Gold Mining, Gold Milling, & Gold Refining: The Full Process

hey guys my name is Jason with Mount Baker  Mining and metals and on today's video I have an   epic adventure for us we're going to head over to  Eastern Oregon we're going to do some underground   gold mining we're going to bring the ore back  crush it up here smelt it down and I'm going to   do something I've never done before I'm going  to refine down our gold and silver to a super   high Purity so stay tuned for all that but first I  gotta head over to Eastern Oregon and get mine in   we're back in eastern Oregon we're going to  gold mining back here underground in this old   abandoned gold mine so in a previous video  we were in here we're taking some samples   and we found a really really hot spot really  really high grade gold it's averaging 5 to 10   ounces we got one assay that was over 20 ounces  of ton I think so we're back and today our goal   let's go down that hole there back to our  high grade area I'm going to knock down as   much of that high grade as I can onto a tarp  get it bagged up bring it back to the shop and   run it through the system so let's go check out  what we're going to be working on today and see   how much we can get all right here's our first  little obstacle we got to go down this ladder down to the second level here it's  about I don't know 15. feet or so so get down here onto the lower level and it  looks like there was just a heck of a rain   event here not too long ago because there's  a bunch of stuff it's all washed down here   so there's a bunch of water running down  these creating little gullies and all this   organic matter and junk washed in here and then  here right above us if you look straight up   oh there's daylight so that's where  the old miners onto the surface and we're going to be working up here today I'll  put a link for a card or whatever up in the corner   if you want to check out our first  video where we took these samples   but we're going to be working right up  here this was the really really rich spot   and I've been looking and thinking about this  since we were in here and I don't know if it's   going to show up very well but there's the vein is  striking more or less East-West and then I don't   know if you're gonna be able to see this but I'll  try and show you up here on the wall right there   running down that way is a fault and  it kind of offsets the vein right here but there's where the vein comes back and  then there's a little hole up to the first   level and that's where we're going to be  working now I pointed out that offset fault   right in there because oftentimes and more and  more what I'm finding is where a vein and a fault   intersect or two veins intersect like that it  becomes very very rich and I don't know if that's   where the original mineral fluids came up and  then they squirted off in this vein or if there's   something happening there but typically when  these veins are forming if you get a change in   pressure temperature or chemistry oftentimes  the minerals will fall out at that location   and what better place to do that than intersection  of the fault you can see there's some copper   staining here the owners told me that the copper  staining is a really good indication of high grade   he's done a bunch of slab work on this stuff  up here you can see there's very little copper   staining it's pretty much isolated to this side  the football side of the vein and the vein here is   probably about 12 to 16 inches wide across there  we're gonna and it's really nice because I got   this big overhang I can work all the way up I've  got a little Roto Hammer chisel thing I've got   my hammer and chisel I got a bunch of fun stuff  we're gonna use today but I'm gonna lay out a tarp   down here and I'm just going to start wailing  away on that thing and see how much we can get well I'm disturbing all kinds of wildlife  in here there's a bat flying around let's   see if it'll come back again and then there's  a pack rat sitting right there in that stall it's in here hmm I've got all sorts of tools here today  got that battery powered Roto Hammer   I think what I'm gonna use first though  is just a good old hammer and chisel   see how much I can knock off there easily I'll  get worn out pretty quick on that I'm sure of it   let's give it a shot see what I can knock off of  there I'm gonna be wearing a respirator for the   quartz dust there's a bunch of packrat we'll call  it poop for the video down here so I don't want   to be breathing a whole bunch of that stuff so  I'll be all ppeed up and uh we'll see what we get foreign about 30 seconds into it here and I've already found a huge piece of gold   right there and I should have gotten the  face when I'm sticking the face but I was   so excited to get it out and show you guys but  that's a pretty dang nice piece of gold there and then looking up here at the face see if I can get this uh there's  kind of gold sprinkled all through it   there's a piece there's some there's some  more up here right up here I can't I can't   see the camera so I hope I'm getting it here  but it looks like there's a little swath   right right here here to here that's just loaded  loaded with gold and and I'm in the copper area   where the owner told me to go so I'm just gonna  oh boy I'm just gonna start working right in here   and uh there might be a little bit more up in  here too a bunch of Galena maybe that gray Galena it's really really nice looking  stuff holy smokes all right well   I like the hammer and chisel just  because it's a little more delicate   and allow me to like I'm gonna I'm gonna  try and pry this piece out right here   I want to save a bunch of these specimens for  the owner he's coming a little bit later today   um but let me work with that hammer and just a  little bit more see if we find some more specimens   well I better get some on video here  before I hand cob all this out of here   um right up in here see the gray I think that's  Galena I'm finding it right along with that Galena   here's kind of that first strip we were talking  about where I saw it all at the beginning I don't   see a whole lot here right now um there might be  some right up in there I don't know if you can   see it right there and there maybe um but it's  breaking up really nice and easy I'm hardly I'm   I'm I'm spending more time looking  at it than I am hitting on it   um but after I don't know five maybe ten  minutes I probably got 50 pounds in the ground   I want to work on this big knob here so I can  work it all the way back there's some really   good looking stuff back over here but I don't want  to be under there hitting and this is all kind of   ravely ground in here and all these big knockers  I don't want anything to come down in my head   especially as I open up this hole bigger I don't  know what's going to happen so I'm just gonna be   careful and just kind of not work with anything  over my head the ground up above looks really   good incompetent so I'm just going to work