Too much borax in the melt dish! :(

[OldManSam]

So I was in a hurry this afternoon ... that's my first problem. I put some freshly refined gold into a melt dish that had too much borax frozen in the bottom of it. Without thinking I fired up my oxy-mapp and got to work melting it. About halfway through the job I had a bunch of little beads of gold, but nothing had conglomerated yet. Just when things started to get good the beads began to sink in the borax. Then I ran out of oxygen.

Ugh.

So I switch to my bernzomatic propane torch and got back to work. It just didn't have enough "oomph" to get the job done, either, and now all my gold was in a bunch of little balls, locked solid under about a quarter inch thick block of borax.

Okay... dammit ... so I take the mapp gas canister off the torch and install my bernzomatic head on it and start cooking it again, but by now all the residual heat is gone and I just can't get it done. Then I ran out of mapp.

I'm tired. Hot. Pissed off...

How can I chemically remove this !@&*(#$*(!ing borax while it is frozen in the melt dish? I don't care about salvaging the melt dish, but I don't think beating it with a hammer is the best idea, either ... Will hot water get it done, even if it is slow? What if I put the whole thing inside a pyrex full of water and stick it in the microwave? I don't have any sulfuric at the moment, either.

Any ideas?

 

[OldManSam]

After doing some googling ... which I should have done first ... I'm gonna try soaking it in hot water overnight on my hot plate to see if that dissolves any of the borax. If not, I'll go to Ace and snag some rooto and add a splash of that to the water and let it cook all day - being careful to not let the water level drop due to evap.

Wish me luck!

 

[Martijn]

you do not need to chemically remove it. Try boiling water as you said, or even better: get a heat source that can melt gold in the future, that will also melt the borax out in no time.
You don't have the heat source to melt anything now, right?
Then do you need that crucible clean right now?
no?, then don't panic. burn it out when you go and melt the next button.

 

[anachronism]

Or... (and here's a really wild suggestion) you could just wait until you get more Mapp. It's not going to evaporate in the meantime haha.

 

[cejohnsonsr1]

Just wait until you get another MAPP bottle. When you get it melted, roll the dish around and collect all the little beads into one button. Then clean off the excess borax from the button by heating in dilute sulfuric acid. (A cup of water and a few drops of sulfuric over low heat.) To get the excess borax out of your dish, heat it up red hot and pour out the excess.

 

[Martijn]

you do not need to chemically remove it. Try boiling water as you said, or even better: get a heat source that can melt gold in the future, that will also melt the borax out in no time.
You don't have the heat source to melt anything now, right?
Then do you need that crucible clean right now?
no?, then don't panic. burn it out when you go and melt the next button.

Or... (and here's a really wild suggestion) you could just wait until you get more Mapp. It's not going to evaporate in the meantime haha.

Just wait until you get another MAPP bottle. When you get it melted, roll the dish around and collect all the little beads into one button. Then clean off the excess borax from the button by heating in dilute sulfuric acid. (A cup of water and a few drops of sulfuric over low heat.) To get the excess borax out of your dish, heat it up red hot and pour out the excess.

Three times in a row!
It cant get more clearer than that.

 

[Shark]

Three times in a row!
It cant get more clearer than that.

Or, the OP (and others with like problems) could search (read) the forum as there used to be a post on how to do it. It pertained to processing used up melting dish’s and was a great example of how and and why to do it. Well worth the read, and search.

Edit: there also was one on removing excess borax, that contains some great advice that cover the recovery of the gold, and being able to reuse the dish.

Last edit, I promise.

 

[Golddigger76]

I melt gold and silver easily with this exact torch head on a 5 foot long hose.
I normally have a 5 gallon propane tank connected to my torch setup and it lasts for months.

When I say easily melts I mean in just a few minutes I can go from a half ounce of gold powder to a molten bead that is ready to pour into a mold or just let it cool for 5 seconds to remove my bead.

One thing that I do to help speed up the process is to heat my crucible to red hot before I put the gold powder or silver in to melt.

The little torches that looks like a sheet metal straw are not suitable for melting gold, they simply do not put out enough heat like the one pictured but they are great for using a whole can of propane or map gas...

The torch that I have has melted pounds of gold and silver and I have used it for several years.