Smelting Jeff William's Secret Gold

hey guys my name is jason with non-baker mining  metals and i have a special surprise today   all you guys thought i was done with  jeff williams stuff but i've got   two more experiments i'm going to do with this  stuff the first experiment we're going to do   is we're going to take some of his uh high  grade specimen super rich stuff i'm gonna   try and figure out which method is the best way  to clean up these specimens the second one is   i still have one bag left of that super super  rich stuff that he sent up from our trip to nevada   i'm gonna take this whole bag of ore i'm gonna  smelt the whole thing down we're gonna figure   out if really truly smelting a whole bag of ore  can get two or three times more gold than just   crushing it up and running it through a gravity  system for those of you who haven't seen the   previous videos or haven't seen these these are  the specimens we're going to be working with today   and man there's just some really nice gold  sticking out of some of these gold there's gold   everywhere and each one of these pieces of rock  has different gold specimens sticking out the side   so i've got a whole grab bag of stuff i've got  vinegar strong vinegar i've got sulfuric acid   i've got what's this muriatic acid we've got some  drano which is uh sodium hydroxide clr clorox and   finally some of my super strong hydrogen peroxide  now i'm going to take each one of these samples   put them in a different little cup and then  i'm going to cover them with each one of these   things we're going to leave them for a day and  see what works best for cleaning these samples   we've got all of our containers here labeled so  there we've got our various samples in each cup   okay prediction time which one do you  guys think is going to work the best   leave me a comment down below on which one of  these seven is going to work the best to clean   up our gold make it nice and shiny and also  clean the cords up take all the rust off it   holy moly look at this i was over there looking  at specimens looking for specimens and the h2o2   is bubbling like crazy i think it's leaked out  starting to get onto the pan there it's going nuts it's hot so let me let me do something with that  here let me move that over on the ground   okay well it looks like it ate through the first  little cup i had i got it in two or three more   and it's sitting on the ground now but yeah  it's uh it's it's reacting it's going crazy i don't know what that thing's gonna  look like when it's all said and done   the rest of them they've only been in five ten  minutes pretty benign not doing really anything   okay i'm going to proceed the same way i did last  time with the samples i'm going to screen out   everything that's over half an inch  because i want to look for those specimens because they're worth way way  more than just crushing them up there's our half inch minus  there's our half inch plus   i'm going to get this wet and take a look at it  and see if i find any specimens i'll let you know   i did find a few specimens that i added  to our pile there was one here that i   just broke open i'm going to show you on  camera when i broke the rest open here but   anywhere there's this little bug these little  impurities in the courts these little pockets   is where i was finding lots of gold so let me  see what happens let's see if i can do this and let's see i think i think that's  a lot of gold sticking up there what i really want to do is peel back this  piece i want to i want to expose this little   bug here and i want to be kind of gentle  about it as gentle as i can with a hammer but that is where we were finding the super rich high grade gold stuff yeah see there's a bunch of gold there i think  there's just a ton of gold right in there   i think there's a bunch up here  that i broke off when i opened it up so that is where we were finding it  in these little these little bugs   well there is all of our sample  we're going to take two pounds off   for the bucket so that's 16 pounds or  right about 7 kilograms worth of stuff   well now we're going to crush our sample  through this little lab jaw crusher here   get it down to half inch or quarter  inch minus and then we'll get it smelted so all right there's our stuff crushed down to  about quarter inch minus now we'll mix up some   flux with it put in the crucible and we'll fire  it well we've got whatever i said 16 or 18 pounds   of that stuff i've only got 10 pounds of borax  and i was going to use borax and a little bit of   uh carbon to reduce the lead that's in there  already is an oxide but i don't know if i have   enough borax so i may need to go to the store and  get some more borax so let's see how this goes awkward oh actually that didn't work  too bad here's what we got   i'll give it a little stir around and see what  it looks like well i just remade my furnace   here this has a number 40 crucible in it and it's  nothing more than kale wool wrapped in a cylinder   here's the crucible inside here's a look  down from the top got a couple layers   of fire brick down there i started using  cement as kind of a liner for the bottom   of the furnace it helps to soak up any little bit  of spill or boil over that you have and it also   makes it so it doesn't stick to the fire brick so  bad when you put it back in so we've got our stuff   mixed up here i almost forgot but i caught myself  i've added a bunch of sawdust