First "successful" smelting, black sands!

[Boarteats]

I don't know exactly what metal(s) I ended up with, but have to admit that this is a crap ton of fun.

Starting with about a pan full of black sands ground down to 100 mesh (or less), I ended up with a couple tablespoons of concentrated material to smelt. I could see some flour gold with a loop along with some other heavies that I was uncertain about in the concentrate. Used Chapman flux in a graphite crucible and smelted material in my crucible furnace.

Below is a picture of the metal that I ended up with. Not quite what I was anticipating . As you can see I ended up with several metal beads of rather questionable composition. Lol. It's easiest to see in the biggest bead, but they are all a mix of metals. They all have some metal in them that is attracted to a magnet but some faces are more attracted to a magnet than others. Not sure what I have here. I'll claim that I see some gold in a couple of the larger beads but this is really just a guess. Must have iron as well, which I found surprising since I used quite a lot of flux in the hopes that all the iron oxides would be taken care of and wouldn't mix with other more Interesting metals. Have some particularly soft silvery metal mixed in there as well. All the metal appears to be malleable, so no cast iron at least.

 

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[Boarteats]

Found a great discussion (video) about smelting black sands. Based on that info, I think that I reduced some of the iron oxides to iron, which acted as a collector medal in turn. Must have had my fuel/air mix set such that I had a reducing to neutral environment in my furnace. Next time, I'll use copper or silver as a collector metal and run the furnace with a leaner fuel mix.

Here's the video. Guy experiments with different collector metals to determine which one works best. Spoiler: they performed pretty much the same. .

 

[Goldwasher]

cool just keep burning and updating

 

[Bonaro]

You have attempted smelting but you have only accomplished melting, big difference.
Try again

 

[Boarteats]

You have attempted smelting but you have only accomplished melting, big difference.
Try again

Au contraire mon ami.

I didn't have metallic iron when I started, only iron oxides. Now, I have some metallic iron. I derived iron from its ore. Ergo, I smelted. If you meant to say that I didn't smelt the concentrated material correctly, then I'd agree and have pretty much said as much in original post.

Strictly speaking, I might or might not have smelted gold. Depends on whether or not I only melted the flour (or other elemental) gold present or if some of the resultant gold was initially bound up in some compound. Can't say that I know what the case here. Suppose it could also depend on whether or not one considers black sands to be gold ore. I've never heard anyone state that they wanted to melt gold from black sands. However, I'll concede that it might not be correct to assert that black sands is in fact gold ore ...if you want to be pedantic.

 

[3cylbill]

i sure could go for some smelts , i bet they are running pretty soon...

 

[TerryC]

As bonaro said, you melted, not smelted. The process of extracting gold from ore requires ADDING certain minerals to EXTRACT certain minerals. A chemical process combines certain minerals from the ore and leaves the rest. Even the last step (cupola) absorbs the lead leaving the gold bead under the melted glass. ╦╦Ç

 

[gold tramp]

i sure could go for some smelts , i bet they are running pretty soon...[/QUOTE

Here in the desert at The claudette mill n smeltery we do smelting.
When i was in maine i went smelting.
Nice batch of fiddle heads n smelt now thats golden.

Gt

 

[gold tramp]

Whenever i smelt im removing unwanted garbage metal.
Always leave your melt in the heat for at least 15 minutes after you achieve melt.
So 45 minutes in the heat nice clean product.
Gt.....

 

[Boarteats]

Whenever i smelt im removing unwanted garbage metal.
Always leave your melt in the heat for at least 15 minutes after you achieve melt.
So 45 minutes in the heat nice clean product.
Gt.....

Thx gold tramp! Will keep the heat on longer next time! More gold AND will give the neighbors more time to walk by shaking their heads. Lol.

I think another issue was the quality of the material that I started with. Percentage gold was small. From what I've recently read, in such a case, a carrier such as litharge, copper, or silver should be used to precipitate precious metals out of solution during the smelting process. Afterward, an applicable parting mechanism such as cuppellation can be employed to recover the precious metals from the resultant metal bead. Really fascinating! I'm curious to know what would have happened if I had not inadvertently reduced some of the iron oxides to metallic iron. Would the gold have coalesced to one or more visible beads on its own? Guessing not.

As an aside, had a chance to do a streak test on the material that appeared (to me) to be gold. Got a yellow streak, so looks like I did get some gold. WOOT! Other bits gave a silver streak. The id of this material is far less obvious (to me, at least). ... a work in progress.