this  back a little bit and but there's man there's   some really really good stuff in here I hope we  get a bunch of gold when to run the equipment well I've got quite a bit of  a knocked out of there now   and I'm gonna work on getting this big  doniger right here out of there I don't   like that over my head so I've got this is the  second tart full I'm gonna put this in sacks   but a lot of nice looking stuff in there I  got a couple pieces that's a nice gold on them   the tarps working really well I can just kind  of get it all into a nice little pile get it   up I probably got 75 pounds there so I'll  get this cleaned up put into a couple sacks   and then we'll come back I'll knock a bunch of  that waste off of there and just put on the ground   and then I can keep going in that vein that'll  open up that vein a little bit more for me everything down has to come up it all comes up this ladder one sack at a time oh foreign spot here so I can get up and and chisel down from  the top and man that is making a huge difference   look at the pile of muck I got here it took me  about 15 minutes I probably got four or five sacks   there and uh I really got a big old chunk out from  the upper section of the vein there and there's a   level above me and I think what happened is when  they were going through and putting in this level   above me uh their blasts shattered the courts down  about a foot into the foot not the foot wall but   the floor of that upper level and so it made it  all real loose and it was super easy chipping   but now I've got this big knob here that  uh is real hard and I've got this little   bottom of around here in the football I think I  may try and take out some of that foot wall and   then I've got somewhere I can slab this hard  vein into um but I'm gonna get all this muck   off the floor first and get it bagged up and  then see about getting the rest of that big   chunk of rain out of there it's good looking stuff  the veins really pinching fast up here it's only   about I don't know eight inches wide up there and  as you can see underneath it pinches down so once   we get this big chunk out of here we'll see what  the veins doing and what it looks like also up   there I'm kind of running out of mineralization  so uh we'll see we'll see what happens well I dug a little bit around the foot  wall that vein goes back in there maybe   eight or ten inches and I really don't like  to be picking on the walls much because   there's a big slab up there that worked its way  down and all this is just kind of hanging here   but it's on the foot wall I'm not too terribly  worried about it so I'm going to work on this   chunk if it was if it was up in the hanging wall  you know and hanging over your head like down that   Big Slab that's that's no good um but now I can  try and just kind of slab that that big chunk   into that hole that I made I got my tarp  cleaned up we got eight bags of mock out of that   and uh that ends up being about 400 pounds that  hole up there that I made is roughly a foot and   a half deep two feet long and about a foot wide  or so uh and so I think for 400 pounds I think   that's about three three and a quarter cubic  feet so we're right around 125 pounds of cubic   feet which I think about what quartz weighs um so  anyway that was that was kind of an interesting   little calculation but let's get going on this  big chunk and see what we can get out of it foreign well it's still pretty hard it's I've  knocked a little bit off of there but   I'm gonna try one of these Feathering wedges  and there's kind of a natural little seam there   Dan Hurd introduced me to these  thanks Dan he gave me a few as well   so I'm gonna try and drill a  hole right in here somewhere   and put that wedge in like that and see if I  can wedge this just a big old knob off this wall   so I'll show you after I get the hole drilled and  see if I can video as I hammer that thing down   all right I got her in there let's see if  I can do all this at the same time kind   of kind of perched on the ladder over a hole  sideways in the anyway let's see this works oh I broke something up I need my hammer Drilling  chisel away what I broke up there and take a look maybe I should have tried to wedge it off  that crack all right let's try it this way foreign something happened there oh yeah all right pretty good I'll do that again thank you Dan I got my chisel right in the hole and it's coming nice well there's our vein I got that  big old knob knocked off of there   got a big old pile of muck here I got a bag  up and uh I don't know how many bags I got   but I think I can carry about 20 or so back  with me I got my little pickup today so I   don't want to do a whole lot more work  and have bags that I can't take with me   so I'm gonna get this bagged up and we'll  take inventory of how much muck we got   all right guys there's all 18 sacks in the back of  the truck every single one of those had to come up   that ladder through the underground workings up  the ladder and then across to the truck and man   oh man am I tired but we're all loaded up so I'm  gonna head home so I've got these 18 sacks that   have the raw ore in them and I'm gonna start with  putting them through this jaw Crusher here this is   a six inch by ten inch jaw Crusher and the ore is  fed in this Hopper it'll Crush down through these   Jaws and come out the bottom into a bucket  and once they're all crushed up into buckets   I'll bring them over here and put them down  through the hammer Mill the hammer Mill is   going to take that half inch minus gravel crush it  down to 70 passing 30 mesh and 50 passing 50 mesh   there's a screen in the bottom half of the hammer  Mill with 0.8 millimeter slots in it we feed water   into the hammer Mill through the side of the case  and down through the top where the ore gets fed   that creates a really nice slurry and everything  stays in there until it can come out those slots   down that orange chute into the distributor  trough of the Shaker table once the ore is fed   onto the Shaker table it gets evenly distributed  through these ports on the distributor trough   and all the dense material primarily the gold and  silver and any sulfides fall down in these long   grooves in the rubber and all this precious metals  and sulfides work their way across the table   only the heaviest minerals can come up the  long grooves Gold Silver and the heaviest   sulfides such as Galena they'll work up onto the  cleaning plane and down this edge of the table   into the number one and number two port as they  work their way down the cleaning plane the water   from this water bar washes the less dense material  away and back down the cleaning plane towards the   grooves and the gold and silver make a really  nice clean line that works down into the number   one there's a number three port here on the  Shaker table this is where the middlings go   so most of the sulfides will end up here  there's a little aluminum splitter right   here that you can adjust left or right and  