mls26cwru wrote:
a lot of places will take something like this and treat the gold as a 'contaminate.' a gram of gold isn't worth going after when you are talking about tons of aluminum.
That is what I am thinking of the BIG board, it is very heavy and someone may not want to try and retrieve the gold from it. As for the other boards, they are pretty light, the one I took apart is about 2 pounds total.
What you have is pretty good plating... as a general rule, the duller or more matte the gold looks, the thicker it is. When you see shiny gold plate you are actually seeing the reflective nickle under layer. gold has a tendency to migrate into some base metals, so there is almost always a nickle barrier layer to prevent it... in essence, the gold is so thin you see right through it. Once gold becomes thick enough, it starts to scatter light is such a way that it takes on a matte looking appearance.
This is very dull so that is good as it may be a thicker plate, that is a nice plus
As to the metal underneath being a silver alloy, its not likely, but not impossible. Apply a few drops of nitric acid and wait a about 15 seconds. Add a couple grains of table salt... if you see a white cloudy substance form in the drop, it contains silver. Check your spot testing solutions, one of them might be nitric (but it has to be just nitric for the test to work). Also, make sure you do this outside or in a well ventilated area and avoid any fumes... there should not me much from a couple drops, but better to err on the safe side. This should work for high silver content alloys, but you could have problems detecting low content alloys.
I do not think it is a Silver at all, I believe it is an aluminum base alloy, either clip (6063) for the flat ones or extruded for the molded ones. I do have Silver solution but I am not sure it is good anymore, it is kinda a dark brown color.