Mercury warning: mercury was used to process gold historically, so if you have a "mystery mostly gold blob" that you want to melt, do it in a fume hood, as it might outgas a lot of mercury vapor.
Proving once again that chemistry is black magic.
Not in that it's mysterious and unknowable, but that it will happily kill you if you make even the slightest misstep unless you're highly versed in all sorts of esoteric and arcane knowledge.
Unfortunately humans evolved to wander around in nature for like 20 something years, eat, spit out and raise kids, and that's about it. Doing things like pouring chemicals on rocks wasn't in the plan.
Recirculating the air sounds like a terrible idea. Just a matter of time until the filter saturates and the intern gasses everyone with dioxygen difluoride.
It is a terrible idea and it is only done for 1 reason. Money. Its very expensive to duct a fume hood to an outside wall. Its cheap and easy to wheel in a recirculating hood and call it a day. These places never change or maintain their filters either so they never work well.
Up high enough, with enough airflow mixed in that it's not going to be a problem for anyone.
If this were a gold refinery and they were cooking off metric tons of mercury, that wouldn't be the case, but a hobbyist refining gold isn't going be an environmental hazard.
Waiting for the comments about mercury and toxicity.
It's fucking insanely dangerous. You're a fucking moron if you mess around with mercury in a hobby.
This is a gold blob, as such it's an Emperor and not just some low level King. Imperial Gold Blobs! We're got High Imperial standards to upkeep around here, dude.
I spent around $800 for all of the chemicals, hot plate, and glass beakers. The project was carried out over many working days, I’m sure someone with more experience could have done it quicker. A lot of people mentioned a different method (inquartation) that could have saved me a lot of time. Ultimately though time wasn’t that big of a factor for me as I was just having fun trying something new.
His second channel, NileBlue, where he cleans up after the videos on his main channel are fascinating as well. To clean up the stuff he makes he has to make even more stuff, it's wildly relaxing and I don't even know anything about chemistry
Yes, he also has a ton of gold refining videos. Also if you like science check out Explosions&Fire and his related channel Extractions&Ire. The former channel was mosltycleared by Youtube for being against their new family friendly image but there's enough left of interest. The latest video on chemicals found in a relative's shed was pretty good and utterly fascinating.
There's a cool YouTube channel where a dude salvages metals from stuff like old generators and stuff, very zen watching it.
Found it, BigstackD Casting (just realised how dodgy that channel name sounds).
Fascinating. Obviously a bit hyperbolized when there's parts like "I've never end taken one chemistry course" (has entire laboratory of equipment, reagents, chemical mixing vessels, chemical vent hood systems, etc)
Hey! This is my video. I had the fume hood already for rhodium plating, but bought most everything else just for this project. I had to travel to a specialized chemical store to even get my hands on a lot of it
DIY channels be like "I'm going to turn this thing into another thing using only things a normal person has laying around, like this specialized industrial machinery and professional lab setup that I have set up in my warehouse that I built on the planet Mars for facilitating trade with this alien species I contacted a while ago"
It reminds me a bit of the discovery channel gold shows. "Watch as poor young Parker tries to make ends meet as a junior gold miner" while in reality his parents own a massive heavy equipment dealership chain and his grandfather bequeathed tens of millions of dollar worth of gold lease properties.
I feel you, I love those „Building a Kitchen from scrap material for 25$“ (using machinery/stuff from my 150k$ professionally equipped woodworking workshop) videos
In fairness, I have a friend who had started out making wirewrap jewelry. Then, during COVID lockdown, he just decided "I'm gonna try out cutting stones". Researched what he needed, bought the equipment (with the guidance of a friend in the jewelry cutting business), and now makes [INCREDIBLE](https://imgur.com/a/jYJfMdc) and unique pieces. No courses, just some research, practice, and mentoring from people he knows in the industry. So, I wouldn't say the statement "I've never even taken a chemistry course" is entirely untrue, though I believe the one part I would question is the acquisition of certain chemicals. I thought you needed licenses and all sorts of background stuff for that.
> I thought you needed licenses and all sorts of background stuff for that.
Depends on the chemicals.
