I started refining when it was illegal to own bullion. I did so because I felt it was one of the rotten things our government had done to the citizens of the nation, and had a burning desire to see and own pure gold. I had no intentions of ever refining for gain---nor did I expect that the law would change.
Jan. 1, of '75, all controlling regulations of gold were abandoned by the government. By then, I was involved in refining, albeit it as a relatively inferior workman. My quality was woefully lacking, and was slow to improve because I had no clue, and no one to help me in ways that were needed. (Very unlike the readers of this forum)
My ex brother-in-law was spending time with a couple of elderly manufacturing jewelers, and casually made mention to one of them that I was refining gold. He asked if I would be interested in refining his waste, which I accepted. It grew from there. I refined for him about three times each year, but word started to spread, and others inquired. I never advertised, and never promoted my business, nor did I expect it to become one. I was running a very successful machine shop, serving the defense, pharmaceutical and aero-space industries, and was well pleased with my station in life.
As things progressed, more and more people started using my refining services, so that made it nearly impossible for me to split my time between the shop and refining, in spite of the fact that they were very close to one another.
The move to the castle was the end of my machining experience. We moved to an unfinished structure, with no lab or shop at the ready. It took several months to get the lab up and running, but I had accepted waste materials from my customers, and provided a rough equivalent to their wastes in pure gold, so they could stay in operation. By the time I got the lab running, and got caught up with the back orders, they were returning at the same rate that they were going out, so I never really ever got "caught up" again. I turned my full attention to refining and decided to abandon the shop, in spite of the fact that I had had new paperwork printed for the current address. Closing the doors on the shop was never in my plans. I had on choice but to do so, or abandon refining.
The business continued to grow, so over a period of ten years, it was so large I could no longer keep pace without working better than 12 hour days, 7 days/week. I was growing weary, and EPA was tightening the noose, making the purchase of chemicals ever more expensive and difficult, plus we had purchased our retirement property here in Washington, and were eager to move on in life. As a result of being overwhelmed, I sold the business, and after much difficulty, the castle, as well, and moved. That was the end of my working years.
I never invested in equipment in the sense of buying things. Being a machinist, all of my equipment was home built. It's not easy to buy what you need, so building was in my best interest, anyway.
Scale is important for the home refiner. who isn't likely to process metals in large volumes. Buying a small ball mill that will serve the intended purpose, for example, can be difficult, at best. By building my own equipment, it was sized to my needs. That was true of everything, fume hood, agitation tank, furnaces, ball mill and even a gasketed filter press.
All of this equipment evolved as need dictated. I did nothing to grow the business, I simply did what was necessary in order to fill the demand.
The most important thing I can offer to anyone that desires to refine for gain is to not get involved commercially until you can turn out quality that rivals industry, and be able to serve all your customer's needs where gold is concerned. It's isn't likely that anyone will survive on running waste electronic scrap alone. The yield for time invested is generally very low, which is the reason I never accepted the material for processing. I simply could not justify the time investment when I had high grade wastes to process.
If you are to refine for manufacturing jewelers, you must be able to provide pure silver as well as gold. The platinum group can be a weak point, for few bench men work with platinum in the way of manufacturing----and the refining and alloying of that group of metals tends to be beyond the ability of the home refiner, anyway. I compensated my customers that submitted platinum metals with gold, which was far more interesting to them than platinum.
Did I miss anything? This was written in haste. If you have a specific question, or if I overlooked one, please ask again. I'll answer this evening.
Harold
