Fun fact: in the semi-conductor industry, this alloy is known as “purple plague” because it’s extremely detrimental to parts. Basically, if gold and aluminum contacts touch at high temp, some purple alloy naturally forms. This alloy is both brittle and a poor conductor, leading to electrical or mechanical failure. It was a big issue for a while, and Al and Au are some of the most common contact materials in chips. So yeah, fun facts for ya. Edit: Wow, this blew up, haha. Glad to start some cool conversations and learning!
One month on, Singaporean here and I just happened to stopped by Lee Hwa for some jewllery shopping. Asked the staff about purple gold and would you know it, the staff informed that this video was shared all over the company internally. Staff shared that Lee Hwa actually experienced a spike in international sales right after this video dropped, so they have Nile to thank for!
You are correct. Lee Hwa's website have gone from an average of 20k viewers a month to a bit above 290k. Thanks to Nile they most likely gonna have their best year.
Turns out that materials science is pretty different from chemistry and just as complicated. There's a lot more to making a high performance alloy than just the right mix of elemental metals.
Nile really made himself a name in the history books. Respect. Obviously purple gold has existed before but Nile here just innovated on the fact on how to make this sort of gold economically feasible. Plus the knowledge itself of casting all these metals is always appreciated to be known by those like me who watched this video since the field of metallurgy is incredibly complex and can't be comprehened by those who don't know that much about this field. Awesome video and what an awesome achievement Nile. You should be proud.
I'm a jewellery maker, and I just watched this whole video utterly fascinated. The chemistry, the complexity of casting metal, and the artistry, all combined into an absolute thriller. When I studied jewellery making, I never got to cast gold for budget reasons, and I only know in theory how gold can be dissolved in aqua regia, and I'm just mindblown right now.
Having studied jewelry making I kept wondering if he knew what a centrifugal caster is. That might have eliminated the last of the bubbles and cast the purple gold into the final form all in one.
I showed this video to my godfather who owns a large jewelry company and he told me he had tried to make this about 5 years ago and this was some of the finest work he had ever seen
The unevenness of the color is likely due to microsegregation of the alloy as it cooled in the mold. The "holes" are likely shrinkage porosity from cooling. You can pretty much weld them together by heating the stock and forging them (rolling) it together while hot.
If the holes are shrinkage porosity, then why would have degassing with argon worked? There seems to be a lot of research papers highlighting this as a problem.
The part with the Aqua Regia is exactly how George de Hevesy hid 2 Nobel Prize medals during WWII. To the soldiers who looked around his lab for valuable things, it just looked like a beaker of orange chemicals. After the war, he precipitated the gold back out and the Nobel Committee recast the medals from that gold.
Remember that aluminum immediately passivates into aluminum oxide, so all bulk "aluminum" contains surface layer of aluminum oxide. You need to use chemistry magic to add PURE aluminum to the liquid gold with no surface layer. Perhaps suspended in a liquid. Add the liquid to the crucible with bubbling argon and slowly warm up the crucible evaporating the suspended liquid. Now you have pure aluminum you can add gold to. You're also sanding / polishing with aluminum oxide. This is why it remained silver. Do this: mix pure aluminum with no aluminum oxide, pure Gold. Bubble some argon. Pour into a mold, and put DIRECTLY into a furnace and do not let it cool below 600C. Let it sit at 600C for 24 hours, and cool down to room temperature over the following 24 hours. Then polish with stainless steel, stone, or some non aluminum compound. I am going to do my own work with my goldsmith friend but you have much more resources. Finally, you say you don't knowing where the gold went... But you were sanding for 10 hours (!) multiple times (!) and you ONLY lost 5 grams?
@@Wireball Even just completely washing it might have recovered some of those lost 5 g. :p Even if the paper doesn't require it, using water while sanding metals makes it easier to recover them because they'll be a slurry instead of dust that can get anywhere by just blowing in the general direction...
Whats crazy is you've advanced a field. no one makes cast purple gold jewelry because of the complications. You are now one of the best in the world at that specific task and made it look like a college students term project.
@@Devblivion That certainly helps in figuring out the correct process. But the actual gear you really need doesn't seem that expensive. I mean, you need the beaker and the acids to pulverize your gold (and that seems to be optional, you can use other methodes) - you need some way to melt the gold, the argon-setup and a way to get your molds. I think some mid 4 figures of gear and material (excluding the gold) to start you off.
