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How do jewellers capture every last particle of gold dust? (2017)
- WalterBright 2y agoUse a magnet! Edit: oops, never mind
- eru 2y agoMagnets only really work for iron.
- askvictor 2y agoIt's a little more complicated than that - gold is a little bit magnetic, and heat or light can increase this magnetism
- bayouborne 2y agoSo does that mean it's possible to develop a magnetic 'figure-print' for gold?
- cancerhacker 2y agoIn the north east, in spring, we’d use magnets to collect iron filings in the street from the snow plows. It was just a thing we’d do, no financial interest. We’d keep our haul in 35mm film canisters (as was the style at the time!)
- JackMorgan 2y agoFascinating. Now I wonder why jewelers don't always just work in sealed containers with vacuums like what is used for sand blasting. I wonder now how much gold dust gets accumulated in the lungs of goldsmiths. I wonder if they take organs to check for sweeps.
- utensil4778 2y agoBecause the work is remarkably intricate. It requires you to get real close and personal with the work, usually with magnification. It requires complete and unimpeded dexterity of your fingers, so bulky gloves are absolutely not an option. Depending on the work, it may also require frequent trips to the hearth for torch work. You really don't want to use an oxy/propane torch in a sealed glovebox. In short, it's too much hassle and makes the work more difficult and much slower.
- pjd7 2y agoThey work with sulphuric acid, oxy/acetylene/propane torches. Some processes give off cyanide fumes. Ultrasonic baths with ammonia based solutions to clean polishing compounds off etc. You need outside air ventilation. There is lots of mechanical suction for things like polishing to capture the waste material for post processing. Most will wear a leather apron for heat / burn protection and capturing fine dust/dirt from polishing compounds. I suppose you could destroy that eventually in a giant smelter.
- nelsondev 2y agoSounds like you are ready to open a crematorium that specializes in former jewelers.
- foxylad 2y agoOr anyone with gold teeth.
- nanomonkey 2y agoMore modern jewelry manufacturers are moving towards this. There are laser welders with glove boxes and microscopes that are auto shielding, also cnc milling machines in completely enclosed environments where the lubricants that are sprayed on the milling ends are filtered for metal. I was a jeweler for a couple years and the common practice was to have carpet and a sticky trap at the door. The carpet was torn up every few years and used to throw a company vacation.
- ortusdux 2y agoReminds me of the people that scavenge gold and gems off New York sidewalks https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/22/new-york-city-where-the-streets-are-paved-with-gold/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/22/new-york... https://www.igi.org/digging-for-gold-in-new-yorks-sidewalks/ https://www.igi.org/digging-for-gold-in-new-yorks-sidewalks/
- ainonsense44 2y ago> In March, 2022 video creator Klesh, who sells the paydirt he recovers from various areas, ... Person, who makes money off people believing they can find treasure, makes video about how easy it is to find treasure. "Oh btw you can buy these utils for 25$ in my store." Media literacy says : trust level 2/10, most probably lies and marketing
- greyface- 2y agoHere's a series of videos showing the recovery and refining process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePEwr-VxqXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePEwr-VxqXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKGhmt7jgMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKGhmt7jgMg
- pianoben 2y agoI love this guy's channel! It's interesting, unpretentious, and he has such a wealth of chemical and metallurgical knowledge. The reactions and processes he shows are amazing.
- sumtechguy 2y agoI watch this channel a lot. He has a few where he is refining electronic waste. He usually says that is not really worth it due to the time it takes him to do it and small amounts he gets and can get easily lost in the different stages of extraction. Most of the stuff he does is estate sales and melting down that.
- nielsbot 2y agoInteresting term of the trade in the article: "lemel". (Metal filings) Wiktionary: From Middle English lymail, from Anglo-Norman limaille, from Latin limare, a form of limo (“to file”); see further there.
- pjd7 2y agoI did my jewellery trade in Australia (hence the correct spelling for me). We used to keep all our emery paper, old polishing wheels etc and send them off ever few years to be burnt & refined. When the building we were in got renovated some enterprising guys in another workshop ripped up their floor boards and their neighbouring empty suites and got all the precious metals out of the gaps between the floorboards. The building was 11 stories and was predominantly filled with small jewellery workshops with 2-5 people per business. And a lot of adjacent businesses (trade supplies, stone merchants etc).
- doctor_eval 2y agoCurious where that was? My partner was a jeweller in the Nicholas Building in Melbs.
- pjd7 2y ago250 Pitt St Sydney around 2002-2003.