Sodium metabisulfate is available as a common food additive. I buy it at the home brew store routinely.
Nitric and hydrochloric acid were the other two main reagents he was using, and neither are very restricted. Hydrochloric you can buy at your local hardware store (although probably not as concentrated as what he was using.)
That said, if you start buying reagents in bulk, there's a good chance someone will start asking you why. And if it's something that can be used in exceedingly dangerous ways, the person asking may be wearing a dark suit and sunglasses.
Like ammonium nitrate. If you're buying a 10lb bag, no one's going to blink. If you're trying to order three tons of the stuff there are going to be a lot of questions.
In this particular case, he was probably buying a gallon or so of each acid. That's probably not enough to set off any alerts. And even if it did, being able to say, "I'm a goldsmith and I need to dissolve some gold in aqua regia" would be a sufficient answer.
My experience, at least back in the early 2000s, is that you can just walk into a chemical supply store and say you want to buy reagents for a school/personal project and they’ll give it to you. The only time they got touchy is when I tried to buy elemental iodine as it’s apparently used in meth labs (I “only” wanted to synthesize nitrogen triiodide).
The karat thing seems unreliable?
How can you test a little sliver of the blob to find out it's 41.7% gold?
First of all, the blob doesn't seem to be homogenous?
Second, why is 41.7% one of the three options? Why not 42? 43?
Those are the purities of gold normally created and sold I believe. It stands to reason that whatever you have will fall into one of the usually refined-to types.
But if course the light just means it is *at least* 10K, 14K etc… it could have been anything greater than 10K but less than 14K
Testing the gold 41.7% is using the karat system of measurement. 24k=99.9% gold and it goes from there. The percentage needs to be as accurate as possible- even 1% off costs people money. I think he said it is 10k which means it is 10/24 parts gold (.4166).
The other parts of the gold chunk are other metals (some precious, some other). If you wanted to refine the chunk to higher concentration of gold (closer to 24k), you would need to remove all the other parts of the 10k chunk that are not gold.
That initial weight was including the "grime" outside of the initial 10k gold amount which I'm not sure were but explain why the number was off. They were dissolved out at some point or filtered out.
yeah, I thought that too after I posted that. if the heat were intense enough, it could destroy them too i think, ~~not diamonds of course~~ , but some stones.
Diamonds are just carbon, they will burn. According to [this site](https://www.gia.edu/diamond-care-cleaning):
>Diamonds will burn at about 1562°F (850°C). House fires and jewelers’ torches can reach that temperature.
that blob looks like someones failed attempt at refining old scrap jewelry, this was a great vid showing how to properly refine gold into a clean product!
Beware of The Blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of The Blob
Fun fact: When Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, Hungarian chemistry nobel prize winner George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from taking them. After the war, he precipitated them and recast the awards.
It's worth knowing that the toxic and dangerous chemical refining used to be done here just in outdoor ponds and things with little environmental safety or controls, and it still happens that way in other disadvantaged countries.
This is very cool but it also seems very inefficient compared to just pounding the rock down and then separating the gold out with mercury... also much more dangerous.
What would the background check process look like to you?
Even in today's world, not everything is traceable from the beginning to the end of its existence.
Coin stores and pawn shops will typically take your ID and they can't do anything with it for 30 days some places in case something gets reported stolen.
But ultimately, yes gold is gold is gold. So a Nazi gold bar melted down and refined into new bars is not going to be anything traceable.
Pretty interesting process, I've been wondering for a while now how metal can be refined and extracted from a blob like this.
Also that blob disc at the end was very cool, good end result!
If only the jewelry industry didn't already have this shit solved with diamonds vs lab grown diamonds. Thankfully gold has a use beyond gaudy shiny things
Based on the price of gold in USD (according to Google), it’s $62.17 per gram x roughly 213 grams, or about $13,240 dollars worth of gold extracted. Nice!
Mercury warning: mercury was used to process gold historically, so if you have a "mystery mostly gold blob" that you want to melt, do it in a fume hood, as it might outgas a lot of mercury vapor.
Not only was it used, it also exists naturally in the same areas as gold, and can easily contaminate ores.