that will cut the midlings from the tailings   the tailings flow down this pipe into this buried  tank and the tailings and water settle out here   and the water is recycled and re-pumped  back up to the system to the Hammer Mill   and the Shaker table for recycling all right  we got 18 bags now we got 18 buckets I weighed   four of the buckets and averaged them out by  weight and they were 22 and a half kilograms   so right in these 18 buckets we have roughly 400  kilograms for the more we're going to run through   our system and a lot of you guys have asked me  what happened to the whole TurnKey system you used   to have a whole jaw Crusher and conveyor belts and  all the stuff I actually had to sell it because   there's such a high demand for all this piece  of equipment that I've been selling all my demo   equipment so to answer you guys question that's  where it went but if you're interested in any of   these pieces of equipment give us a call or shoot  us an email you can find our contact information   in the description below let's get these  samples running we'll see how much gold we have thank you thank you thank you well I don't know if you can hear me but this  is really nuggety sometimes there's lots of   gold in the table and other times there's not  there's a pretty good little blood of gold   right here and it seems to be associated with  the Galena it's that kind of blue gray mineral   out here in front and it seems to be that when  there's more Galena there's more gold and it's   all coming down into the number one right here  there's quite a bit of pyrite in it over here   and that's mostly coming into the number two  there's very little sulfites coming down into   the number three a little bit of quartz  and then we got a nice clean cut between   the number three and the number four so  it's all it's all quartz going that way oh yeah it's real spotty some buckets  seem to have a lot more gold than others   we're down to our last five four five here  well I don't know if you're telling the dirty   water but I think most of that line is all  gold going right down into the number one   that's the best one I've seen all day right  at the end of the run that last bucket there it comes down number one you can see the pile of gold right there there's a pretty nice Gold Line huh look at that going all the way down that gold is so so fine but it runs all the way down so there's going down to the number one  that goal just runs all the way up the table super super fine stuff it's called nice Gold Line all right guys well the Shaker  table's finishing up behind me we're cleaning   up and brushing down the table to get all the gold  off and while I'm thinking of it I want to mention   a few things we ask ate it and I stayed about  15 ounces a ton there is not seven and a half   ounces in that number one concentrate bucket so  I wanted to set expectations early that it's not   going to be a seven and a half ounce Pour at the  end of this video and the reason why that might   be is there's a couple reasons one is something  called the Nugget effect when you assay for gold   if there's a super super rich area in the vein  and you get a little piece of that it can throw   off the whole assay and kind of skew your results  to show way more gold than if you just go in and   take the whole vein so that might be part of it  the other part is you saw the gold hopefully in   the video it's super super fine we may have a  Liberation problem I may be only liberated 30   50 I'm not really sure but I've got a sample of  the tailings coming out of the number four trough   and I'm gonna get those acid usually it takes a  couple weeks so if I don't have the results by   the time I post this video I'll put the results  in the description below so you can check out   the assay results of the tailings and that'll  tell us how much gold we didn't liberate from   The Rock because I didn't grind it fine enough  the hammer Mill could only grind so fine but I'm   working on another machine here hopefully in  the next six months I'm going to show you how   I'm going to grind all these tailings finer and  release more gold the other possibility is there   could be some values locked up in the sulfides  not chemically but sometimes you'll have little   grains of gold to get grown around by a grain  of pyrite or a grain of Galena so there might   be quite a bit more value in our number one and  number two cons than we can visually see and that   will come out with the smelting process let's  get the table cleaned off we'll get our number   one and number two concentrates we'll go smelt  them down and we'll see how much gold we have   all right here's our number one concentrates  the drug weighs about 40 grams 50 or so at the   water so 13 100 grams and here's the number two  which I don't think I can weigh on this scale   oh yeah it's about four kilograms so call it  roughly five five kilograms from 400 kilograms   is a hundred to one concentration ratio the 80 85  somewhere in there well here's a look at our gold and that was just kind of a quick and dirty pan  there's some in there so that's our next step   we'll get this in the furnace and melted  down and see how much gold we have and then over here in this pan is the the panning  tailings so I'm going to smelt that down separate   and see how much gold we have in the panning  tailings but there's this gray mineral over here   and it's super heavy I believe it's  Galena I panned a lot of it out but it is very hard to pan and if we smelt it down and we  get just a whole bunch of lead in our button we'll   know that's that lead Galena lead sulfide well  what I've done here is I've panned down the number   one cons down to a small amount and the reason  is I wanted to see if I can keep the free gold   separate from the other number one concentrates  these are the panning tailings and the idea is   to see if most of the gold is in this stuff is  free gold or if there's a significant amount of   gold left in the number one panning tailings I  tried to keep as much free gold out of this as   possible and so what we're going to do is smelt  them both down separately if there's a a bunch of   gold in here and hardly any in here we're going  to know that most of our goldenness ore is free   and I can just pan it out if there's half gold  in here and half value in here we're gonna know   that there's still a significant amount of gold in  the sulfides from the concentrates and we can just   melt them all down together and recover our gold  here's the enriched number one concentrates that   I panned out I've got 86 grams I think I'm I've  got enough precious metals in here and I think   that sulfide is Galena so I've got enough lead  in there I'm not going to add any lead collector   here we are all mixed up I edited  the formula a little bit I've got   40 grams of silica 120 grams of soda ash  and I added 30 grams of potassium nitrate foreign foreign foreign well we let the second pour cool down  let's get this one weighed it's cooled   down