- candeira 2y agoA friend of mine had an art studio at the Nicholas Building, and I got to speak with a jeweller who told me that he still did a lot of bespoke work in wedding rings, especially for tradies who would otherwise wear down store-bought rings because they were solid gold and therefore softer. I don't remember the details, but he specialised in harder alloys that are nevertheless mostly gold, and therefore "good as gold" for a wedding ring. Would that be your partner?
- doctor_eval 2y agoNot my partner, but I bet they knew each other, it was a great little community and she was there for the better part of 20 years. Great parties in the 00’s!
- ironmagma 2y agoBut do you pronounce it “jew-el-ry” or “jull-uh-ry”?
- pregseahorses 2y agoSaw it in Karachi last year: a street containing exclusively gold workshops was blocked for traffic Sunday morning, guarded officially by the police, while the staff hired by the co-op swept every inch. Apparently this is a weekly routine.
- notJim 2y agoReminds me of the stories of people in NYC's diamond district making their living by looking for dropped gemstones and tiny bits of gold. https://nypost.com/2011/06/20/got-his-mined-in-the-gutter/ https://nypost.com/2011/06/20/got-his-mined-in-the-gutter/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfrqUNFtM6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfrqUNFtM6A
- kjkjadksj 2y agoI'm wondering how these gemstones even make their way on the street. Are jewelry workshops really so messy and flippant with this product that it presumably gets caught up on people and just falls off their clothes when they leave from work? Is it from crappy stone settings falling off immediately on leaving the stores? Seems so strange to me how such a valuable product ends up dispersed in the environment like this.
- mtnGoat 2y agoSome jewelers are dealing with things of great enough value that some gold dust or small stones doesn’t matter. Most jewelry value is not in the gold or gems, it’s in the eye of the beholder so to speak. So losing the actual ring is a much bigger loss than the gold/gem value. However, a guy on the street that isn’t dealing in six figure goods, places great value in that small gold amount. Most people would be amazed at how little, when not in a shop under bright lights, jewelry is actually worth. Let’s just say they aren’t selling gold, they are selling emotions and hype. And many customers get extremely angry when they go to resell and find out how little it’s worth. You’ll be lucky to get a tenth of what you paid for the stones. Source; my wife ran the biggest gold buying store in northern LA county for a few years.
- blackbaze 2y agoIngenious! Why not. Beats getting it out of the ground. Possibly good for the environment as for a given gold demand less needs to be mined.
- CrispyKerosene 2y agoThis is why if you ever get jewellery repaired or resized, ask for the scrap to be returned. Some less than reputable places will try to off-handedly say it was discarded. They don't lose anything.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoSeems like this is only netting you $8 or so. https://old.reddit.com/r/jewelry/comments/vno1to/question_re_gold_ring_resized_significantly/ie8f4k5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/jewelry/comments/vno1to/question_re...
- Suppafly 2y agoThat's what they're charging to collect it at the end, not necessarily what the actual value is, although the value is low enough that they just collect all their scraps once or twice a year and sell them in a lot instead of messing with each individual piece per client otherwise.
- xcv123 2y agoThat sounds miserable and desperate. A couple of dollars worth of scrap shavings. What will you do with that? Just let them have it.
- mtnGoat 2y agoYea it’s like people that bring in their dead ancestors teeth, no one wants to buy an old tooth and certainly not one with $5 worth of gold in it.
- joelfried 2y agoI'll pay you $5 for gold teeth and make a tidy profit. This article from 2019[1] said $40-92 per crown. Multiply by 1.6 based on the way gold has appreciated since 2019[2] and that's $65-147 or so per tooth. [1] https://thegoldcenter.com/how-much-gold-is-in-a-dental-crown/ https://thegoldcenter.com/how-much-gold-is-in-a-dental-crown... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-...
- COGlory 2y agoMy father (makes fake teeth) rips up his carpet every decade and has it burned and the metal dust in it melted down. Usually gets $10k-$15k.
- 7thpower 2y agoI would just get a Roomba, bling it out, and then destroy it when it ripped one of my charger cables out of the wall. Or just get sheet vinyl or something.
- eru 2y agoA carpet is probably better at holding on to particles as people walk over it. A vinyl sheet will just lose it to people's boots. 10k$ over ten years is also not that much per day. So he might be happy to make the trade-off for having a nice carpet.
- 7thpower 2y agoThat’s fair. I was just surprised to hear he’d be using carpet in the first place. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing, not questioning him.