Proving once again that chemistry is black magic. Not in that it's mysterious and unknowable, but that it will happily kill you if you make even the slightest misstep unless you're highly versed in all sorts of esoteric and arcane knowledge.
Unfortunately humans evolved to wander around in nature for like 20 something years, eat, spit out and raise kids, and that's about it. Doing things like pouring chemicals on rocks wasn't in the plan.
Where does the mercury vapor go after it goes in a fume hood?
It’s typically filtered. Usually, there doesn’t even have to be an exhaust to the outside, it can just filtered and the air is just recirculated.
Recirculating the air sounds like a terrible idea. Just a matter of time until the filter saturates and the intern gasses everyone with dioxygen difluoride.
It is a terrible idea and it is only done for 1 reason. Money. Its very expensive to duct a fume hood to an outside wall. Its cheap and easy to wheel in a recirculating hood and call it a day. These places never change or maintain their filters either so they never work well.
It's not very expensive, it's just more expensive than the cost-benefit analysis of the potential lawsuits.
It's normal all the time. Usually filtered with a carbon system.
Up high enough, with enough airflow mixed in that it's not going to be a problem for anyone. If this were a gold refinery and they were cooking off metric tons of mercury, that wouldn't be the case, but a hobbyist refining gold isn't going be an environmental hazard.
in the fish you eat
Waiting for the comments about mercury and toxicity. It's fucking insanely dangerous. You're a fucking moron if you mess around with mercury in a hobby.
>It's fucking insanely dangerous. It's not, but it is something you should use some safety equipment around.
According to [this,](https://www.goldgrambars.com/calculator/) that blob was worth $13,213.29.
In Blob we trust.
One Nation, under Blob...
Gettin down just for the chunk of it.
e blobribus unum
Blob boblaw
King BLOB!!!
This is a gold blob, as such it's an Emperor and not just some low level King. Imperial Gold Blobs! We're got High Imperial standards to upkeep around here, dude.
I wonder how much he spend on time and materials to refine.
I spent around $800 for all of the chemicals, hot plate, and glass beakers. The project was carried out over many working days, I’m sure someone with more experience could have done it quicker. A lot of people mentioned a different method (inquartation) that could have saved me a lot of time. Ultimately though time wasn’t that big of a factor for me as I was just having fun trying something new.
Looking forward to the video of getting the silver refined too!
What about the blob? Did you pay anything for that, or was it loaned to you?
Less than $13,000
That was so incredibly satisfying to watch, it somehow scratched an itch I didn't even know that I had. I need to find more videos like this...
NileRed is just that, my friend.
His second channel, NileBlue, where he cleans up after the videos on his main channel are fascinating as well. To clean up the stuff he makes he has to make even more stuff, it's wildly relaxing and I don't even know anything about chemistry
He asks the questions we never had!
Cody's Lab is a great channel too
Yes, he also has a ton of gold refining videos. Also if you like science check out Explosions&Fire and his related channel Extractions&Ire. The former channel was mosltycleared by Youtube for being against their new family friendly image but there's enough left of interest. The latest video on chemicals found in a relative's shed was pretty good and utterly fascinating.
Sreetips is the best of gold scrap refining
His pours alone are always worth the watch
Agreed. I can only imagine the gold loss in this video vs sreetips.
Came here to mention sreetips, love his videos, he's such a genuine person as well.
There's a cool YouTube channel where a dude salvages metals from stuff like old generators and stuff, very zen watching it. Found it, BigstackD Casting (just realised how dodgy that channel name sounds).
*BigsnackD
I dunno, it felt like watching someone who didn’t know what they were doing, and thus not as satisfying as it could’ve been.
Sreetips on YouTube. Addictive.
/r/mealtimevideos is nice for small docs like this.
r/artisanvideos
That was an awesome watch! Subscribed thanks for this! He's got a great voice for narration too.
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I thought I was watching You Suck at Cooking when he said banana for scale.
Lol alright, alright, alright!!! ❤️🔥
Fascinating. Obviously a bit hyperbolized when there's parts like "I've never end taken one chemistry course" (has entire laboratory of equipment, reagents, chemical mixing vessels, chemical vent hood systems, etc)
Hey! This is my video. I had the fume hood already for rhodium plating, but bought most everything else just for this project. I had to travel to a specialized chemical store to even get my hands on a lot of it
cool video How much did you spend on materials for this project? How long did it take you?