Hi Nilered & subs, I use to work for a manufacturing jeweler and they use to keep all findings of precious metals, eg. Sweeping up after the day to collect all the precious metal dust made by eg. sawing or polishing down the jewelery, and that would be send to the metal refinery where they melt it down and extract the precious metal in it to buy it from you. Nothing goes to waste😊
It's absolutely fascinating that you ALWAYS include processes that went wrong or produced unexpected results. It makes me appreciate the hard work, time, and patience that you put into all of your projects even more.
I appreciate that he shows this because as anyone who’s taken a chem course can attest to, experiments never go how they’re planned so it’s nice to see that that’s not just a problem at the student level
Honestly that's by far the best part of his videos, the problem solving. If it was just a step by step on how to do chemistry it would be like reading a recipe, it isn't exciting. But finding roadblocks and manouvering around them with relatively limited equipment is a testament to ingenuity, creativity, and the indomitable will of human beings.
The failures are sometimes the funniest parts. It was fun seeing him make the cherry soda from the paint thinner, but it would not have been the same experience without including the mistake where he accidentally tear gassed himself.
I'm from Singapore and i grew up seeing Lee Hwa's purple gold ads and shop displays. I didnt know the purple gold was legitimate gold! My husband also thought there was a coating of purple substance, not actual gold. This is so interesting. Good job Nile on replicating it so perfectly.
Purple Gold was found and patented by a Professor in Singapore. Then Lee Hwa Jewellery brought the formula rights, and then make it Gold Heart’s exclusive. I used to work with Lee Hwa Jewellery, therefore, it’s part of the training.
I was in Singapore back in 07 for some courses through the company I was working for. I remembered walking past some jewellry stores and they had purple gold jewellry for sale. As I had previously worked in a gold refinerary doing the Aqua Regia making 99.999% or Five Nines (sometimes higher) I was curious as to the process of making the purple gold. The sales team couldn't tell me the exact process but there had been a patent taken out on it.
well it's not actual gold, it an ally of about 80% gold and aluminium. Like the other gold ally with silver, or copper, that the jewelers sell as "gold".
This has to be one of the most well deserved patents. Not only figuring out how to make purple gold but refining the process so it can be strong and once it’s set into a shape then annealed into the crystal structure that gives it the purple colour. It must be near impossible to rediscover this without a deep, deep understanding of metallurgy.
Metallurgy is freaking magic. I have an insane amount of respect for the researchers, engineers, and artisans that have put in the time and effort to understanding it. Every time I look at a phase diagram, I am reminded that there are some real geniuses out there.
i am a jeweler and goldsmith apprentice and seeing you drop the beaker "full of gold" game me heart palpitations and i almost started crying in Italian
The loss of Gold was almost certainly connected to the Sanding portion of your working with it. You likely have a significant amount that is still in the matrix of the sandpaper you used, and there is also a loss of gold in dust form through air movement. I would suggest using a wet sanding method in a container or water where the gold dust will be collected in the water of the container. I also saw when you hammered earlier pieces of purple gold, small pieces flew off due to the brittle nature of the metal. and because gold is so heavy it doesn't take much gold loss to amount to 5 grams. but it is still a lot of gold to lose. so, if and when you decide to work with gold alloys again, make sure you are using a vacuum with a filter that can collect the gold dust or better yet just sand the gold inside of a water filled container to that all of the abraded gold can be kept from being lost. Also not go hammering any of those pieces anymore because metal does form into crystals when freezing and if it is brittle like the purple gold, you made hammering it will cause the crystals to break apart and some of them will shatter. to get an idea of how to keep all of your gold in a form that will minimize loss you should watch Sreetips and his gold refining videos, but it does little to show how to keep your dust to a minimum. Work your gold in a different medium than air, work it in water, or rather sand it in water. Your Dremel can be hooked up to a flex shaft and you can do your shaping of the gold in water as well. this will prevent loss but may not stop it all. when working with precious metals, jewelers have to accept a certain amount of loss, and this loss is figured into the price of the Jewelry being made. Sure, jewelers collect as much dust and granules of the precious metals they work with but it can never be truly all accounted for This is just the nature of the world we live in.
