How to refine gold?

The potato method does work, but mainly on fine gold mixed with black sand, you put your black sand and gold in a rock tumbler with some mercury, the mercury will pick up the gold , this is called an amalgam.. Now you have to dispose of the mercury, there's lots of ways, retorting, certain acids or burning it off[the potato] , Advice here, all methods are dangerous, mercury fumes will kill you...I don't know what type of scrap gpld you have,,but if it's jewelry, the purity can vary from 10 -24 karat, black hills gold has more silver in it than gold, seperating the various metals is complicated...As far as making your own bullion, if you have enough raw gold, first have it assayed,,gold purity here in Alaska runs anywhere from 80 to 95% depending on location.. Melting your gold down and making bars out of it isn't hard, I know people that do it..But it's usually fine gold, 8 screen and bigger are sold as is. Nuggets usually bring 10-20% above spot, which was $810 an ounce yeterday..Making your own coins, sounds like a waste of time, they would only be worth gold value,if you could prove how pure the gold was...And if you have that much gold that you can start making your own coins,,,,,I want to be your friend....... salchanra said it,,don't eat the potato..

This site will provide all the answers

www.goldrefiningforum.com...

See what you do is take a wedge of lemon...wait...wait...no lime.

hold your lime to the light of the moon for 2 minutes...no days...2 days.... Do not eat the lime....

Sounds like an old episode of M*A*S*H when the boys were trying to explain to Frank Burns how they made a bottle of gin.

This is the part where ATS should add....THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS THREAD ARE NOT THOSE OF STAFF AND MANAGEMENT...PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME...REMEMBER WE ARE PROFESSIONALS HERE

My god! some of the things you people are telling this gent could get him killed!!!

GOOD LUCK WITH YER GOLD MISTER.

Dorian Soran

PS - I am not saying refining your own gold is a bad idea...I'm just sayin'.....

[edit on 1-12-2008 by Dorian Soran]

reply to post by Dorian Soran


Maybe if you would of read my post, you would of seen I used the word Dangerous, and also fumes will kill you, in it..If he wants to refine gold,Im just saying it can be done..just be careful....The potato trick is basically a retort with the potato absorbing the mercury, safer than just burning it off..

There are basicly two ways of refining gold. There is smelting, heating the metal up to it's mealting point and boiling off any other meterials. This takes a while and much energy. However after your done you can meter out approprate measurments, gram-ounce, into coin blanks. Later on when the coin blanks are cooled you can warm them up again and then press your graphics onto the blank if you have a tap and die. See ancient roman coin making.

The other gold refinement process is chemical smelting. Basicly you put the mixed "gold" into a chemical salution that then seperates the metals out over time.

However you'd surve nothing but your own ego in minting your own coins as they will never be worth more the Credit Suisse, and are likely to be worth alot less.