enough I can touch it and it should  just pop right off of there there we go so there is that that's from our  number one panning concentrates 24 grams so that's about three quarters of an  ounce and I can tell you from the assays that   we did that this stuff should be about 70 percent  gold and 30 percent silver according to the assays   so whatever three quarters or three  quarters is without like half at 0.55   ounces of gold and it's definitely yellowish  in color but it's quite White a very very light   brassy color so that is less than I was expecting  I was hoping for two or three or four ounces   um but let's see what's in that lead that's from  the panning tailings of the number one there might   be quite a bit of gold and silver in there as  well let's have school down a little bit now but   I've noticed since I've started using oxidizer  that I get this interesting little layer on top   and so the potassium nitrate that I use  must not mix with the slag and so I get this   this separation on top of the pore and  that's why you don't see that surface   of the Sun texture anymore is because  this stuff is floating right on top   and the surface of the Sun textures underneath  so I thought I'd point that out I have not seen   that before but it's kind of cool to see  them separate but this is cooled down now so let's hopefully the lead's not molten  at the bottom let's see what happens lead still Moulton see it here  splattered out of there son of a gun   well this is a nightmare this is exactly what I  keep warning everybody about on these videos I   I took the temperature on the top and usually  when the temperatures below about five or six   hundred degrees the lead is solid in the bottom  but I'm wondering if this stuff on the top maybe   acts as an insulation layer and so this cools  off faster than the stuff underneath let me   let me take the temperature  of this stuff right now so oh yeah see that's still 700 degrees that's  way hotter than the melting point of lead so   from now on I got to make sure I got this layer  off the top so I can get an accurate reading on   the temperature dang what a mess all right well  we the good news is we haven't lost anything so   I'll just collect all this lead here this stuff  here I'll see if I can break off the slag once   it cools down and try and recover the lead  where's absolute worst comes to worst we'll   just smelt it all back down again and report it  holy moly look at this mess so I got lead stuck   in the inside of the mold I got lead dripped all  down around the outside I'm just gonna I'm just   gonna put it back in the furnace and re-smelt it  I uh I guess I'll pick out whatever I can here oh see learned from my mistakes don't be in a hurry let the lead cool down well I got upset with it after I poured in the  cone mold so I just dunked her in water it's just   been soaking in water about three or four minutes  so everything should be nice and cold there that's what you're supposed to get is  nice solid lead Chunk on the bottom   and there's our there's our slag no matte  layer in there so that's good I got a nice   uniform piece of lead I did not add any lead  in there so that is all from The Ore itself so let's figure out how much we got we started  with about a kilogram worth of concentrates   well it's all cleaned up and it weighs 500 grams  so about half of the weight of the concentrates   was lead and all your gold and silver is going  to be in here it's actually a little bit hard   when I when I pound on it I pound on a corner  here somewhere and it's a little bit hard so   I'm wondering if we got some copper mixed in with  it but now we got to get rid of I don't want 500   grams of lead that that'd take forever to keep  all away so what I'm going to do is show you my   new trick on how to get all this lead out so I'm  going to take our lead block and re-melt it down   so we'll turn it back on but it's going to  melt pretty quick then I'm going to pour   it in water and corn flake it and then  I'm going to oxidize all that lead away I'm just going to take our lead  and pour it in a bucket of water all right drain the water off and there's  what it looks like so I'm going to bring   all that out I should have used deeper water  because it's kind of clumped together it still   has a much surface area but kind of clumped  which isn't ideal but we're gonna go with it   so let's just scrape all this out into a bin here   and you can actually see if you look close it's  kind of copper colored some of it so again I   think there's some copper in there we'll get  that in there keep the water out as best we can now what we're gonna do is because  we have a huge amount of surface area   on the lead I can add a bunch of  oxidizer and oxidize away or oxidize   the lead and the copper and the base  Metals all the junk in there we don't want   and all the precious metals will collect the  bottom and then we'll have a much smaller button   to work with we don't have to keep hell 500 grams  we might have to keep Health 50 or maybe 20.   we'll see what we come up with I've mixed up  our metal I have 500 grams of potassium nitrate   which is probably way too much but I'm going  to pour the coals to it and try and get all   these big chunks oxidized I've put in about  300 grams of borax anhydrous borax and about   100 grams of silica sand and that's going  to absorb all those oxides we're going to   make and hopefully we'll have a precious  metal button at the end of our pour here foreign flag down there all right I had it in the water  again I'll see what happens oh a bunch of junk all right here we go third time's a charm foreign foreign number two concentrates in there we're gonna have  340 grams a circle sand 1360 grams of soda ash and   340 grams of potassium nitrate so it's 20 percent  silica 80 soda ash and then additional 20 percent   potassium nitrate the increase are Crucible  to number 20. and I'll do two smelts in there foreign this is the number two concentrates all the  lead and everything I oxidized as much away   and it looks like there's hardly any lead  left in the button when I put it in the cupel   because it's about the same size so let's see how much it weighs there's  it looks like you can't really see it   on the camera but it looks like there's  some slag left around the outside there   so I might have to get that one  cleaned up a little bit more but well there they are all three buttons  the one on the left is the free gold   that I panned out and smelt it down  the number one panning concentrates   the middle one is the panning tailings from  the number one concentrates and then this   nasty looking thing over here on the right  is the number two concentrates and they vary in Gold content this one's the yellowest so it  has the most gold probably about 70. I don't   know if you can tell on camera it doesn't  look like it from when I'm filming but this   one also has a little bit of tinge to Yellow of  yellow so that might be 50 gold and this one is   pretty silvery and the silver