Yeah it's absolutely hilarious that he says he has no idea how he lost it! The whole video long he's smashing stuff and pieces are flying off, tons of it going into the sandpaper, random blobs splashing out of the crucible, ...
Liked the comment so that Nile sees this. My suspicion was it went into dust form and just kind of permeated his environment. But likely a good floor sweeping, plus brushing his clothes, and recovering metal from the sandpaper, would help.
recap: 81 wt % GOLD 19% wt % ALUMINUM - Prepare an inert gas (such as argon) and a melting station such as a furnace with a bubbling-capable apparatus made out of fused quartz (Alumina could be an alternative but must be tested) - Make sure the gas if flowing towards the melting chamber (no bubbling needed yet) and it has removed as much oxigen/water as possible - Melt the gold, the finer the particles the easier to measure and to melt too, precision is a MUST - Throw the aluminum pieces on top of the gold puddle to allow easy melting and mixing with the gold - Let it melt completelly, the hotter the easier to mix, but be careful because hot aluminum is VIOLENT. mix with graphite rod if possible, but make sure it's properly mixed. - Proceed to the degassing phase, lower the bubbling apparatus and let it degas for AT LEAST 20 minutes, the bubles MUST be at a constant and decent rate. (ultrasonic vibrations may be used instead or in a combination, but the results must be tested still) - Heat up a mold as much as humanly possible to avoid the alloy to freeze too quickly. - pour the alloy into the mold and let it cool down slowly until room temperature. (- at this point you can finish the shaping process, cutting the excess metal. remember that this alloy is not really workable.) - Sand it and polish - Anneal at 600ºC for about 20-30 mins - Fall in love with the finished product. thank you Nile for going through such an annoying process and explain us the process you followed so well. i'm on my quest to make a unique ring to propose to my girlfriend (but being poor sucks a lot) and my only desire is to home made it (to make it even more special) my idea is to accompany it with some artificial sapphire or ruby too (yeah, dreaming too high) i'll make sure to show up on the patreon as a way to thank you.
7:50 As soon as the gold was completely dissolved, I thought to myself, man, the worst thing that could happen is if he spilled this beaker of $5,700 orange soda. I basically yelled out loud when I saw it slip.
Aluminum die caster here. We have graphite tubes with hundreds of little holes in them. Think like a fish tank bubbler rock. The sole purpose is to degass our molten aluminum with argon! It was fun to watch you figure this out on your own. It took the casting industry about 50 years to do it!!! Edit: we also put negative draft on all of our molds. I think you now know why!!! We have very expensive mold design and testing software that I would be happy to use to help you if you want to make another mold. Just let me know!
I used to work for a company that produces industrial compressors and vacuums like the ones installed in hospitals for their pneumatic equipment (think the tube a dentists uses to pull excess water and saliva from your mouth while they do cleanings an such.) we always installed "brass sponge" mufflers on our units for all of the exhaust and drain pipes. The brass sponge fittings also have tons of holes but I guess wouldn't work under such high heats. However I have seen them used alternatively as percolators for fume filters an such
A man approaches you, he smells of Raspberry perfume and hes wielding a Bismuth knife. His finger is adorned with a rare purple gold ring. Intoxicated by his homemade toilet paper moonshine, he smiles at you exposing custom gold grillz. What do you do?
Can we just appreciate the fact that this guy took an arcane process only known to a few specialists and made an entire YT step-by-step that everyone can now see. Congratulations, man!
This is legitimately some stuff that may have never been recorded on camera let alone documented in this way. Fantastic work, NileRed. You should be very proud of this one.
From now on jeweleries from all over the world trying to make purple gold will look at this video the same way we look at those extremely detailed answers from 2007 forums for ridiculously niche questions
Man really just spent $8000 on gold, bought a CNC machine, and spent days purifying and re-smelting metal just to make a ring he doesn't think he will wear all that often. Legendary.
Love way you introduce the metals. Like, “here is my 5000 dollar bar of 24k gold, i considered smashing it, here’s me throwing it on the ground. Im going to disolve it now..” and then “i bought this aluminum off ebay, here is me showcasing it on the table, im not going to do anything to it it’s staying like this.”
Right before he redissolved it again for the first time I thought "Wow he spent 5 grand and now it all looks like a bunch of grey junk". For some reason the thought didn't occur to me that you could just put it back in the aqua regia.