in here for carbon   hopefully that'll work to reduce that lead  oxide that'll acts as a collector metal for   the gold and it'll collect down at the bottom  of our crucible we'll get it in this number 40   crucible and see how full we are i only  want to bring it up to about two thirds   i don't want to bring it up too much and have it  boil all over this new furnace well it looks like   this is going be a a two smelt operation i've got  it about two thirds or three quarters full there   and i've still got probably half my material over  here once it's good and hot we're gonna take it   we'll pour it in this big old cone mold here all  the lead and gold is going to collect down at the   very bottom of that inverted pyramid the slag  will float on top with no gold in it and then   when it's cooled down we'll knock that piece of  lead off keep held lead away and get our gold well my first batch is still in  the furnace it's not going so well   it's got some big chunks in there that i  can feel when i stir it with the iron rod   so i took the stuff the second batch and i  crushed it down through our little disc mill   so it's you know fine the coarse sand it  should melt quite a bit better in the flux so uh here's all our samples from yesterday it's been  24 hours we got some different colors going on   but let's get them out washed off and see what  they turned out like all right let's see if i can   work around the camera here and grab these things  here's our first one this is the one in the bleach   that came out okay so there's the bleach here's  the clr one you got a little bit of gold down here   nice little chunk up there still a lot of rust  on this one red rust rusty color there's a   little more gold down there it looks like there's  some gold over there this is a pretty good sample   but it's not cleaned up very well so i  don't think clr is going to be our best one   there's muriatic that shined up pretty nice took off a lot of the rust there's still a  little bit there but you got little pieces of   gold down here those chunks sticking up are nice  and gold colored now so muriatic didn't do too bad   sulfuric is next there's a nice piece of gold  there lots of little pieces down in here too   this one might be the best so far sophia  took off a lot of the rusty red color a lot of the gold is now real shiny in comparison  to what it was you can see a lot of it now   this one is 30 vinegar and  that is a really nice specimen they cleaned it up some you can see  there's there's some gold back over here but man that is a really nice  piece of gold sticking up there   but i don't think that's the best one  we got drano this is an interesting one   because it's a strong base all the other  ones we've used so far are acids yeah i   cleaned it up pretty nice actually the  gold is is much more visible now i think boy another really nice specimen that's  a big hunk of gold stuck on that quartz   but the drano actually did pretty good considering  it's a strong base so that didn't do too bad still   a little bit of red pockets here and there but  there is the hydrogen peroxide cleaned it up   pretty good you can see the gold nice and shiny  there some more gold back here on the back side so that didn't do too bad i think the winner  though probably the winner is going to be either   the sulfuric acid which is in my right hand or the  sulf or the muriatic acid which is in my left hand   those two came the cleanest so what are  some of your guys's favorite techniques for   cleaning up your gold specimens i've been trying  different acids and bases if you guys have a   surefire way to clean this stuff up leave me  a comment below i'd like to hear about it so   that we can all figure out what the best way to  clean up these gold specimens is well here's a   quick little update i've got the muriatic one here  and that actually has turned a little bit green so that's not good we don't want green stuff  on our on our samples i really think out of   all seven of these so sulfuric did the best job  well here's the results from our very first pour   and this is kind of textbook way not to do it um  two things when i tipped over the cone mold the   lead wasn't quite solidified so i got a little  cone at the bottom and then there was a bunch of   molten lead that ran all over the place but i  needed to do that because i had that other pore   coming right away and i needed to get the cone  mold cleaned out so that isn't ideal but look at   this stuff this is the stuff that had the quarter  inch pieces in it and that is absolutely not what   you want you want all that dissolved you want it  to look like this where it's just black clean slag   um there you go now you can see it but just black  slag nothing nothing like this all these pieces   are little pieces of quartz and silica and  rock that didn't get dissolved in our slag so   um and then look here there's there's pieces of  lead in there um there's little little bits so it   didn't all collect down at the bottom see there's  some more a big pocket of lead so we got to redo   this one this one did not come out right so i'm  going to take this stuff get it crushed back down   and i got another little smelting  experiment i'm going to do with this stuff   just to try something different and see if it  works but yeah i would call this pretty much   a failure at this point here's our second pour  that i ground up a lot finer and this looks a lot   better when we poured