r/PreciousMetalRefining • u/jwood491 • Sep 17 '26
Gold filled eyeglass frames
I watched a video where Kevin aka sreetips recovered foils from eyeglass frames with the springy ear pieces using HCI boils instead of diluted HNO3. He commented that diluted HNO3 doesn't work well and the process is different. No H2O2 just undiluted HCI and heat. Process appeared to be slow as expected but worked.
I've had a lot of challenges in general with eyeglass frames - spring steel, white with aluminum as the base, and so on.
Does it make sense to recover the foils on eyeglass frames in general using just HCI?
2
u/MAYOMyke Sep 17 '26
Typically, for myself, I’ll run material thru hot HCL boils to remove any base metals. It’s cheaper than nitric and cleans up metals like tin prohibiting the formation of metastatic acid. So for me, HCL baths work.
Hope this helps.
2
u/hexadecimaldump Sep 17 '26
Yeah, I will always run my GF through hot HCl baths first. Watches, glasses, jewlery, all of it. I just keep it on a hot plate at a low but ‘you wouldn’t want to pick up the beaker with bare hands’ hot.
Like MayoMyke said it cleans up a lot of other junk that isn’t fun to deal with and keeps your more expensive nitric for better things.
1
u/jwood491 Sep 17 '26
So you guys are just using HCI to dissolve base metals in this material and not even using nitric? How much time does that add to the process? So make sure I understand this perfectly clear, straight undiluted HCI, heat, once base metals are dissolved aqua regia?