods (grinding / smelting) with chemical methods.
Once you smelt and get all the metals into a cone, you could use pure chemistry. Nitric acid will dissolve all the copper, lead, silver, and perhaps other metals leaving the gold (and perhaps platinum group metals) behind as solids.
Then using aqua regia (hydrochloric plus nitric) you can put the gold and PGMs in suspension. Adding a few drops of sulfuric acid will precipitate the lead, and after filtering you can use sodium metabisulfate (SMB) to precipitate the pure gold.
If you are interested in getting into the chemistry side of things, pretty much the entirety of my armchair-expert knowledge comes from sreetips channel here on youtube.
I enjoyed watching your video, what are you planning for next time?
I was also going to suggest sreetips possibly as another joint venture with these guys. Jeff dig it, Jason smelt it to a cone, and sreetips to chemically sort the metals out. Would be fun video series for all.
@sreetips is imho the best at separating precious metals. At least on yt
Jason. not many people would show a failed experiment so i commend your honesty and integrity. Everybody makes mistakes. Anyway, you fixed them and pressed on. Great job and great video
Nice work Jason.
I’m getting ready for some testing using pay dirt (high grade sample)
I want to do exactly what you did to see if I recover additional gold by smelting the entire sample vs sluice running and panning.
Thanks much sir!
✌️PT
I like how you share both your success and your mistakes on video. I have a larger, DIY channel where I often show my mistakes or ask questions and get help from my viewers. We can all learn together this way.
Always interesting, wish I knew more about the chemistry end of what you do. I'm constantly researching something and just dont have enough megabytes left to fit much more in my cranium right now. But I'll get there, before I need to do my own smelting. Thanks Jason
To keep it from turning green you need to neutralize the muriatic acid in the specimen by rinsing and putting in a solution with baking soda. Should neutralize all of them with appropriate agents.
His poor fingers
He probably just rinsed with water, which would be enough to protect from burns but isn't enough to fully neutralize the acid in the rough rock surface.
If you’re dealing with quartz matrix you’ll have to use hydroflouric acid. It dissolves quartz but is nasty and dangerous to work with. It also dissolves glass.
Don't play with hydrofluoric acid, commonly used in pharmaceutical antidepressant medication fluoxetine (Prozac) and the material PTFE (Teflon).
I agree with Lothar but it is commonly used in mineralogical specimen preparation to dissolve guartz matrix around specimen gold and the rare showing of Pt. Pt almost never occurs in non ultramafic rock hence rarely associated with quartz.
I once had a quartz-and-gold nugget just under 1/4 oz; I placed it into a bottle of HF (Hydrofluoric acid) for several weeks. All the quartz was eaten up and left a beautiful gleaming gold nugget with tiny spires where it had penetrated the quartz. Even though the final weight of the gold was just a little less than 1/8 oz, I sold it for the price of 1/4 oz because it looked so nice.
But yes, HF is nothing to fool with. Get it on your skin, and not only will you NOT feel any pain, it will continue to react with fat, muscle, and bone. People who have spilled it on themselves have had to had limbs amputated because the flesh and bone is dead and gangrene sets in. Unlike other acids or strong bases, it never lets you know when or what it is destroying until it’s too late.
sounds like this method should only be used in lab setting.....
Knowledge or research and due caution and lab skills are much more important than setting. In other words don’t be stupid. No hold my beer and watch this. There are numerous chemicals that for safeties sake need to be used in a fume hood for instance.
Hi Jason,
Great video thanks! I've cleaned up a few specimens with acid and you really have to scrub them with warm water to get any acid residue off, to prevent yellow discolouration, soaking in a cup of water for 24 hours afterwards also helps!
I love your investigatory methods, and lessons learned, very insightful. See, that right there is an issue I now know how to resolve, or begin to resolve. Loved the specimen cleanup with all the chemical varieties, learned all kinds of stuff. Keep up the good work, loved the cooperative work with Jeff and all, but love your channel all on its own as well.
Keep it up!
A piece of cardboard will prevent the crucible sticking to the firebrick. Learned that one on Bigstacked's channel. :-)
You really should spray some rigidizer on that exposed Kaowool. Those fibers get torn and blown around your shop when you fire your crucible, and can do some severe damage to your lungs.
You could dissolve some of the cornflaked lead in muriatic to see how much lead it takes away.
Love all your video's and the one with Jeff. I've learned so much from you. Keep 'em coming! 👍
I love the experimenting and problem solving. And the explanation for each process. I understand the learning and your always open to suggestions. Love watching especially after a long day at work.
Really cool process. I love that you share the mistakes and what you learn. Looks like great fun!
