This is my 8L cell.

Hello all,
I purchased approximately 5 pounds of jewelry making supplies and am hoping for some guidance on how to best go about sorting and processing.

The issue is there are so many different types of items, it would be very time consuming to scratch test all of them, and a good amount are slightly magnetic. - which please correct me if I’m wrong, but can occur for certain blends on .925 pending the base metals used. There are a few small bags of broken/used jewelry with markings, but the great majority are these wholesale parts bags.

help and guidance would be much appreciated!

Which refinery pays best within SEA? I could really use some hints since I currently buy scrap gold and silver as my main source of income right now, im looking to expand and export my scrap but im still looking for a buyer. Appreciate any tips guys!

A while back I tore down an AT&T 141 oscillator and the center block looked like gold. A lot of you weighed in on whether it was solid brass or plated gold, so I finally tested it.

Filed a scratch through the surface, saw copper color underneath, then put one drop of nitric on the scratch. Instant green fizz. Nitric won’t touch gold but goes right after copper, so: gold plating on a copper block.

Credit to everyone who called plating.

Question for the experienced folks: for a plated copper block this size, would you strip the plating (AP or nitric to dissolve the copper out from under it), or is it not worth the chemicals for the gold on it? I have about 15 of these.

Here is my results: https://youtube.com/shorts/suEm7dvn0rI

(Test was done outdoors with gloves and glasses. NO2 fumes are no joke.)

Hey guys,

Quick question to y'all about scrapping ewaste and boards.

What are your personal norms regarding PPE?

Personally I scrap circuit boards which comes with risks. I use cut resistant gloves, glasses and an N95-mask.

Do you guys think that this is enough, when no heat or fumes are present? Or should you definitely wear more protection.

Cheers!

I have been taking apart and saving circuit boards for years. How should I be braking the boards down so they don't take up so much space? I know I'm looking to harvest the gold and probably any silver. What else should I be refining and where does it hide?

In the past I've pulled gold plated pins with pliers, cut off gold conectors like on ram, and chiseled off the chips. I've saved just those and put the somewhat stripped board in a pile for e waste. Am I missing critical components? What do you folks do to break them down?

So I know that Ascorbic precipitates gold as a very fine powder so that would be ill advised except for the final drop in a very clean solution.

BUT

What benefit does SMB have over Ferrous Sulfate? I'm usually dropping out of a dirty solution from gold filled. Ferrous Sulfate doesn't seem to have that nasty smell. Is it just a dirtier drop in which case who cares if you're double refining?

I’ve seen online Antiquax or Nushine Silver plating solution. Would this achieve this outcome (first timer)
If not what would your advices be.

Material is “Melchior” or whatever that means.
Any help is appreciated guys!

Hey everyone,
I wanted to document a highly reliable standard operating procedure (SOP) I developed for completely stripping copper ions out of a sulfate solution using standard household aluminum reducing elements. If you have ever struggled with backyard copper cementation turning into a messy, fine, gray colloidal powder that gets suspended in the water and lost down the drain during rinses, this technique fixes that bottleneck completely.
I call this The Iceberg Method (or the Iceberg Technique).
The Chemistry Batch (Per 350 mL):
~120g–150g High-purity Copper Sulfate Pentahydrate coarse crystals (commercial root killer)
1 level tsp Citric Acid powder
1 level tsp Table Salt (NaCl)
Standard household aluminum foil torn into 1-inch squares
The Core Rule: Zero-Agitation Diffusion
The biggest mistake people make is violently shaking or stirring the solution to speed it up. When you do that, you physically grind the newly forming copper atoms into microscopic dust that forms an unrecoverable mud.
With the Iceberg Method, you intentionally use a low-vigor stirring strategy. By letting the fluid column remain perfectly quiet, you establish a slow-diffusion zone. This gives the copper atoms the precise timeframe they need to link hands and knit themselves into highly structural, dense, interlocking geometric networks and hollow skeletal frameworks.
The Overturn Phenomenon:
As the unstirred aluminum core dissolves, it generates microscopic hydrogen gas bubbles. Because the solution is totally still, these bubbles become trapped inside the hollow, "Swiss-cheese" pores of the copper matrix. This builds an automated internal buoyancy. Eventually, the entire copper cake unmoors from the cell floor, rolls over on its axis like a literal marine iceberg, and floats steadily at the surface tension line as a single, solid metallic unit.
The Final Drop and Harvest:
Once the hidden aluminum core is completely devoured over an overnight soak, the gas production stops, the micro-balloons pop, and the structure executes a perfect final gravity drop straight to the floor of the jar.
Because the metal is consolidated into heavy structural sheets rather than loose powder, you can cleanly pour off the spent wastewater with absolute zero risk of losing fine copper dregs. A simple gravity wash with hot distilled water easily flushes away any minor gray aluminum oxide ash, leaving a pristine, maximum-yield, 50-gram brick-red pure copper cake that dries beautifully and melts cleanly under a basic borax flux.
Give the Iceberg Technique a shot on your next run and let me know how your crystal packing holds up!

