do you refine your sandpaper/emery paper for gold? some firms i
worked for in the past have done.would you pay more on refining costs
than you would get in return? i imagine you would need a huge amount
to make it worthwhile.
Jon- Yup. We sure do. About every five years along with the buffing
dirt,floor sweeps and under sink bucket. Lower grade stuff is a pain
to refine and so it’s more costly. So we save it up. We do our bench
sweeps two to three times a year.
Have fun and make lots of jewelry.
Jo Haemer
www.timothywgreen.com
We separated gold dust/sweeps and sent that in separately.
Sanding paper went with the big barrel of Sandpaper, rubber wheels,
crap from the bench. cloths from cleaning ultrasonic Vacuumed dust
from cleaning polishing machine filters from polishing machine
David
do you refine your sandpaper/emery paper for gold? some firms i worked for in the past have done.would you pay more on refining costs than you would get in return? i imagine you would need a huge amount to make it worthwhile.
With the price of gold, any amount is worth while.
A jeweller told me that he bundled up bits of carpet, lemmel, emery
sheets, floor sweepings etc. etc. etc. For a years worth of work he
got about $7000.
So is it worth it… hell yeah. Just save it up.
Regards Charles A.
it’s far better to refine polishing dust, bench filings and emery
(a.k.a.sand-paper) if you have barrels of these items. One company
that I spent 14 years with, made so much on the refining…they had
enough money to pay summer vacations for all of their 175
staff…and this was “after” the refining charges…
Gerry Lewy
not the regular paper. There is a sticky variety for belt sanders.
It is used if you need to do a lot of grinding. It must be refined.
Also, before sending it to refiner, you can burn the paper, settle
the heavy component in water, dry it, and refine only that. Same as
regular bench sweeps.
Leonid Surpin
I have a drum that is about 1/2 the size of a 55 gal drum. I throw
everything in it, floor sweeps, buffer dust, sandpaper…you get the
idea. My bench dust I keep separate. I send this drum in about once
a year and get between $1,250.00 and $3,000.00 dollars. It works for
me…Teddy
We include our abrasive papers, anything else that might contain
precious metals, in with our sweeps. The refiners have never
complained, and it’s more cost-effective than waiting until we have
hundreds of sheets to refine ontheir own.
Depending on how you use those sheets, there could well be a lot of
value, but it does depend on the grit, how much you use them, and
whether you use oil or water to lubricate them.
Be aware, though, that you should keep using papers until they are
unusable - my dad binned all of my 3M microfinishing papers because
he thought they looked worn out, when in fact they were just
super-smooth. It cost UKP 30 to replace them, and you can’t buy them
super-smooth - they only go like that after a lot of use.
thanks for the responses.ive been keeping the sandpaper and polishing
dust for the last 3 years since i became self employed, but not sure
if i should refine it or not.time to send it in and buy my workshop a
christmas present!