it so i have higher hopes  that this came out better than our first one   and it's been all night so this is  cooled down there should be a lead   button at the bottom so let's get  it flipped over and see what we have hold on well i got it all knocked out of there  here's the bottom well it's hard to tell   but that was the bottom of the cone and i  found this little teeny tiny bead in there and it doesn't weigh very much it's  not very dense doesn't feel like   um so we're gonna have to re-smelt this with more  lead collector because that's just not that's just   not enough we didn't have enough collector metal i  thought there would be more of that lead oxide in   there that would get reduced but unfortunately  it didn't happen that way so now we've got   two smelts to do again i'll get them i'll get  them all crushed up through the crusher and   back in the crucible well we're about to get these  crushed down and one thing i don't think i got on   video from yesterday is with this stuff i use  straight borax melted it down and i got those   big chunks in it and so what i did with this one  is i ground it down finer and i added about five   pounds of soda ash to it to try and help eat  up more of this silica content over in this one   the soda ash will help get rid of some of the  silica we'll have everything get dissolved we'll   have the lead at the bottom as a collector  and we'll hopefully get all jeff's gold back two so now a lot of people have left comments  on some of my past videos where i'm doing   experiments like this you know it's not worth  it it's just not worth it to do it this way   it's not economically feasible and you're  right i am not doing this to find the the   most economical way to get the gold out of this  stuff i'm most interested in in the experiments   in the learning process figuring out what works  what doesn't i mean clearly i've i've made some   mistakes on this one and so that's one of the  important parts for me about making these videos   is if anyone out there sees something that i'm  doing that you think there's a better way to   do it let me know leave me a comment down below  because one of my goals in this whole thing is to   is to get the knowledge out there so that people  who are trying this stuff learn from my mistakes   learn what works what doesn't and uh so we can  all just be better at smelting in general and gold   recovery well we're all cooled down it's the next  day so we're going to tip this over see what's in   there and i was lucky enough to get both pores  back in this one pot and pour them so all the   stuff that whole bag is in here with the lead and  everything else i put it all back in so we'll see   what we get out of here when we tip it over i'm  hoping to get a cone of lead at the very bottom   and then we'll get the gold and silver out of that  one other thing too is i sprayed the mold with   wd-40 and really any oil will work but it creates  a little carbon barrier so the thing didn't stick   i i had it sticking here on one of the earlier  pours let's see what we got here here's our lead   so that all came down to the bottom  real nice this stuff is really sharp   but our slag is nice and glassy it's not  full of rock bits or lead beads or anything   so that is what a smelt is supposed to look like  that's a nice looking slag right there so let's   go figure out how to get the gold and silver out  of this part well our lead pyramid here weighs   just about 800 grams so now i'm going to do a  little experiment i don't want to keep all this   away that's just a ton of lead to get rid of so  now i'm going to do something and see if it works   i'm going to melt the lead down pour it into water  and and flake it make a huge surface area re-smelt   it down with a bunch of uh sodium or potassium  nitrate and see if i can oxidize away a bunch   of this lead and we'll get down to maybe a couple  hundred grams of lead and that'll be that'll save   us a lot of time and a lot of energy and stuff  with the compelling process holy cow that really   gained a lot of volume look at all that my hope  was i could put it back in this crucible here   but i think we've got more volume that'll fit  maybe if i cram it in there i don't know we'll   see maybe i do it in two sections but now i'm  gonna add this with potassium nitrate and maybe   a little bit of borax and try and oxidize a  lot of this lead well we got our crucible here   i don't know if this is the smartest thing but  this is some of that potassium nitrate i'm going   to put a little bit of that on the bottom  the crucible is still pretty hot see what   happens here anything happening no it's pretty  pretty benign now let's take some of our lead get it in there like that  didn't do a very good job   i'll pick up the pieces i spilled mixed in there  with some potassium nitrate and we'll fire it up   well this is either going to be really  cool or it's not going to work at all   but uh you know there's nothing i can't hurt  it really right i mean even if even if this   doesn't work at all and nothing oxidizes i'm  still gonna get a brick of lead at the bottom   so i'm not too terribly worried about screwing  it up but i i think it's really important to keep   trying stuff i mean let's try this if it doesn't  work that's fine we know it doesn't work but   i i don't think we need to be scared of you know  trying it or losing our gold or anything like that   so i'm going to put this in the furnace