- PhasmaFelis 2y agoCarpet is probably the best thing for it, since the dust will work its way down in and stay there instead of sticking to your shoes and winding up all over the city.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> 10k$ over ten years is also not that much per day. It would be about $2.75 per day, an insignificant amount, but it's much worse than that because you earn it all at once at the end of the ten-year period. So you're making (almost) $2.75 a day toward the end of the period, and a lot less than that toward the beginning.
- 00N8 2y agoReminds me of my favorite story from the Manhattan project: The project needed massive amounts of wire for all the equipment, but copper was in short supply for the war effort. They ended up working out a deal with the Treasury Department to use silver instead, since it was an even better conductor & apparently more available at the time. Part of the deal involved making sure not to lose any silver & IIRC they managed to not only return all the borrowed silver, they even found some extra to return by tearing up the floors in all the mints, warehouses & workshops, to incinerate & reclaim the precious metal, just like in the article!
- dredmorbius 2y agoDo you have a source on that? I'm finding "The Manhattan Project: the Important Role Silver Played In the Building of the Atomic Bomb" <https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Manhattan-Project-and-The-Borrowed-Silver https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Manhattan-Projec...> (2015).
- 00N8 2y agoI think I first heard about it in a Scott Manley video - maybe this one, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JNT28WKAxgs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JNT28WKAxgs - & read more on Wikipedia & possibly elsewhere
- glompers 2y agoHere's a more official source: https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1942-1944_ur/y-12_construction.htm https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event... Groves' deputy, Nichols, who was responsible for the loan, also told the story in more detail in 1987 memoir, "The Road to Trinity."
- glompers 2y agoDirectly related to recapture of gold -- and related to the Manhattan Project by Farm Hall [0] too -- is the tale of German objector Max von Laue's Nobel Prize medal, which was dissolved during WWII and recast out of solution afterward [1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue#Post-war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue#Post-war [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue#Hidden_Nobel_prize https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue#Hidden_Nobel_pr...
- itishappy 2y agoMy colleague told me a story just last week about his father's old job at Kodak working in silver reclamation. Same story as this article, they chuck everything into the furnace. They go so far as to filter the wastewater from employee showers.
- whycome 2y agohttps://www.reuters.com/article/world/india/gold-from-the-gutters-the-life-of-indias-ghamelawallahs-idUSKBN1FP0R6/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/india/gold-from-the-gu...
- interroboink 2y agoReminds me a little of the man who "mines" gold and precious gems from the sidewalks in NYC: https://nypost.com/2011/06/20/got-his-mined-in-the-gutter/ https://nypost.com/2011/06/20/got-his-mined-in-the-gutter/
- hilbert42 2y agoI wonder how much precious metal such as gold and semiprecious metal such as gallium and indium essentially disappears forever in the thousands of tons of electronic waste every year. Does anyone know the percentages recovered/lost? Right, some recovery does occur—gold from edge/contact connectors etc. but I'd venture it's only a small fraction of what is used annually. And what about LEDs and transistors? I wonder if anyone ever bothers to recover the gallium and indium from them or whether the amount used isn't worth the effort.
- ars 2y agoIt mostly ends up in landfill. At some point we may be resource poor, and but energy rich and we'll use Plasma mass separation to separate each element out and reuse the valuable ones. Until then it's safely stored there.
- hilbert42 2y agoNo doubt most valuable elements do end up in landfill and most will ultimately be recovered, but we still need to have a good handle of what's actually lost or doesn't make it there, and or how much leaches out before recovery. (Here we don't seem to have decent figures, if anyone knows of any authoritative references please post them.) Hopefully, as you suggest, we will eventually be energy rich and can afford mass separation techniques to recover these elements. Nevertheless, unless some very cleaver as yet uninvented techniques are used then the amount of energy involved would likely be enormous (but I'm almost certain such techniques will be available in the foreseeable future). Incidentally, for the same reason, I'm not overly worried about the necessity for having inordinately long-term storage for nuclear waste (hundreds of thousands of years), as in an energy-rich world there'd be enough energy to enable the use of transmutation techniques (along with fast breeders, etc.) to ensure these dangerous byproducts are 'burnt' to harmless materials. Basically, whilst nuclear waste is a big problem it's a comparatively short-term one. That said, we're doing a pretty poor job of repurifying recycled materials now and the reasons are multifold. I'll give an example I've come across but there are hundreds more. Batteries of any kind should never be thrown away because of the valuable materials they contain. To my knowledge, with the exception of lead-acid batteries, an unknown amount of used battery material is recycled annually, but the effectiveness of what is actually recycled is limited due (it seems†) to the difficulty of repurifying said materials. For example, recycled reagents and other components, depolarizers such as manganese dioxide, are (often?) insufficiently pure to ensure a battery's long-term storage life. Instead of say an alkaline cell having a nominal storage life of about six years, impure components contain unwanted ionic/conductive materials that lead to a much increased self-discharge rate that shortens shelf life (I've seen such cells become discharged in only about one third the time of those with well-purified materials). No doubt higher levels of purification would be achieved if more energy were inputted into re-refining these materials. That said, this re-refining problem isn't just limited to batteries but is intrinsic to many recycling processes. Probably the best known and most problematic is that of separating used plastics together with their cracking/depolymerization. Again, it's almost certain these problems would be eliminated if enough cheap energy were available. __ † Obviously, repurifying recycled materials is different to their original refining from ores etc. as repurifying processes would be required to remove unwanted materials that were never present in the original refining process. I am unclear about what this involves and or the extent of its deployment as there seems precious little information about it in the public domain.