That's not counting the gold in his specimens. Bear that in mind. Outstanding analysis and a great video. Jeff has a killer mine and I hope it just gets better and better for him.
Great videos! It was great meeting you Jason! I’m sure we all look forward to getting back down there! Was definitely an ausome time!
You can put in old cupels with some charcoal to new smelts whenever you would add lead as collector metal. A great inline recycling method beneficial on many points. No waste to take care of, no additional lead needed, saves money, time, labor... awesome!
Hey Jason, awesome work!! When using Muriatic Acid, it works much better 1:3 Muriatic: Hydrogen Peroxide (normal 3%). Muriatic also needs to be at room temperature (around 70°) to work efficiently. During the etching process, get a tooth brush or scrub brush, and brush each sample every now and then with hydrogen peroxide to remove the sediment it etched off, then put your sample back into the stainless steel bowl full of 1:3 solution (plastic will melt). This will give a new clean surface for the acid to keep working effectiently.
The reason it turned green is possibly because it wasn't neutralized well enough. Neutralize it by letting your samples soak in a baking soda/water mixture or Windex (blue window cleaner) for at least 30mins.
I love following your channel, keep up the amazing content!!! 🙏
Give oxalic acid a try! I've used it to clean iron oxides off of quartz points before, worked great....everything was completely white/clear when it came out after an extended soak.
isnt that sold as wood bleach?
Hey there Jason, I’m sold on using Oxalic Acid! It’s the best for tough specimens.
Used heavily for Quartz crystal mining… makes the gold pop. 👍🏼
Duuude! I love the Pb/kno3 method. Such a time saver. Cupelling takes forever.
Wow what a great result I learnt heaps from you and Jeff Williams who I’ve been watching for a few years now
Hi Jason, what a learning process... my first ever cupelling yesterday was... a disaster... I made a "cupel" out of MgO in small clay flower pot, MgO inside the pot cracked, gold microbeads are diffused in bismuth oxide cake... Well... I need to buy some good cupels... no so easy to make a good cupel...
A trick that I found works well for stopping crucibles from sticking is putting a piece of cardboard or poster board under the crucible when firing it. The resulting ash creates a non-stick layer under the crucible.
I remember that Applied Science used something similar when he made glass in his tabletop furnace.
You are sincere in teaching us, and you are a wonderful person and deserve to be rewarded in this world and the hereafter
Thank you Jason for going into the process of how to recover gold from rock through Two separate pathways.
I like your attitude. Honest and truthful.
I'm more intrested in understanding how things are done myself.
Very Informative to acquire for beginner thank you I'm learning so much the videos from Jeff ,Dan Chris and yourself thank all
Jason, thanks for sharing your investigations. I have to say I really enjoy watching the slag freeze in the cone mold. I suggest a super slo mo of that in the future as a short. Keep the videos coming. They are some of my favorites.
Super video. I would love to see it done both ways with the same sample to see which way is the best recovery. Thank you for doing this video
Wow I love your passion, tenacity and perseverance. Very engaging, well done fella. You inspired me to buy a gold pan to try my luck in some streams around my house in West Wales. I'll let you know how I get on.
Good luck and all the best 🙏
Good job brother i am now a subscriber of your channell ..picked u up at Mr. Dan Hurd the gold guru...he gave u a thumbs up for a reason ...God Bless both of you and all of us..
Gave you a like because you are not afraid to fail. Love all your videos! Keep it up!
Really interesting collaboration with Jeff, Jason , excellent. I am aware that Jeff is very productive,so maybe we can hope to see more sometime soon. I figured any day now he'll be calling out for a jackleg , hopefully,lol. All the best regards Jason from here on the West Coast side of Australia 🌏🖖🙏🤟🇦🇺
I needed this exact video! Thank you! Love this channel. :)
Been prepping to hit some of my own ore and trying to figure out what chemical is cheapest and easiest.
Definitely sodium hydroxide/caustic soda/lye (all the same thing) works, but you need to BOIL it. If you get a speci with multiple shows of gold, test it with a multimeter to see if one show connects to another show. This give you an idea if it's something nice worth dissolving or it gets chucked in the crush bucket. Stick your speci in a zinc pot and bury it in lye. Slightly dampen the lye with water to make it boil easier. Boil it for an hour(ish) and the quartz will be gone. If you're lucky, you'll get a pristine nuggy or at least a much more attractive speci.
I was shown round a rock analysis lab once. Each sample coming in was crushed to about 2 mesh then coned and quartered, then one quarter was crushed again, coned and quartered again twice more, then the final quarter was analysed. All to make sure that the test sample was representative of the sample from the mine.