Dude just completely reverse engineered, fully documented, and probably even improved a deeply proprietary jewelry process based on a one line recipe in a patent, what an absolute beast. I'm thinking most of your gold loss was in the sanding and grinding, especially if you didn't chemically extract the gold from the used sandpaper.
@@kitsunekaze93 The entire point of patients is that you share the information with the public (no reverse engineering needed) and then the exclusive right to use it, defending with lawyers instead of secrecy.
That's amazing work. I love that you decided to just go with your last attempt. While not a perfect ring you'd get from a jeweler, what you have is something with charm and uniqueness. Every time you look at it you'll be reminded of the trials it put you through, only to come out as a success. It's a beautiful ring, well done!
The missing gold is likely from the sanding and polishing. Even if you got all the fine dust that piled up, there was still probably some left on the sandpaper, especially with the finer grains.
I agree atleast 95 percent of that 3 lost after the initial 1 percent lost from the 99.9 was from the sanding, the rest could have been some percent from the none gold or lost from the beaker.
You should attempt to make blue gold, it's a rare alloy of gold made possible using indium or galium in combination with the gold. The result is a really nice blue or cyan color.
Dude this is huge. You just provided a production process to small independent jewelers all over the internet for a really cool thing that the greater jewelry industry has dismissed as unprofitable. I have several ideas for how to improve your processes, based on my own past jewelsmithing experience as a hobby, and once I get my garage workshop set up, I can definitely see myself making some purple gold jewelry. Big thanks for sharing the info!
I hope you realize I'm subscribing to your channel and waiting patiently for you to join some of the few souls who've been willing to try their hands at AgAl alloy jewelry-ing! Here's wishing you good luck and god's speed on getting that garage workshop set up! I believe in you!
Except for one thing; the patent. It’s one thing to make small samples for personal use (like NileRed did here), but if you try to use this and sell the results, you’re going to have a lawsuit on your hands, or at least angry lawyers showing up with cease-and-desist orders. 😢
I come from a family of Jewelers with an over 50 year history of being in the business. Purple gold is not the only interesting color you can find the alloy in. In the early 2000s Green Gold suddenly became very popular for a brief time. Rose gold has been very common place for a long time as has white gold. The most striking color of it in my opinion is an alloy of either gallium or indium. It looks kind of like Cobalt. When I heard you wanted to break that bar down with a hammer my heart skipped a beat. Gold is incredibly mailable, the purer the bar the soft it is. You can also get a Jewelry Workers Kit for very cheap and it should have all the tools you need except for the for maybe the Manual Rolling Mill Machine.
Do you have any more tips? I want to handcraft a set of rings by hammering, primarily for the look of a hammered surface. I plan for them to be durable, reworkable, and entirely made of precious metals and/or their alloys. I might make a piece for a necklace later on, idk
Amateur jeweler here, played with alloys of gold back in the early 2000s. You can also get various shades of pink. Purple is fun, maybe Nile will start a trend. Tempting to go back to jewelry. So much you can do with semi precious stones and metals.😊
I love the premise of Nile coming into the jeweler space with his chemist perspective and finding a more convenient way to work with a difficult alloy.
There is also a "blue gold", that means a gold intermetallic phase with indium or gallium. Purple gold is also known as purple plague because it is an unwanted corrosion process of gold junctions in microchips.
@@_Yuki.v. well in jewelry production and gem stone treatment are multible toxic and even radioactive means used. the manufactures use unharmful amounts
I worked in a Aluminum foundry. For degassing the metal the graphite rod had to be spinning with teeth at end to "chop up" the argon to grab more hydrogen. We also added strontium (less than 2%) to make the parts stronger
This is such a genuinely cool and insightful comment. It's so cool that you were able to bring experience from your work life into this neat purple gold video!
Hello, metalsmith and jeweler here! This process looked BRUTAL, especially as someone who consistently works with metal to shape it into something new. You did a fantastic job, though, and your resilience is insane!
@@takumi2023 honestly probably no other way to do it, with metals you usually are able to plastically shape it, but this thing can't even be bent😅 closer to working with a stone than to metal
@@RENO_K Not all metals are malleable or ductile, including a lot of steel alloys. They can only be shaped by grinding and cutting. You can't reshape knife steel after it's been quenched for instance. For some brittle metals with a super high melting point, like tungsten, you can't even really cast them- any material you would use as a mold would melt too. Tungsten is actually formed by sintering. Metal powder is put in a mold or built up in layers and each one is melted or heated to near its melting point with a laser and then it fuses to a single piece. But this limits the applications for the metal since it will have very small, jagged crystal structure and be brittle.