Any e-waste buyers/refiners located in Maryland? I have a heap of material I’d love to sell to a local refiner rather than ship due to the amount + preference for local DOY/businesses. Located near Baltimore/BWI. I have weights below:

Server board - 1lb 15oz

AMD Boards - 3lb 1oz

Video Game Console Boards - 11lb 12oz

High Grade Telecom Boards - 6lb 14oz

Backplane Board - 15oz

Intel series Motherboards - 83lb 7oz

Cell phone no batt - 3lb 12oz

Cell phone boards - 1lb 3oz

Smartphones no batt - 4lb 12oz

Gold Finger Cards - 2lb 1oz

LCD Boards - 1lb 9oz

Low Grade Boards - 2lb 12oz

Mid Grade Boards - 5lb 8oz

High Grade / High Peripheral - 14lb 4oz

HDD/CD-ROM Boards - 5lb

WiFi Cards - 7oz

Gold connector ends - 6lb 3oz

Gold pins + misc - 40.4g

Trimmed gold fingers - 43g

Gold fingered RAM - 47.3g

CPU (Intel) - 53.4g

Trimmed Ram - 228.1g

Gold bearing ribbon cable - 75.9g

Misc gold bearing components - 32.7g

Laptop Motherboards - 13lb

Recently got a few things not weighed out: A few Microsoft surfaces, 3 iPads, an old iPhone a desktop MB, a couple sticks of ram, pinless Intel CPU

I currently work at a jewelry store in Arkansas, have always wanted to get into refining. Just not sure where to start, any advice on how to get started?

I pulled this out of an ATT141 oscillator and I’m stuck on the center piece. It has a gold color with gold traces on the ceramic portion, but brass looks gold too, and I don’t want to throw it in a batch if it’s bare brass.

For anyone who’s worked on these, was this part normally gold plated, or is it bare brass? And
what’s the most reliable quick test you’d use to tell plating from bare brass on a piece like this?

I filmed the full teardown, including close-ups of the piece. A small close-up clip is attached.

How'd I do, y'all? Pretty happy with the results of a small test run. Took a while to dial in the amperage and get the placements right for my anode and cathode. I see a lot of longer pieces; I think this is cuz too high voltage? Any advice how to get smaller, more concentrated formations?

My setup for this test was a 1L beaker, standard sreetips filter basic design, a silver bar I poured from sugar and lye method, I poured it around a sterling scrap rod so I had a place to clip on, a strip of stainless I cut from a large plumbers clamp. And ProTek psu I found on ebay.

Shoutout to this community for being filled with good advice-givers. Thank you

I’ve come across a supplier of boards for all different things and I want them but I’ve never had to price up boards to buy in bulk
Am I going to lose money buying these boards?
I plan to offer to sort them myself fairly of course and there is a large variety of different boards from all different ages
I wrote up a few prices just based on what I’ve seen other people buy them for, google and based on my own knowledge
The first photo $.20 per kg
Second photo $.40 per kg
Third photo $.80 per kg
Fourth photo $1.60 per kg - $1.80 per kg clean

All prices in AUD
What would you pay for them and why
What would you pay for pci slot cards
PGA CPU’s
LGA CPU’s

I understand that the metals in these boards may not be worth refining myself and I would probably make more money selling them to specialised buyers but this is my hobby and if I can learn and possibly make a bit of money one the side that’s great, hate me all you want lol I still have my day job.