I use aluminium brightener to clean my gold. Alubrite. It is a mixture of various acids including 1% HF. It cleans the gold up perfectly and the gold retains its shine as well. I find that HCL takes away the golds shine so I prefer not to use it. Good video Cheers.
I have had bad experiences with K-Wool, Cer-Wool or Ceramic Wool Fiber (pick your name for it). Got it in my clothes and it found its way in the wash where it wound up on my underpants! No washing didn't remove it! It did a fantastic job redistributing it!
If I had a nice sample of quartz with visible gold like these samples, I think I would have them sliced and polished for jewelry. Also, silver is a strong catalyst to make hydrogen peroxide release oxygen, so that's probably why the H2O2 cup had such a violent rection. Great video, as usual.
Your Experiments Help You to Know what works better, as well as what doesn’t. Through Your Experiments Sharing saves Viewers a lot of Money and Time. “ Thank You “
Hey Jason! My husband and I are huge fans! We have been prospecting for over a year and we appreciate your experimenting and showing your adventures through your expertise! We live in Colorado and have come across some very rich ore, and veins that look abandoned. We would love to send you some of our materials, and see what you think about it. If possible, do you have email or other contact information you can share with me so we can get your expertise on what we have come across? Thank you for all you do for us to learn from!
Lisa and Lee
Thanks for the update.. I was actually waiting for it .. Much appreciated 👍😎
My auto shop teacher had a mine at Cerro Gordo California, he taught me Muratic acid method, I find it fascinating the different waysyiur covering. Hello Mr Robert Desmarais if your out there
Hey there! I'm not sure if anyone else has made this suggestion or if you have tried this yet, but my husband and I put one of our specimens in apple cider vinegar overnight and WOW!! Cleaned up crazy nice 👍 and took any iron sulfates clean off! Hope everyone has a great day! 😁
Jason thank you for the education! ❤❤❤
Awesome info Jason! Great experiments I love watching even if it "fails" Keep on keeping on.
Coat your steel mold with a clay/graphite/alcohol wash. It’s super thin. Foundry supply place has it.
Soda ash is your friend to make silica slag and grind your test material as fine as you can. Bigger grind takes longer and you might want to melt it hour or more longer. Hence grinding it smaller for faster melt.
I had a glassblowing shop and made a lot of glass from the many raw materials that go in to it and find your metal recovery fascinating as anyone who’s run a glass furnace has seen just a little metal , couple grams, maybe bb size,will sink to the bottom of the crucible and start to eat a hole in it. You might find greater results if you start crucible say 1/4 full, let melt, then add more to kind of combat the foaming issue. your oxidation technique is intriguing and I want to see more. You have great videos!!!
Was looking forward to this. Thanks Jason 🤝🍻👍
Jason: I really find your videos quite interesting and educational. Thank You for making them.
Your videos are very informative you're smelting of sulfides has helped me very much as well as the dissolving of high grade iron ore to get to the gold. In one of your videos you used potassium nitrate as an oxidizer so I figured 🤔 high nitrate fertilizer would work the same and it did appreciate the info. Someday I'll have a way to thank you I have some major things in the works😁.
I've seen meminer get some good results on dissolving calcite with various methods. Stuff like white vinegar may take a couple weeks to do the job, where muriatic acid might take a few days to a week.
Awesome work you guys have shared with all of us! Colorado here and thank you for the videos. I appreciate you guys. I could definitely use a small scale shaker system from you guys.😯
Colorado here too
So awesome so informative and just badass! Loved seeing y’all work together
Its amazing that you find the right solution every time you face a trouble,, For such ores, why dont you try leaching process with a non-toxic reagent (like eco-goldex super agent)? It will get more gold with far away less effort .. good luck Jason,, all your videos are fascinating !!
Great Presentation of very practical and scientific info series..Useful..Mo' Shiny from Slims' Map !!!
Cheers !
i've used a propane torch on super high grade gold ore from california to heat and quench the quartz into shattering off of the gold without harming the gold veins, another thing i do is take a wet saw and slice thin slabs off of high grade samples, then polish the slab/s on one side to expose the precious metals, then i sell, gift or trade them usually to collectors and jewelers for making jewelry.
Hey Jayson I know I said this before but I love you channel dude.
Also I've just bought a load of books to do with smelting and gold and silver recovrey it's so interesting
Love watching that awesome lava pattern in your pyramid mould
enjoyed watching your video great work nice to see you try different methods of bring out the best specsmains of gold. I glad to see your explanation and experience and excitement working with gold ore.🤗
wow nice job brother very good experiment i learn someting deferent on your video thanks for your effort.
