How to Estimate Gold Plating Thickness and Content

Here's an excerpt from a very good article:

The board is made over-sized, in order to provide electrical connections to the areas of the board that require plating. When the plating has been done, the "picture frame" is trimmed off with a die.

We used to hire cheap labour to cut off the gold plated areas of the picture frames with tin snips - the good offset type - you can buy them left or right handed. This will reduce the volume and weight considerably and will make the pile much less bulky. I, myself, have filled many barrels with just the gold portions, using this method - it's not so bad - wear leather work gloves. We then stripped the gold in a cement mixer with cyanide/peroxide.

Even if you don't process this yourself, by trimming it, you are putting it into a state that can be sampled and assayed, before having it refined. This is much harder to do with the picture frames, since many of them are different. You might also have a separate barrel for pale looking gold pieces.

If it is true immersion gold, it's worth about $.04 to $.05/square inch, max. Immersion...

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Mike
Home Based Salvage and Recycling Business Manual