I took jewelry in high-school. We used a wax reverse casting. And then we measured out the metal we need in a crucible. We then had a sort of centrifuge arm that held the cast and crucible and would spin around forcing the liquid metal inside. Sadly I don't know how to do that without a whole chamber filled with Argonne to for the purple gold.
I like that you don't just act like you researched and got it right first try. Showing your trials and errors along the way, and bringing us all on the journey with you is what makes this channel truly special.
@@existenceispain_geekthesiren I saw a theory - he's satirizing the bots. (I'm surprised and a little impressed hat satirizing is an actual word, and not just one I created)
@@UTurnAtTheWelcomeCenterYe and it is possible because just for the first time he sanded it he said he sanded it for around 10 hours which is a lot of time to lose gold
As someone who uses sandpaper a lot, I can almost guarantee that the gold that you lost simply just got stuck in the sandpaper. Soft metal is very good at clogging sandpaper grit and with as much sanding as you claimed to have done, I'm genuinely surprised you didn't lose more than you did lol
I'm pretty sure he'd have had to have recovered the gold from that. It's pretty simple if you just burn the paper. Getting the sand out would be harder though.
@@GameDesignerJDG and you also have to remember that a lot of that “sand” is actually aluminum oxide. I’m no chemist, but I would think that introducing other chemicals into the mix would make recovery a bit more challenging lol
That looks absolutely BEAUTIFUL! I really dig that unintended design that it has! But I do think it would be a great idea to apply a layer of clear coat on it, which can help to minimize/prevent discoloration from occurring, from oils from your skin coming into contact with the purple gold itself; Thus being able to keep the ring more shiny for a longer period of time.
I wouldn't be surprised if this video has a genuine impact on the jewelry industry and purple gold becomes a lot more common because there is now a visual tutorial on how to do this stuff
I looked up the patent and I think I found the right one I don't know a ton about patents, so I'm probably reading this wrong, but it seems like it's expired I don't know for sure because it was submitted in 2000, but it wasn't granted until 2005, it lists an expected expiration of 2020, but because it's only listed as expected and it was granted in 2005, it's either already expired or it's going to expire in 2025
@@snod5436 What process would that be? It's not clear that the patent was required here for anything other than some essential information about "purple gold". I'm pretty sure that the general method smelting metal and adding a second metal to create an alloy isn't patentable. Annealing is also a ancient and standard metalworking process. Attempting to prevent oxidation or another gas sneaking in when the hydrogen leaves by surrounding the metal with a "noble gas" isn't exactly novel. The exact ratio of Gold (Au) to Aluminum (Al) and other elements used for a company's product might count as trade secrets if they were kept private, but also isn't patentable info afaik (i.e. the 81:19 ratio). It might be challenging to mass produce it and sell products (especially jewelry) due to the risk of patent infringement. And having read the patent and used thatinformation could complicate the situation. But I think this guy can probably make and sell as many purple gold bars as he likes without a problem, as long as he's doing just what's shown in the video.
Hi, was a jeweler when I was teen, and we'd sell used polishing pads to larger jewlers since lots of the gold we'd polish would microscopically end up there. So I'm sure the sandpaper and whatever you used to polish has some gold in it. So I wouldn't throw away any sandpaper or pads you used to polish if you wanna salvage some gold, cause it adds up quickly
I thought this too, as sanding is removing material. He didn’t show what happened to the sand paper, but did show multiple new sheets across all the attempts. 5g isn’t all that much, so it’s possible it got sanded away, dremeled, and polished away. Recovering the gold from those would interesting to see, though I imagine it would be time consuming.