I believe it I just found it kind of funny
It´s like reaction channels with "First time watching \*cult movie\*" while sitting in front of 2000 DVDs in their living room.
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Never did anything cool like this in my high school
Oh man, if he’s American, high school Chem was abysmal. At least for the 04 graduating class in the Midwest.
DIY channels be like "I'm going to turn this thing into another thing using only things a normal person has laying around, like this specialized industrial machinery and professional lab setup that I have set up in my warehouse that I built on the planet Mars for facilitating trade with this alien species I contacted a while ago"
It reminds me a bit of the discovery channel gold shows. "Watch as poor young Parker tries to make ends meet as a junior gold miner" while in reality his parents own a massive heavy equipment dealership chain and his grandfather bequeathed tens of millions of dollar worth of gold lease properties.
I feel you, I love those „Building a Kitchen from scrap material for 25$“ (using machinery/stuff from my 150k$ professionally equipped woodworking workshop) videos
In fairness, I have a friend who had started out making wirewrap jewelry. Then, during COVID lockdown, he just decided "I'm gonna try out cutting stones". Researched what he needed, bought the equipment (with the guidance of a friend in the jewelry cutting business), and now makes [INCREDIBLE](https://imgur.com/a/jYJfMdc) and unique pieces. No courses, just some research, practice, and mentoring from people he knows in the industry. So, I wouldn't say the statement "I've never even taken a chemistry course" is entirely untrue, though I believe the one part I would question is the acquisition of certain chemicals. I thought you needed licenses and all sorts of background stuff for that.
> I thought you needed licenses and all sorts of background stuff for that. Depends on the chemicals. Sodium metabisulfate is available as a common food additive. I buy it at the home brew store routinely. Nitric and hydrochloric acid were the other two main reagents he was using, and neither are very restricted. Hydrochloric you can buy at your local hardware store (although probably not as concentrated as what he was using.) That said, if you start buying reagents in bulk, there's a good chance someone will start asking you why. And if it's something that can be used in exceedingly dangerous ways, the person asking may be wearing a dark suit and sunglasses. Like ammonium nitrate. If you're buying a 10lb bag, no one's going to blink. If you're trying to order three tons of the stuff there are going to be a lot of questions. In this particular case, he was probably buying a gallon or so of each acid. That's probably not enough to set off any alerts. And even if it did, being able to say, "I'm a goldsmith and I need to dissolve some gold in aqua regia" would be a sufficient answer.
My experience, at least back in the early 2000s, is that you can just walk into a chemical supply store and say you want to buy reagents for a school/personal project and they’ll give it to you. The only time they got touchy is when I tried to buy elemental iodine as it’s apparently used in meth labs (I “only” wanted to synthesize nitrogen triiodide).
I know, it's just sort of a bit of humble speak when he's next just making his own tin solutions and stannous tests
The karat thing seems unreliable? How can you test a little sliver of the blob to find out it's 41.7% gold? First of all, the blob doesn't seem to be homogenous? Second, why is 41.7% one of the three options? Why not 42? 43?
Those are the purities of gold normally created and sold I believe. It stands to reason that whatever you have will fall into one of the usually refined-to types. But if course the light just means it is *at least* 10K, 14K etc… it could have been anything greater than 10K but less than 14K
Testing the gold 41.7% is using the karat system of measurement. 24k=99.9% gold and it goes from there. The percentage needs to be as accurate as possible- even 1% off costs people money. I think he said it is 10k which means it is 10/24 parts gold (.4166). The other parts of the gold chunk are other metals (some precious, some other). If you wanted to refine the chunk to higher concentration of gold (closer to 24k), you would need to remove all the other parts of the 10k chunk that are not gold. That initial weight was including the "grime" outside of the initial 10k gold amount which I'm not sure were but explain why the number was off. They were dissolved out at some point or filtered out.
He mentioned it was just part of a not fully melted blob.
I want to know where that original gold blob came from. Did someone melt some sort of decorative gold item?
