Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Extracting Gold from Ore
Pound your gold ore with the hammer until it has the consistency of sand. You can use gold ore that you've identified outside or ore that you purchased in a mineral store. Crush enough of it to fill about 1/3 of one of the jars.
Put on your gloves. Fill up the other jar 1/3 of the way with water. Stir in 10 grams of the calcium hydroxide and keep stirring until it dissolves almost completely. Add 4 grams of of sodium cyanide and stir. The calcium hydroxide can be purchased at gardening stores in 5- or 10-pound bags under the name slaked lime. Sodium cyanide can be difficult to come by; if you can't find it from a chemical supplier near you, check with the chemistry department of a nearby college.
Dip a pH strip into the mixture. The color should indicate a pH around 11 or 12.
Pour the crushed ore into the water. Screw on the lid and swirl the mixture until it makes a muddy liquid. Remove the lid and test the pH again. It probably has fallen a few points, in which case you should add more calcium hydroxide. Test the pH every 30 seconds and add more calcium hydroxide to keep the pH as close to 11 as possible. The amount you'll have to add will depend on the mineral makeup of the original ore.
Allow the muddy mixture to sit for about 4 hours once the pH has stabilized. Stir it about every 20 minutes.
Place the funnel on top of the empty jar. Put the coffee filter inside and filter out the minerals from the solution.
Add the ion exchange resin to the solution. They are normally used in home water softeners, and can be found at shops that sell water-purification equipment. The gold mineral will accumulate on the resin. Once it does, pour the liquid in the jar back into the other jar. Pull out the block with the accumulated gold while wearing gloves. It should scrape off.
Refining Gold
Add the scrapings from the ion exchange resin into the crucible, which you can buy online for about $10. Add a teaspoon of sodium nitrate, if you can find it, and a teaspoon of borax, which can be found in the laundry aisle of grocery stores.
Smash a glass bottle and add to the crucible a few teaspoons of the shards.
Put on the welding gloves and goggles, and light the acetylene torch. Apply the flame to the mixture in the crucible. Heat it until the entire mixture is liquefied.
Dump the liquid from the crucible into the old cast iron pan using the tongs. Many of the impurities will be dissolved in the glass, so once the mixture cools, break off the glass either with your hands or smash it off with the hammer. You'll be left with refined gold.