Sprouts give it  away that's more gold or more silver than gold   so we have 163 grams it might be half gold maybe  sixty percent so what's that 80 grams that's   a little over two and a half ounces I believe  of gold but what this tells me is I have to do   something that I've resisted for years I'm gonna  have to make a follow-up video on these three   parting with nitric acid and purifying the gold  this is the stuff from the number one I've cleaned   it up a little bit more with cupelling and I'm  going to make something out of this later uh   in a separate video so I'm going to just set that  aside that's already nice refined stuff that I can   make into some jewelry or something now the first  thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to melt   these two buttons together and get them cleaned  up a little bit they've got some junk on the   back of them they've got a little flux on the top  here so I'm going to use this melting dish an oxy   acetylene torch to melt them and then I'm going  to pour them in this little Ingot mold here and   hopefully we'll get a nice clean metal ingot that  we can then do our chemistry on all right we're   gonna get started here just nice and slow I've got  it up on a fire brick so I'm not sitting on the   cold table and we're just going to warm everything  up here you know nice and dried out warmed up   so we don't start breaking anything  and just start slow you know you don't   need to be in a rush here I'm going to try  this I'm going to turn the oxygen way down   I'm gonna try and carbon this mold  here so it doesn't stick so there's there that mold's got a bunch of carbon in it  now we'll work on getting this heated up melt   it down and I'm going to pour off of this  lip so I want that lip to be nice and warm so here comes the Moment of Truth here whoa already almost a disaster all right that was something huh I got a little bit of   why when I tipped that thing when I  first grabbed it I got a little bit   of precious metal stuck on the edge there  I'm not going to worry about that too much let's see if we can get this flipped over there we go there's our bar here we  go let me get my hot dog tongers here there not bad that worked out pretty good a little  bit more practice we'll have that down in no time   but now let's get another weight on this bar  and then we'll start the the exciting part we had about a hundred almost 140 grams so we lost a couple grams probably like I said  that junk on the bottom a little bit of slag   on top but what is it about 138 138 grams but  now I've got to figure out what carrot this is   I got to figure out how much gold and silver  there is in this and I'm going to show you   an easy way to do that using something that  Archimedes came up with about 2500 years ago   how this works is we're going to measure the  amount of water that our bar displaces so I've   got a jug of water on here it weighs  almost 700 grams I'm going to zero it   I'm going to use this little piece of copper  wire I'm going to submerge it into water   that's 0.8 grams I'm going to zero that again now I have a wet mark on my wire there we go zero okay now we get our bar put on The Wire displace it  or put it under the water back up to my wet mark 11.9 grams so that means our bar  displaces 11.9 grams of water   now we can calculate the density of our bar  it weighs 138 grams I'm rounding for easy math   and it displaces 11.9 grams of water but  here's the trick because water is one   gram per cubic centimeters it also displaces  11.9 cubic centimeters of water so I'm going   to take away the grams part and replace  it with cubic centimeters and now when I   divide those two together I get a density and  that equals 11.6 grams per cubic centimeter   yeah that's the density of a bar so now it gets a  little bit more technical but we want a 25 gold 75   percent silver alloy and the reason why I know  that it's just gold and silver in here is it's   gone through the compelling process and all the  base metals have been removed the lead the Bismuth   the copper all that stuff is gone so we just have  gold and silver we want this ratio because our   nitric acid needs to have access to enough enough  silver to dissolve it all out of the alloy and   leave just the gold sponge so now we've got to  calculate the density of of of this this is what   we want so you would take an imaginary bar that  weighs 100 grams 25 grams of gold and 75 grams   of silver you divide it by the density of each  metal which gives you a volume of the bar of 100   gram bar you take the 100 gram weight of the bar  divide it by the volume of the bar and an alloy   of 25 gold 70 five percent silver has a density  of 11.8 grams per cubic centimeter we have 11.6   so we're almost perfectly right on the money there  I could add a little bit more gold to this to get   it up to this 11.8 but I think we're close enough  we're just going to go with what we have okay now   what we're going to do is we're going to take our  bar I'm going to re-melt it back down pour it in   this water over here and corn flake so we can get  a bunch of surface area for our acid to work on there we have it there's all  our corn flaked gold and silver   so let's get that decanted off and into a beaker it's on precious metal refining with acids  everything I'm about to do here and for the   rest of the video I learned from him so check  him out I'll put a link to his channel in the   description below now I'm going to get all  of our alloy moved over to this Beaker here   I'm going to add about a hundred milliliters of  water then I'm going to add about 100 milliliters   of nitric acid and turn the hot plate on and  we'll get this boiling but there's going to be   some nasty fumes coming off of there so I'm gonna  go put my respirator on there's our nitric acid I   just added a little over 100 milliliters and it  immediately turned brown now I'm going to cover   the beaker and we'll let that heat up and  boil and the Nitric will work on the silver   so I'm really starting to boil now the silver  or the alloy has turned pretty much black so it's working real good   I'll have to do this several times now I'm getting  ready for wind I pour off that Nitric solution   it's going to have a whole ton of silver dissolved  in it and I'm going to pour it over copper   because the copper is more reactive than the  silver and so it will displace the silver in the   solution and the silver will come out so I have  about 164 grams of copper that should be enough   to displace the roughly 100 grams of silver we  have in solution well our first boil is pretty   much complete there's just a little bit of gas  coming off but not much the solution is clear   nice kind of reddish tan color  so now let me get it poured off   we'll do it again okay let's see how this  works here so we'll take our cover off that's sludgy kind of Muddy okay now I'll put some more water in some more Nitric and we'll continue the reaction okay let's see what happens here I  have one little strand of copper wire