melt it  down i'll pour it into the cone mold just to get   the lead at the bottom it was a pretty good  experiment actually with uh trying to process   down the lead i learned a couple things i started  with about half the lead at first about 400 grams   put it in there with just potassium nitrate  and what happened was is all the lead melted   and went to the bottom before the potassium  nitrate could actually dissolve any oxygen the   lead pooled at the bottom and then all the oxygen  came off and and we didn't get a whole lot of   reduction in the overall volume of the lead i  needed the lead to stay suspended in the the flux   essentially so it could react with the oxygen and  so what i did was i added some soda ash and silica   sand because i know those have a much higher  melting point than lead and potassium nitrate   so my theory was is that would keep everything  suspended and high surface area essentially and   as the potassium nitrate melted and released  all its oxygen it would reduce the lead   and we would have a lot less of it when we went  to pour it and that actually is is what happened   we ended up with about 100 grams of lead at  the end of the second experiment whereas the   first experiment we ended up with about 380. we  removed about three quarters of the lead which   is encouraging for now we got the lead  going compelling in my propane furnace i have it a really strong oxygen-rich  environment in there so i don't have a   whole lot of propane going in and i've  got the blower turned up all the way so that that lead oxidizes  gets absorbed into the cupel   and then we should be left  with just our precious metals well they're both pretty much done  propelling in there so i'm going   to let them cool down in the furnace and  then i'll pull them out when they solidify pretty nice looking buttons let's  get them cooled off and weighed nice here's our two beads i checked we  had seven kilograms worth of material and six point four six point five grams all right  guys we'll go over a little bit of math here we   ended up with 6.45 grams out of 7 kilograms or  0.007 metric tons so when you divide those we   ended up at 920 grams per ton is what that ass is  at 66 percent based on the color of those beads   67 gold figure we got 610 grams per metric ton now  i did a previous video where we just crushed them   and ran on the shaker table panned out the  concentrates we got 6.4 grams from 14.5 kilograms   based on the color we figured it was about 80  percent gold and that's 360 grams per metric   tons so you're almost double by doing it this  way by smelting all right guys well a couple   important things to go over here even though this  looks like it might be twice as much by smelting   this isn't really an apples to apples comparison  what you would really want to do is you'd want   to take a bulk sample of 20 30 kilograms  grind it up do a gravity recovery on half   on 15 kilograms and do smelting on the other half  so you're getting the same sample this bag may   have been from a richer spot i mean take these  with a grain of salt there's some interesting   findings here but don't be like oh my goodness  jeff's gonna get twice as much gold if you smelt   it down or your shaker table lost half as much  gold because we didn't grind it fine enough   that this is this is kind of a first  trial basis this is a starting point   for jeff to start you know testing and  getting some information about his ore   uh another thing that i always get asked about  is how much did it cost i used about 10 to 15   gallons of propane for this whole operation so  that was about uh 60 or so roughly uh in u.s and   how long did it take well this this whole  thing took me about three days actually   and i screwed up and i played around and i did  some experiments but if you were gonna do this   in a production time scale type of thing and you  got it figured out right from the start you can   probably do this whole experiment in in a day you  know it doesn't take that long the compelling part   uh compelling away that 500 grams of lead or  so took two hours in those two q pedals so that   gives you kind of an idea on how long that took  um but those are some of the questions i always   get asked so i wanted to address them here so jeff  we've come full circle i've ran out of ore for you   i don't have anything left to play with uh next  time i'm down your way i really want to get back   into that mine and get some more high grade  you're right i got the gold fever a little bit   here i really want to thank you again for having  me down this is kind of the final video in this   whole series that i've done over the last three or  four weeks so i hope you guys learned something i   certainly learned something i learned something  almost every smelt i do and it's always fun   getting gold and silver at the end of the day so  i hope you guys enjoyed it leave me a comment down   below if you have any questions otherwise thanks  for watching and we'll see on the next video

Channel: mbmmllc

Views: 230,101

Keywords: mbmm, mbmmllc, black sand concentrates, black sand gold, collector metal, fine gold, fire assay, flour gold, gold bullion, gold concentrates, gold melting, gold ore processing, gold refining, gold smelting, gold sulfides, melting gold, precious metals, smelting, smelting gold, smelting gold ore, sulfides

Id: 6NBRmVfL6NY

Length: 27min 8sec (1628 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022