Photos of progress

Hi Kevin,

What was the source of the salt you heated the silver with? Dew or GW?

If dew, I wonder where the sodium/NaCl came from... Unless you used the dew+see salt process... I don't remember

Also, after the period of putrefaction, I'm curious if you did or didn't pour and filter your water off the slimy insoluble sediment?

Hi AB,
The salt was flower of the ocean. Yes I used the Dew+sea salt process.

Your last question I think is in reference to the dew/rain that I had in an oak bucket for about 6 months. I didn't add any salt to that and I poured all the contents into the flask... slime and all before I distilled. At some point I will give the GW process a try also, 1st with silver then gold. It looks like I didn't succeed this time, but I have gained valuable experience!

kevinpaw123 wrote:

Yes I used the Dew+sea salt process.

That should probably explain it, then...

The process with Dew in Nick's last book is much easier, with no sea salt involved.
You just have to make sure it's good, potent dew. From my many baches of dew, only one was highly potent and loaded with the salt we're after... Like Nick said, even if you know the process, you're most likely to fail a few times before you succeed.

I for one wish you and all of us in this special group much success this year, which I also believe is about to become a year to remember in regard to Alchemical breakthroughs.

PS: Of course there is an even simpler Dew process which requires no distillation at all and that special Seal of Hermes I wrote about a few threads back

Best of luck ! ! !

These photos are after the 3rd add/mixing and firing of fresh silver/salt. " border="0" alt=""/>" border="0" alt=""/>" border="0" alt=""/>" border="0" alt=""/>
I mixed and recombined the last of the fresh silver/salt. I have sealed with cement and will fire it one more time tomorrow night. This was the first time the silver/salt was like a black stone sitting at the bottom of the crucible.
Nick does it look any better?

Well, today it's the little experiments day.
Looking at my "first batch standard Actum" flask I consider there are 3 products:
1- a white salt pH 5 it looks like NaCl very brighting doesn't melt and it stiks to the little goldea leaf I put together. These compound crystals grow letting the flask without heating for more than those two days we were warned about. They didn't dissolve anymore in the water even with 130°C heating.

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(I know what my pics are:geek: , but at least you can understand the structure of thi salt)

2- a misterious red salt that looks like sand that I will try to heat with gold leaves
3- a bright white water that became brighter when I shake the flask with its all contents.
I go to exp.
In the meanwhile... Any one has similar products?

Zosimo

Here are the Photos after I fired the silver/salt the 4th time. This time the material was much harder and seemed to have more reflective particles.
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This time I had to use more force to bang the material out of the crucible!

A little heads-up guys... If you use cement make sure it is Refractory/Furnace Cement! I realized that the regular cement allowed out-gasing to occur; That could be another reason the silver/salt didn't convert to the glass material. " border="0" alt=""/>" border="0" alt=""/>
The high temp cement is good to 2000 *F and specifies that it seals air/gas leaks!
I'm going to give the gold a try using the furnace cement, but I'm going to cut and weld the new Iron pipe my self this time...My Dad is a master welder and said he will teach me enough to handle any type of home repair!
That said it will be week before I give the gold/salt a try.

Moved post to new topic.

Hi guys
I'm going to fire the silver again. This time I am using the refractory cement! I shouldn't have any out-gassing... I'm using a 50ml ceramic crucible. I hope it is strong enough.
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I'm going to put the crucible in this Iron pot... just in case. I'll post more photos tomorrow night!
Love the work!

That iron pot is going to heat the crucible too hot on the bottom and cause it to break. Did you get that crucible from crucible.org? It looks like one of those fragile ones that will definitely break if heated up too fast.

My furnace finally arrived from London. It's the square one with the little hole for the crucible to sit in and a digital temperature controller, for only $300. It came with a graphite crucible that gets your handles dirty like holding a giant piece of pencil lead. Hopefully I'll get a chance to fire that baby up this weekend. The top is made with ceramic wool that can withstand insanely high temps, and I think by just weighing it down with my iron ring that is used for holding down Erlenmeyer flasks in boiling water, the top will be able to keep in the vaporized dew salt and allow it to perform its magic on the metal.

We'll see how it goes with this baby. Sure will beat using an iron pipe and MAPP gas torch.

Hey Nick thanks! I did get it from crucible.org. I was concerned that it would be too fragile. The furnace I have heats really fast! I will use the Iron crucible then. Congratulations On the arrival of your new toy!