let's see what happens when  I put it in the solution it starts to immediately foam and that should start pulling  the silver out of solution and replacing it with copper  in solution let's add some more you don't add too much too quick you can see the the blue is starting to form  it's turning it's actually turning orange   and as the copper goes into solution  it'll turn a nice pretty blue color so let that work and see how that comes along when I said blue I guess I meant green it's  turned a nice beautiful emerald green color   and looking down you can see the silver  coming out onto the copper wire strands here's our second boil much clearer than the first  one still making some NO2 but not nearly as much so we'll just have to see what happens well our second boil is done here no more Brown gas so I'm going to slowly pour it into here went too fast that's what I did not want to happen  quite a bit of Nitric in there there's our Brown sludge so I think I'll do one more  with the nitric acid and water there's really no reaction at all for  our third bath yet I just put it in   but as that heat gets going we'll see if there's  any more but the solution is pretty much colorless   our resistance going like  crazy this is the copper wire   I almost boiled over there you really don't want  that to happen so got to be careful with that well this is our third boil it's been gone  about 20 minutes there's no gas coming off   the solutions almost clear so I'm going  to decant this often a little filter out   hopefully or very pure gold mud I'm not going  to pour it in with our copper solution yet so I'll pour it into a clean beaker  a couple rinses here with clean water   can anybody tell me why the  solution is slightly yellow is that a little bit of iron contamination I  think silver nitrate is supposed to be clear   and then our right over there our copper solution  is green but I thought for sure it was going to   be blue so let me know what you think on those two  well I have my funnel here with some filter paper   hopefully this works I'm gonna try and get all  of our gold powder down here on the filter paper okay now let that filter through dry out  a little bit and the plan is to melt it   down and get a nice shiny yellow gold bar  all right I'm going to transfer this over now we'll burn it off okay everybody  cross your fingers this turns gold I'm also going to use a new   melting dish so we don't contaminate from any  little bits of silver we had before you want   to be really really gentle now with the torch  because you've got essentially gold powder there   some of it and you don't want to just blow it all  over the place I've done that in the past with   plaster gold and small hard rock  gold I'm trying to melt down oh look at there can you see it I don't  even see it's turning bright yellow   we got her melted down we've got  to kind of do double duty here carbonize that mold here we go okay we got a board come on there there it came  a little coercion there dang look at that mbmm's first purified gold boy it's just nice shiny yellow may not be the  best surface appearance but whew it worked that's   so cool I can't believe it worked I can't believe  it worked but it worked so well the first time   thank you three tips okay  the Big Moment of Truth here   there should be I think we figured right  around 30 to 35 grams right 30 30 grams or so   is what we're shooting for because we were a  little bit under the 25 mark so what'd we get 29.65 oh just under an ounce just under   one ounce so there's a little under two  thousand dollars of gold right there man that is cool well I've screwed up on the  silver part and a lot of you guys who are in   the know probably saw this kind of slow motion  train wreck happening from earlier in the video   I was all excited to put that fine copper wire  in there because they had such a big surface   area and help the reaction go along and get that  silver precipitated out but what I didn't think   of is now I got to remove the Copper from the  solution and I have excess copper and it's all   covered in silver and there's probably some fine  wires that got down into the sludge the silver   sludge and there's still copper on them so this  is not this is not the way to do this so uh I'm   gonna have to re redo this part so learn from my  mistakes but let's start this second process and   hopefully by the end of the video we'll end up  with pretty pure silver sauce that we have here oh yeah this is a mess here I don't I don't really know what the best way  to deal with this is for now let's just put it   in this container I'm going to pull out as much  copper as I can another interesting thing I found   while doing some research is I had it backwards  one gram of copper we'll pull like three and a   half grams of silver out of solution so I had way  too much copper in here but let me decant this off   and again get as much copper out of there as I  can so I'm just going to pour the solution off   and this should be totally saturated now with  copper there shouldn't be any more silver in here and we'll save this for processing later oh yeah look at that look at that mess  copper wire some of it's plated with silver   oh boy what a mess all right plan Plan B I  think we're just going to dissolve it all   in Nitric and then just plate the silver out I  think is what we're gonna do so we've got to mix   up some more Nitric here I'm gonna use our spent  nitric acid not really spent but this is the last   boil that I did previously there's still lots of  Nitric in there so I'm going to take this pour   it into there and then we can use the active  Nitric in here for our first ball all right   we'll let that work a little bit and check on it  we'll just do a quick filter of our solution here   there's a little bit in there I'll wash  down into the beaker on the hot plate   I've dissolved about as much copper  and silver as I can in this solution so let me pour off   most of the solution now I'm going to add some  water and some more nitrate now I don't want   to add too much Nitric because I'll just waste  it so I'll add about 100 milliliters more water and about another 100 milliliters of Nitric and if there's still some sludge in the bottom oh that's bad huh the thing I had my tray on there  no I'm just learning all kinds of things here   so here's the thing I'm not scared to make  mistakes and I'm not ashamed to show you on video because this is how we all learn so  I'm hoping we can just do this it's a good thing I went and got some of these  trays this is a Goodwill deal at two bucks I'll see if I just did it again hopefully not so you want to add the Nitric real slow now  here are the solutions that I just poured   off they should be saturated with copper and  silver so now I'm going to use copper pipe to   precipitate out just the silver and then  I'll be able to take the copper pipe out when the reaction is complete look at there silver so we're just going to put a couple  of copper pipes in there foreign out on those well