- gnicholas 2y ago> Hockley Mint has also upgraded its windows so that blinds are now encased between panes of glass — their fabric panels were a magnet for precious metal dust — and it also has an on-site laundry to process workers’ clothes. Hilarious — I guess big tech companies weren't the first to offer employees on-site laundry after all!
- GarnetFloride 2y agoHospitals used to have on-site laundry, for community sanitation and hygiene reasons. of course that was done away with for profit reasons.
- sundvor 2y agoWow, it sounds like the fine particles are going everywhere in the shops. This made me wonder what the health benefits of having lungs of gold might be. Remains to be seen, perhaps?
- schlauerfox 2y agoGenerally Gold (aurium) is not bioreactive, it's hardly reactive at all hence it's lustre in the wild since it doesn't tarnish or bond easily. Goldschlager has gold flake in it for human consumption. It's generally considered safe to consume for this reason. The quantity to make an LD50 of inhaled gold would be considerable I imagine, but have no data.
- ajb 2y agoWonder if that is the last industrial processing still done in central London? If you don't count university labs.
- simonjgreen 2y agoPiece of advice I’ve given people having jewellery resized for years, is if you are having something resized down then the jeweller should be paying you. A surprising number of people forget the majority of most jewellery value is the raw material.
- rhplus 2y agoA surprising number of people forget the majority of most jewellery value is the raw material. Scrap value, yes, purchase price, no :) The quick sanity test is to ask why big name jewelers can sell the same style ring at all sizes for the same price, despite perhaps 25% difference in mass. The majority of the retail sales price is not the precious metal value.
- thenickdude 2y agoReminds me of Cody's Lab refining platinum from roadside dust from the highway: (due to catalytic converters) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5GPWJPLcHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5GPWJPLcHg
- EE84M3i 2y agoHow do the taxes work for this?
- fest 2y agoI found it interesting that CNC machines aimed at precious metal processing have an optional access control system for swarf/dust collection bins- presumably so that the technicians operating the machine don't steal the "waste" material.
- DonHopkins 2y agoSo prepare yourself for the bloody mayhem and unholy carnage of Joshua Logan's "Paint Your Wagon"! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM5-xFenaZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM5-xFenaZI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Your_Wagon_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Your_Wagon_(film) https://archive.org/details/paint-your-wagon-western-comedy-1969-lee-marvin-clint-eastwood-jean-seberg?start=6096 https://archive.org/details/paint-your-wagon-western-comedy-... (Money shot at 1:44:30!)
- surfingdino 2y agoBaird & Co. do the same: "“At the end of the year all of the filters are collected together and burned,” Baird says. “Everything is ‘deep cleaned’ and burned, all of the filters and all of the doormats both inside the refinery and throughout the office.” Last year the company retrieved £15,000 worth of gold from the deep clean." https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/26/the-pots-of-gold-at-the-east-edge-of-london https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/26/the-pots-of...
- mk_stjames 2y ago> Mr Wibberley recalls when a parquet floor in its own factory was ripped up and the precious metals embedded in the wood made it worth £20 per sq m. I find this interesting, as nicely re-claimed wood flooring itself can actually fetch about that price per sq meter these days.
- alexpotato 2y agoThere was a story about the diamond district in New York City: A homeless man would go and brush the sidewalks at night. The story is that there was so much gold and diamond dust on the clothes of the people working in that area that it would fall off of their clothes and accumulate on the sidewalks.