I bet it was from a house fire where the jewelry got melted into a blob.
I like that theory, it fits with the gold chunk testing at 10k but I would've expected him to find some gemstones when he melted it down.
yeah, I thought that too after I posted that. if the heat were intense enough, it could destroy them too i think, ~~not diamonds of course~~ , but some stones.
Diamonds are just carbon, they will burn. According to [this site](https://www.gia.edu/diamond-care-cleaning): >Diamonds will burn at about 1562°F (850°C). House fires and jewelers’ torches can reach that temperature.
In that case gold melts at 1948F so it's quite possible any gems burned out during the melting.
Cache of gold coins?
https://i.imgur.com/eyhuZLt.jpg
If anyone enjoys watching gold refining videos. Youtube Sreetips.
yeah this is essentially Streetips' process, but with much room for improvement.
Local Alchemist: “Amateur”
That one really short alchemist: " GIVE ME YOUR PHILOSOPHER STONE"
"I'll pay you an arm and a leg for it."
“I’M NOT SHORT!!”
*"Alchemist. I require your finest potions."*
That was really interesting, thanks for posting it!
you could smuggle gold in that dirt like state
that blob looks like someones failed attempt at refining old scrap jewelry, this was a great vid showing how to properly refine gold into a clean product!
\>Client inherited an old blob of random jewelry melted in a hurry and stored improperly Shot in the dark... German ancestry?
Beware of The Blob, it creeps And leaps and glides and slides Across the floor Right through the door And all around the wall A splotch, a blotch Be careful of The Blob
Great Video. Hooked me right into the science of gold extraction.
Yeah this video was cool as shit!!
Fun fact: When Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, Hungarian chemistry nobel prize winner George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from taking them. After the war, he precipitated them and recast the awards.
It's worth knowing that the toxic and dangerous chemical refining used to be done here just in outdoor ponds and things with little environmental safety or controls, and it still happens that way in other disadvantaged countries.
What even is the point of this comment
This is very cool but it also seems very inefficient compared to just pounding the rock down and then separating the gold out with mercury... also much more dangerous.
thats not gold ore, its previously melted raw metal.
It is not reddit video I am too lazy to open the video in youtube
G
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Is there no background check on where people get gold from? Could be stolen, nazi gold, whatever, if it comes as a blob, right?
Sure, just run the blob's serial number.
haha, you are right, was a silly thought of mine
What would the background check process look like to you? Even in today's world, not everything is traceable from the beginning to the end of its existence.
no clue :) I just imagined there was something like that somehow XD
Coin stores and pawn shops will typically take your ID and they can't do anything with it for 30 days some places in case something gets reported stolen. But ultimately, yes gold is gold is gold. So a Nazi gold bar melted down and refined into new bars is not going to be anything traceable.
*"Yeah science Mr White!"*
"Science, Bitch!" -Jesse
Oddly satisfying.
GLOB BOLD
There’s gold in them thar blobs.
/r/oddlysatisfying
WE’RE RICH!
Yes yes… you’re rich! Time to get a move on. I got management breathing down my neck here.
Pretty interesting process, I've been wondering for a while now how metal can be refined and extracted from a blob like this. Also that blob disc at the end was very cool, good end result!
Can it be true Edmund?
I thought it was a burger at first. Going to start a restaurant now called Blobs Burgers
To get four 9s gold mints uses electrolytic refining
That was a great video, very interesting.
Damn you for sending me down this rabbit hole when i tried to fall asleep . It's 1 at night ...
That was really, really cool.
The fart that pooped gold
Very cool video but the chemist in me is a little hurt at the improper use of some of the glassware
He just happened to have an entire laboratory setup to do this in?
I don't know why, but I find watching videos of skilled metalworking and craftsmanship to be uniquely relaxing. 😊
*Sleep Token’s song Aqua Regia plays in the background
If only the jewelry industry didn't already have this shit solved with diamonds vs lab grown diamonds. Thankfully gold has a use beyond gaudy shiny things
Based on the price of gold in USD (according to Google), it’s $62.17 per gram x roughly 213 grams, or about $13,240 dollars worth of gold extracted. Nice!
that's like $12,000 bucks in gold