Gold Recovery the First Steps

Welcome to my first blog.  I will try to not mess this up too much and keep it as straight forward and informative as possible.  This blog is for those out there who want to try their hands at gold recovery from ewaste.  Please keep in mind that this is no where near a "get-rich-quick" venture.  For someone to be successful in this they must first start this off as a hobby in my opinion.  Please also note that there is no one process for all gold recovery.  There are many different types of GBM's (gold bearing materials) out there and they require different methods of processing. 

The first step in this art is getting informed.  While this blog may seem like a tutorial it is in reality a very brief guide and should be used only to familiarize yourself with the process so that you can get an idea of what recovery is all about.  There are two first steps that I highly encourage everyone to do.  The first is to read the book by C.M.Hoke called Refining Precious Metal Wastes.  This book is available free online.  You should read it cover to cover.  Next is to go to the goldrefiningforum.com and read some more.  There is a lot of great information there and a lot of very experienced people.  My only advice is to not ask questions.  If you are new to the field they will chew you up and knock you down......in a sort of twisted sense of compassion towards those who will not actually take the time to read and discover how dangerous this can be some of the members there feel that the only way to weed out those who will take the necessary precautions is to mow them all down so that the strong willed will pop back up and be successful and safe.

Step two, gather your material!  This is where you want to hoard up all the gold bearing material you can.  The benefit of doing the reading and research first is that it will help to give you a better idea of what type of recovery you would want to start off with.  In my opinion, there are two that are the least expensive to attempt, "safer" and I use that term loosely, and that is the A/P method, or Acid Peroxide, to remove gold adhered to boards via copper etching, and the HCL and heat method for metal pins plated in gold.  You are going to want to gather up several lbs of material because it takes a lot to get a very little gold.  Remember that 1 oz of gold can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long.  The first attempt at this that I made was with the Acid/peroxide method on gold fingers.  These are the edges of things like PCI cards and Ram chips.

They can be easily removed from the board with a pair of tin snips of by clamping them in a vice and pulling the board back.  I have a video on this on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLBTWH4SafM

You are going to want to amass at least a pound of trimmed gold fingers.  It is very important to make sure that there is nothing else on the trimmed fingers, no solder, other componants, or base metals.  If the contents are left clean then the solution used and be reused almost indefinitely. 

Age matters!!  The age of the electronics you get the material from makes a big difference!!  Gold was less costly a couple decades ago, plating technology was not as advanced, so in most cases you have a thicker plating!!  So gather up all of your gold fingers from pci cards, RAM chips, slot processors, and even some boards like phone boards and calculator boards can be treated here as well as long as there is no other metals present or componants.

Step 2 coming soon....