it might be hard to tell in the solution but there's no more silver  plating out on the copper   so the copper silver reaction has gone to  completion there's all our silver on the bottom   now I have this Beaker over here  I'll switch the copper pipes over too   once it's done filtering and we'll cover the rest  of our silver and this should immediately start   precipitating out silver there it goes so let that go to completion and  now I can filter the silver out to our funnel and filter paper again I'm going to  rinse this stuff with hot water a bunch of times get all that acid out of  there this is my last rinse   with hot water probably six or seven  now the solution is more or less clear   after the silver settles out we're doing  our final couple rinses here on our second   batch of silver our first batch is pretty much  settled out and washed and I'm keeping all my   copper nitrate filtered here in a bucket and  I've thrown those copper tubes back in just so   we can if there's any residual silver whatever  I can just sit there and and percolate a little   bit so that's where that's going and here once  this is all rinsed up we'll get it melted down   and pour it into a bar we've got our silver in the  filter now and it's filtering out any last liquid   my buckets here are getting full of spent solution  and so once that gets filtered down and dried out   some we'll melt it in this little melting dish  hopefully it's big enough and then here are   several different Spence filtered papers and I'll  deal with those again at a later date I'm going to   do this quite a bit different next time this this  was really cool because I really wanted the silver   from that that button out of the same mine but  if I'm just refining gold from you know wherever   I'll probably just put it all in this bucket throw  some copper in there let it do its thing and not   worry about it not try and refine the Silvery  because that little bar of gold we got that   was worth almost two thousand dollars this mud is  worth like 75 bucks and I spent two or three hours   today working on this spilling making a mess doing  all kinds of crazy stuff learning a lot of good   stuff learning a lot of really good good things  about how to do this lots of respect for those   other guys on YouTube that make this look easy but  uh yeah we'll get our silver melted down here and   that should be the final refining part of the gold  and silver out of our mind well I took a little   scoop of the silver out of there and it's still  quite wet so I'm gonna try just a little bit so   let's see how this works here with just a little  bit of wet mud silver mud I've had a little borax and it looks like things are moving along here oh  there wasn't much silver in that pile was there now I'm just going to add more to the hot dish well I got our bead molten here it's not all of it  but this is not a very efficient way to do it so   I'm going to pour it in this mold  I'm going to try something different well that didn't work very well  there's just too much volume   my Ingot looks like junk so I'm actually  concerned that there's some copper still   in there so when in doubt I'm gonna put it in  the furnace and melt it so that goes in there   I'm going to put some Borax in there I'm going  to get the rest of this funnel stuff in there   most of that filter paper and all we'll just  melt it all down into a button and pour it there's our silver mud our filter paper  and a little bit of borax and a crucible   we'll melt her down hope this works Moment of Truth here nice well let's see if we get that slag off why is it all copper colored all right we'll try  again here see if we can get this thing going come on well that's the best I could get and I'm really  disappointed with it silver is apparently a lot   harder I must have done something wrong I think  there's a bunch of Base Metals in here still   I think there's some copper in there so what I'm  going to do is just back to what I know I'm going   to take cupel put it in there with a little bit  of bismuth and refine it as best I can and then at   least we'll get a nice shiny silver colored button  all right before going in the furnace we have   76 grams which where did the rest of my silver go  I was expecting I think roughly about a hundred   and ten 105 grams so I've lost about 30 grams  somewhere in the filter paper left over in the   solution so I'm gonna have to go do a little more  research on how to work this silver I've turned   the furnace way down and I've let it cool down  slowly so hopefully won't get any silver sprouts   when I pull it out turn that off there we go see if we can get it out of  there all right guys well let's continue   to Fumble our way through this it's been the  next day a couple things I want to show you I   ended up with this silver button here out of the  compelling furnace I tried to shine it up with a   little HCL that was a mistake because it turned  the surface real gray dull gray color because I   think it made silver chloride on the surface  so don't use HCL to clean up your silver and   also I want to show you what I found in this  bucket I think I found the rest of our silver   so apparently there was still a bunch of silver  see down there the mud left in our solution I   guess I kind of rushed it there yesterday and so I  won't make you watch it but I will filter all this   out then I'm going to smelt it down in a crucible  and get all our silver together so hopefully we   can get up back to that between 100 and 110  grams we're looking for the next step is to   take our silver button and cemented silver which  is in the bottom of this Crucible this is the one   I used the other day and look at how pretty blue  that flux is that slag but now I'm going to melt   this down in the furnace pour it into our cone  mold I've used quite a bit of borax and I've   added a little bit of potassium nitrate to try  and oxidize off some of that last little base   Metals that's in there we'll pour it into our cone  mold and then we can see how pure our silver is we're starting to cool and crack here   but I wanted to show you I hope you can  see there that metal Edge down there   you can actually see all the way through the  slag and see the silver button in the bottom   so that is unusual for me I usually have a bunch  of iron and junk in the slag and two also tells   me we didn't have a whole lot of base metals that  oxidized so that's good it should be pretty pure oh it's a lot of junk on our silver there so  there's our silver boy it looks really nice   and shiny there's some slag on it but man look  at the color of that slag just sapphire blue   beautiful stuff our silver buttons all de-slag now   nice and pretty let's see how much it weighs  here should be we're hoping between 100 and 110. 