2007-01-14 03:26:38 · 5 answers · asked by walter z 1 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Visual Arts ➔ Sculpture
In a furnace using a crucible. When the gold is still molten the crucible is removed and the gold poured into molds. Your gold will still be 18K. The simple act of melting it does not remove the impurities and change it to pure or 24K gold. To purify gold takes a much more lengthy process.
As some assayers and old miners used to do it... the gold was left to cool in the crucible and then removed. These small rounded and slightly convex pieces of gold were known as buttons. The weight of the button in comparrison to the amount of raw material used to get it told the assayer how much gold there was per ton of ore.
On a larger scale one method of refining gold was to run the ore through a mill where it is crushed to powder then subjected to chemical reagents that remove the gold & other metals. This part is skimmed off, dried and then seperated by specific weight. The gold is then melted and poured into bars for transportation. Most of the final processes were done at smelters. It was to costly for most mining companies to run their own smelters so the the raw mix of gold, silver, copper etc. was shipped to them. Their payment was a percentage of the final product.
2007-01-14 04:38:25 · answer #1 · answered by smilindave1 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can melt gold with an air-acetylene or oxy-acetylene torch, or many folk use oxy-propane because it is cleaner. You need a good porcelain crucible made for melting gold and not been used for anything else. An air-acetylene is barely hot enough so you need a good crucible that will not waste too much heat.
If you are planning on casting something from it I would melt everything at that time as each melting loses some things and adds some polluting ingredients as well.
There are very fancy melting setups that use massive electric currents to melt the gold, but if you had any need of one you would not be asking this question.
2007-01-14 21:46:21 · answer #2 · answered by Freedem 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
well the melting point for gold is 1064.43 °C/1947.9741 °F. So good luck.
2007-01-14 11:36:13 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
methinks you have done a very bad thing and are trying to hide the evidence...
2007-01-15 08:20:41 · answer #4 · answered by captsnuf 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
high temperature
2007-01-14 11:31:33 · answer #5 · answered by Yellow Tail 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