Here is how blacksmiths seal crucibles to make wootz metal using satonite paste and inswool or kaowool.

http://dfoggknives.com/photogallery/wootzprocess_files/wootzprocesscontent.htm

hello everyone,
Just a quick update on my progress as of the new year, we had a lot of rain over this season and so i have collected 1 x blue chemical barrel of rain water which is roughly 200+ liters and i cut the top off it so that the sun gets to shine on it and i put a lid over it at night so the moon light doesnt shine on it.

dew collecting most days and try to use 4 of my containers so i can max out the dew collecting per day so far i have 30 liters in two containers. My aim is to collect 4 x 15 liters which is 4 bottles that i've been filling and hopefully fingers crossed, by the time i finish collecting into the 4th container the wait should be done on the first bottle if not i'll be getting more 15 liter bottles so i can keep collecting and see how many i can store before the first barrel is ready.

If all goes well in these next few months, i'll be getting a 6 meter deep x 8 meter wide x 3 mters high shed so i can do my lab work in it, and store everything i need in that, lab gear, barrels, bottles, dew catcher, etc.

3 x rain water bottles have come ready so i've been boiling down the water in them, so far it doesn't look much. the water is a browny green and the bottom and top parts of the water were two different colours, different things growing on the bottom as to the top of the water. as to this water i'm hoping to just split the water and the dregs apart and then leave the dregs sit for a while to see what happens to it because by the time i complete the rain water distilling i'll be back to distilling the dew water.

i'm hoping that i'll always have distilling to do instead of waiting for so long for the dew to be ready, i'm going to get about 2-3 liters of dew dregs water from the bottom of all the bottles and then see how much "dew salt" i can get from it using the dew water 3 steps.

phillip reed

To get the black powder. I do not know what happend to my post earlier, but I believe I asked that question before.

I have been running my furnace for 3 hours and maybe its too much. How many hours are you running to get the black powder?

Thanks

Al

Hey Al
1st I'm working with silver. I think you are working with gold right? Yours should turn into a red glass stone. You only need to maintain the heat for an hour once you reach the recommended 2200*F. Did you get some refractory cement? If you didn't it is very likely to out-gas. Where did you get your furnace from? Show some photos if you can. I hope your project is a success!
God bless!

Got my furnace at Casting Cowboy link that I posted.



Yeaaayyyhhhh!!! Got it to work!

This is the wonderful GW project, bad seal, botched project, but did get a red glaze at at the bottom!

Could you adjust your photos to a smaller size? I use 640 x 480 and that seems to be pretty good...not too large or too small.

I had the hardest time figuring out how to resize photos on photobucket, but I finally figured it out. You have to press the 'full screen' button, and then more buttons will be available alowing you to save the resized photo to replace the original.

word2give
Photobucket:
On your home page you will see a box that says Upload images & videos
right below that you will see
Use CTRL to select multiple files (more options)
Click on more options. Then you can select your photo default size. Don't forget to save your changes before you exit or you will have to do it again.
Hope this helps!

Hey all

I have some photos of the gold I put in the Iron crucible, just finnished. I think I failed again . The pics don't show the crystals that formed nearly as good as you can see them with the naked eye. The problem is even though there are many glassy crystals they don't seem to have any redish coloration at all. So where did the gold go? The good part of this experiment is that the crucible clearly didn't have any out gassing! So I guess a step in the right direction.
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So I added some fresh gold/salt...I have enough for a total of three rounds in the crucible before I melt it all.

Here are the photos after the 3rd time in the Iron crucible w gold/salt. The gold has to be somewhere in the crystals cause I don't see any metallic gold. I don't see any distinguishable red hue in the crystals either. " border="0" alt=""/>
Here are the first crystals that came out." border="0" alt=""/>" border="0" alt=""/>" border="0" alt=""/>
There was alot more glassy sparkley material this time. I hope this is a good sign.
Love the work!

Are you sure its getting hot enough? Is the crucible pure iron? Are their any problems sealing it? Are you projecting your intention onto it? Also I was doing some reading and the book said that the gold you are supposed to use should never be melted before the work because it gives up its air, so bullion and coins would be out. Just some thoughts, trying to help, not to be critical.

What you might try is to dissolve these crystals in water and filter out whatever doesn't dissolve. Then either digest this solution or evaporate it and see if the crystals will deliquesce. And you might want to see what it tastes like.

I just tried to work with the lead but all I got was a gold coating on the surface...it didn't work completely this time. I'm hoping for success sometime in the future though. So the gold is attached to the salt somehow, but not readily visible as gold.
Here's a photo:
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Thanks for the insights guys. Yes it was an Iron crucible. That sounds like a good idea field.