104. we'll take it 104 is not too bad and probably  the the rest is in the filter paper and stuff that   uh I didn't I didn't deal with um so I I lost a  little bit of silver but that's okay we got 97   of it here in this button oh slags acting up  she can't get over how cool that is well now   I want to try something that's probably crazy but  I'm going to give it a shot here I have a melting   dish in this furnace it's up to 850 degrees  Fahrenheit above the melting point of silver and I'm going to sprinkle some Borax in there and then I'm going to put our silver   in there and re-melt it and I'm gonna this  should be pretty pureed 98 99 somewhere there   but I want to try and melting want to try to  melt the silver again have it sit in that dish   and any of the face metals that sit on the surface  they're going to oxidize just like they do in a   cupel but the melting dish doesn't absorb the  oxides but hopefully there will be a little   ring of borax right around the edge of the metal  interface and the melting dish and those that   we only have a percent so one gram and hopefully  those oxides will absorb into that borax ring and   then we'll have a really nice super high Purity  silver button I can control the temperature really   really well so once it's molten and super pure I  can turn it down to about 1600 1650 degrees let   it cool there won't be any silver Sprouts because  I've let it cool very slowly and we'll have a nice   super hopefully perfect round silver button let's  see if I can do this here what do we got going on   okay so our silver's melting see all those  little raindrops down there that's going into the   borax so that's good we're purifying as we melt  that's actually exactly what I wanted to happen another check here oh man that is working so good all those oxides  are getting absorbed into that ring of borax   the key is to not have the borax  cover the surface of the silver   so if you cover the surface  of the silver it can't get   open to the oxygen but man that's working just  perfect refining away there all right last check look at that a perfect mirror finish on  there so that is as refined as I can get it so now what we'll do is we'll turn it down   silver melts about 760 something degrees 1760.  so I'm going to turn it down to about 16.50   and that way it'll solidify while it's still  very hot and it won't have those silver sprouts   and have silver shoot all over the place so we'll  check back on that in a little bit it's going to   take a while to cool down and I want it to cool  down and solidify so it'll be half an hour so   but we'll check back on that then I'll pull it out  and hopefully we'll have super high Purity silver   all right we'll have a look here  it's been here about an hour   oh silver Sprouts oh dang um all  right that's not what we wanted it's pretty nice in color get a little  bit of that flux cleaned off of there and   might have a winner well that works so well  with the silver but I think I'm going to do   it with the gold as well I got a separate  melting dish a little bit of Borax in there   we'll see if there's any leftover impurities in  the gold the gold will be a lot easier because   we don't have the silver Sprout problem so I'll  heat that up to about 2050 degrees melt the gold   see if we can get any oxides forming and then I'll  just let it cool down slowly and hopefully pull it   out of there has a nice little round button with  a good finish on the surface I'm going to try and   clean up this silver bar a little bit and there's  been some debate online about what the best one is   to use sulfuric is supposed to work well but it'll  dissolve some of the silver apparently oxalic acid   will also work so I'm going to add  just a little bit of oxalic acid here   and that should dissolve any of the borax  any of the flux that's on there it's on the   heating pad we'll heat it up and see what  we come up with here's a peek at our gold beautiful mirror finish on there so all the  oxides are off there was very little actually   I checked a couple times and there wasn't any any  beads coming off of there hardly at all so it was   quite pure from the beginning so I'm going to turn  it down about 1800 that should leave The Borax   molten and the gold solidified then I can pluck  it out of there and cool it off in some water well it worked got it nice clean borax a little yellow tinge  but not much and a beautiful gold button look at that man that is cool that is so cool our Silver's in there I think it's doing Wonders  on the silver so I'll drop our gold in there too get them both cleaned up we've been boiling about half an hour here 's  where we're cleaning off our slag I don't know if   sulfuric would be better or not what do you guys  use to clean up your the precious metal bars well   I'm going to try a little bit of the sulfuric acid  see if we can speed this up about 10 percent or so see how that goes we might lose a little bit of  silver but hopefully we get a nice shiny surface   the sulfuric did the job I'm still not real happy  with it but it's got all the slag off and shined   it up real nice so let's see how much our silver  weighs I think we we had 104 I think 104 grams so that's pretty darn close to  104 103.71 again we probably   lost a little bit with the filter  paper and stuff I I didn't process   that so we lost a couple three or four  five grams there and then for our gold I think it was 29.65 or something   so we lost three hundredths four  hundredths of a gram by re-smelting it down and clean it up now let me take them over to the  xrf gun and figure out what percent Purity we have well now it's our ceremonial stamp here foreign there we go Mount Baker AG for silver  zero zero one I don't know how I'm gonna   fit all that on this gold now there  we go Mount Baker au001 and MBA g001   the first refined gold from Mount Baker Mining  and metals well it's been a long process a long   journey but I finally arrived at refined gold  and silver parted separate gold and silver   really really nice stuff I do still have this bead  here but I'm going to do something with later but   I want to give a big thank you to everyone who's  helped me supported me and all the other YouTubers   out there that I followed in their footsteps to  come with this refined precious metals and as a   big thank you to all my subscribers and Watchers  I want to put these two up for sale a lot of you   have asked me over the years if I'd sell you gold  and silver well now is your chance these are going   to go on eBay I'll post a link down below so you  can check them out in eBay the other thing I get   asked a lot about when I produce some really  really fancy cool looking slag and so I'm gonna   put this in a bag and this will also be for sale  on eBay so check that out and if you'd like to   support us directly you can check out super thanks  on YouTube or also our patreon page links in the   description below so thanks everybody for watching  this was a huge video for me I really appreciate   all you guys watching I hope you guys enjoyed  it thanks again and we'll see on the next one

Channel: mbmmllc

Views: 423,822

Keywords: mbmm, mbmmllc

Id: ggDqunl0CV4

Length: 93min 53sec (5633 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023