I'm looking forward to seeing the yield from this 😊, great video as always
I wish I could give two thumbs up, I love the E&E (Education and Entertainment) Thanks! A big part of life is messin around trying to figure things out and having a good time doing it, thanks for sharing your adventures :)
Your process always seems very accurate, with lots of measuring and knowing where "lost" gold went to. But then at the end you use round percentages like 50% or 66% based on the colour of the metal bead which arguably nullifies much of the previous carful calculations.
It could very well be that you know what you're talking about, but I'd like to see a more scientific confirmation.
I understand this is often difficult because you have tiny beads weighing fractions of grams, but now you had over 6g. I hope you do some sort of test with these beads (test stone with acid or even x-rayed) to confirm your 66% purity estimation.
It is the glue he is sniffing.
My friend used muriatic acid heated slowly over a low fire to completely clean the rust off his crystals. We are from Arkansas. We have some of the best clear quarts.
Wow that was so cool have you tryed to desolve the lead with sulphuric acid that would reduce the amount of lead and make it easier to smelt the gold out
I'm getting ready to meet Jeff Williams and do some work with him. Sure do love these videos. You should come on his mine rehab tour be cool to meet you. Spokane Washington
Great experience thanks J.
My suggestion is this: remember that I am a curious soul as well. I lack the basic necessary equipment and most generally use borax, a potato, a pair of wide pliers, and a little handheld MAPP tank. While all is melted kill flame allowing flux to cool to its waxy state and then press with pliers. This forces hot molten metals out of flux . Restart fresh with collected metal and borax. Don’t crush. Use less borax each time. Keeping your beads more manageable until they can find their way to each other. By now, lead has been burned off or just lost due process. It works for me on about 5-7 gram scale of collected gold
Interesting video, I'm not certain about the use of another acid to remove the lead as if you were to use Nitric you would then have a solution that is extremely high in lead and silver which is a real pain in the butt to deal with chemically.
Maybe after the recovery with lead take that lead and then treat it like you did when recovering silver from galena and use zinc? I'm not as knowledgeable about the Parkes process in regards to if it would also collect the gold in the zinc removing it from the lead however you could always zap the lead left over with an XRF to see if it carried over any precious metals after the Parkes process. might be something to test. keep up the great work!
Chris from VoGus prospecting boils specimens in caustic soda and water neutralises the caustic soda in tartaric acid, although this more dissolves the rock rather than cleans them up for display, but the gold does keep its form.
One thing I’ve seen other smelters do is periodically while smelting take a big metal spoon and skim off the top layer separating it in a pile next to where there’s smelting then continuing their smelt. I was just watching how you poured it into the reversed pyramid mold and there’s chunks in it.
سلام استاد
استاد فلزات یا موادی مثله بوراکس مکمل تجمیع طلا جهت رسوب در ته قیف اصطلاحا
دگمه طلایی را راهنمایی میفرمائید متشکرم
Awesome video guys. Really enjoyed every second of it.
Nice video! Awesome tests. I haven't cleaned up much specimen gold, but have used the ultrasonic cleaner in combination with powerful cleaners to clean up copper parts and gold plated parts - the agitation really helps, maybe give it a go? May be risking the specimen breaking up?
Brother I learn more from your mistakes, than I do your successes 💪 I'm in the trenches with you so I understand how failures feel. I'm a gold miner refiner out of Cripple Creek Colorado. And I just wanted to say I appreciate you keep trying keep going thank you for your time and for your attention
With the muriatic acid as soon as the rock is out of the container you must dip it in vinegar to neutralize it and it won't turn that yellowish color I've been in masonry for a long time and its the number one best technique we use
I wonder if using the chemicals for the fine powder stuff would be more cost effective than smelting? And perhaps cleaner product. I liked the video and thanks for the experiment on our behalf.
Gaday, have you put quartz that hold nuggets in a camp 🔥 in a bowl ,half an hour later Cool down with water,soak it , crush with slight pressure
I'd sure like to see both you and Cody from "Cody's Lab" work together on a few of these smelting projects.
1:57 My guess is whichever one has the strongest acid.
Thanks for taking the time to make and produce this video.
Now, please add up all the costs of the expendable items, Borax, lead, lead absorbing crucibles, fuel, and any other expendables.
Add up an accurate number of man-hours involved to produce the final grams of gold. Then we can try to determine what you actually "earned".
The potential costs of operating the mechanical crushers per/hour would also need to be figured in, wouldn't it?
Thanks again.
Stay safe!
This was a very fun video
Thanks Jason !
Soda ash? Maybe a little, but you need a lot of borax. And silica. Used to smelt that same exact ore everyday.
Good job on the close up shots perfect detail 👌
Hello from Norway.
Thank you Sir. I realy love this canal✨✨✨God bless you✨✨✨. And take care✨