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Help needed to extract gold from 1% min plated 44 awg Oxygen Free Copper

February 10, 2011

Hi,

I have around 10 kg of scrap gold plated wire. The wire is 44 or 46 awg Oxygen free Cu with a 1% gold plating harvested from scrap cables. I have a few questions:

1. I would like to determine the weight of the gold, but I don't know if the 1% specifies weight or volume. When something is said to be 1% gold plated, what does that mean?

2. I have seen some sites explaining how to extract the gold from the copper wire, but am unsure of the reliability of sites like eHow.com. Any recommendations, or is this even something I can do myself?

3. If I cannot do this myself, where would I go to get the materials smelted?

Thanks,
Joe

Joseph Michael
Junk collector, buyer, eBay s guru - Yarmouth, Massachusetts