Q&A for How to Melt Gold

You could, but as soon as you poured the molten metal into the gold mold, and it started cooling, your other metal would bond itself to the gold.

You can use propane as a fuel, and if you use an oxygen pipe, the gold will melt faster.

Check out this article on How to Tell if Gold Is Real .

No, a soldering iron is only hot enough to melt lead, at about 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Yes. Anytime you're working with these alloys, wear a respirator (painter's mask). You don't always know what's been bonded with the gold.

Yes as long as you don't care much for the bowl. The bowl will crack or pop and is useless after.

A crucible is a pot- or cup-like holder that is made out of material that can withstand extremely high temperatures. You can order a crucible online at many glass blowing or ceramic stores or at any art and craft store specializing in glass or ceramic supplies.

Theoretically, yes, but you would possibly melt the frying pan in the process, so that's not recommended.

You will have to separate the microcontrollers and gold plated pins. Crash the plastic and separate it from the metal. Afterwards, you can refine it to get the gold out. A motherboard also contains other precious metals besides gold too.

No. Gold is an element on the periodic table, and since it is in its most basic form, it cannot be destroyed. Be aware, however, that you can ruin a piece of jewelry or a shape that the gold has been formed into if you melt it. The gold itself will always remain gold.

Yes. I have used a small butane torch to melt flour gold I gathered from prospecting. It just takes a little more caution and care.

No, it won't. Gold can withstand temperatures up to 3000 degrees F, and it is very hard to get the gold that hot with just a torch or a microwave.

No. Gold is extremely strong and heat resistant; it can't just burn up into ash.

Yes; it turns a glowing red when it reaches its melting point and liquefies. It turns yellow or whatever it's natural color was/is when it re-solidifies.

It's the ambient temperature of its surrounding environment. If it's in your sweaty palm, it's approximately 98°F. If it's in a clod of mud and ice next to a frozen river in Alaska and it's -20°, it's -20°F, and so on.

You need to refine it. One way to do that uses nitric and hydrochloric acid to dissolve the gold alloy and then selectively precipitate pure gold from the solution.

Melt it and use a flux for the big stuff. For the smaller stuff use hydrochloric acid and draw it off.

It's likely it would explode. Anytime you put very hot material in contact with very cold material, you're going to get a reaction. Don't do it.

It is not necessary to stamp gold bars. Many vendors do as they have made the choice to do so, but it is not mandatory for them to be stamped.

Try to use flux to help with the gold bonding together. If you don't use flux, it could possibly cause this problem, as it sounds like the gold is not sticking together properly.

You might not get very much money, but gold flake should be able to be melted in the same way as shown in the article.

This is rarely an issue. The metal, when liquefied, tends to 'whet', which means it sticks to itself and metallic surfaces.

Make impressions in slightly wet sand to create the pour mold. Kinetic sand is a good choice for this purpose but keep it bounded within a hard-sided border.

No. Ore is a mixture of many different types of rocks and minerals; only a fraction of a percent of ore is typically gold. Even if you could somehow melt the rock, you'd just have magma. Gold refinement involves many chemical steps on a commercial level.

Yes, you can. Obviously it will change the concentration of gold. For example, 10K and 14K will become somewhere in between - making the 14k harder.

When melting gold, or any other precious metal in a crucible,yes. The borax forms a coating in the crucible to prevent metal from sticking to it. It also helps with removing minor impurities in the metal, especially when smelting scrap material.

Gold has a natural yellow colour, so after you have melted it down, it should have a yellow colour, unless it has been alloyed to make it white. To get a red colour, gold is alloyed with copper.

No, ore of any type will have a lot of impurities. In particular, hard rock mining several tons or more of gold ore will yield around one ounce of pure gold. Normally, the rock is crushed and cyanide is used to dissolve the gold and silver (silver is pretty much always alloyed to gold in nature); look up gold cyanidation. Also, it is not practical to melt an ounce of gold out of tons of rock because the molten gold will get suspended in the rock mixture, kind of like how water gets absorbed by dry clay.

Yes, most metals can be alloyed with each other, although some metals go better together than others. Bronze is mainly copper and tin. Copper usually makes red gold when alloyed with gold, adding strength. Tin is soft and silvery; it probably will not make a noticeable difference to color or strength, but the lower price of tin would make the alloy cheaper than using only gold and copper.