@@BenjaminSeuser It actually wouldn't be all that hard but yeah time consuming. The good part is he has that part down already. Reduce the sandpaper to ash, Run the acid extract. Filter any trash out then pull the gold from the acid. I was going to use a method similar when I was extracting gold from pc components. ROM Chips using micro gold wire inside of them and incineration was the best method i found to get that out.
this isn't just a video of somebody making a ring out of purple gold, it's an entire story on the issues and even teaches us a lesson about crafting metals, to be resilient and keep trying
Or get lucky like the guy who accidentally made Nitinol by mixing Nickel and Titanium, bending it and leaving it under a heat lamp by accident. When he came back, he found out it bent back to the original form and the first shape memory allow was made :)
In the 80s at a company that made YAG lasers for industrial marking we wanted to try to put a darker mark on gold plated integrated circuit packages. For a POC, we sandwiched gold and aluminum using a yag transparent ceramic. We then flooded the laser chamber with argon to get the oxygen out and then blast it with the laser. The attempt totally failed but what we saw was the aluminum foil would turn to plasma which is what we wanted but that the gold itself no matter how much energy we threw at it would just move the heat away and would not melt or enter any state that would combine with the aluminum. It was a fun thing to try at least.
This man just casually playing with $5700 of gold, throwing it in chemicals, melting it into random shapes, and sanding and heating it like he knows what he's doing or something... Man, I am quite jealous of this dude's knowledge of chemistry. And now also his one-of-a-kind purple gold ring. That thing actually looks pretty cool.
You’re not going crazy about the gold loss - in my workshop, we call it ‘Fairy Tax’ - a tax paid to the fairies for good luck on the piece. Works every time 😅
Oh, interesting....kinda like the Angel's Share in distillery work. A little of your liquor volume is lost during the fermentation process due to evaporation~
@@Element0145 He properly did. But properly not the dust stick to the sand paper. You can only recover them by burning(or use the acid) the sand paper to ashes.
NileRed videos are honestly a perfect example of why “if at first you don’t succeed, try again” is a common phrase for a reason. Seeing how he continues to deal with problems as they arise and the suffering as more and more problems mount is pretty inspirational.
50:00 as someone who visited the West Australian Mint they ran sessions showing melting gold and explained that a small percentage vaporised into the air. So its on your ceiling, walls etc
Hi Nigel, its very common for sandpaper to cling on to some amounts of the item they are sanding. Usually as the item is sanded, some of it becomes powder fine enough that the moisture makes it cling to itself, or sometimes to the sand paper's grit. While careful preparation (i.e. using specific types of abrasive papers/belts) and environmental controls can help mitigate it, it is hard to reduce it to zero. This clinging is also why sandpaper loses its abrasiveness as you use it and have to be replaced once it gets fully gunked up.
yes i have found that you can treat the sandpaper beforehand to midigate the sticking of the material. i use this to save the sandpaper. but that might contaninate the experiment. i use chalk to do this.
I was about to suggest this, along with suggesting that if the sandpaper hasn't been thrown out, trying to refine the gold back out of it would be a good way to test this theory.
I truly support you in this video, bc you did your best, tried and tried until you succeed, you didn't give up, you stayed motivated until you made what pleased you, you fr knew what "patience is key" meaned
In case nobody's mentioned, your typical sandpaper is made of aluminum oxide, and it's possible the friction of sanding your piece was reapplying the oxide 😅 My partner is a machinist and has been teaching me lots about abrasives as we've been experimenting with lapidary over the past few months. He's the one who introduced me to your channel and I know he'd be thrilled to consult on that kind of stuff if you're interested 😊
Sandpaper that jewelers and other metalworkers use is generally silicon carbide, so using aluminum oxide would have been a strange mistake to make for someone so experienced and thorough. (Then again, it's weird he never mentioned let alone used gold dust, so who knows?)
Didn't think about that, but that does make sense. I was thinking maybe it might be a crystalline structure thing where sanding the metal down breaks down the crystalline structure so it reflects light differently and looks silver instead of purple
@@calmbbaer yeah my partner and I have been using silicon carbide and diamond paper for working obsidian over the past few months, so I happened to have the different types of sandpaper top of mind :) lucky that this video came out around the same time!
I just considered the difference between polished metal and etched metal. Often when metal it polished the crystal structure is interrupted leading to a different appearance to that of etched metal, where the crystalline structure is maintained. Seemed reasonable to assume that the act of sanding the metal was changing the way the surface interacted with light and as such changed the colour. Annealing appears to reset the metal structure in such a way as to re-establish the purple colour
The really cool thing about NileRed’s process is that at several steps he is essentially rediscovering several known phenomena and problem solving routes. Some of them were him reading the patent or metal working articles, yes, but some of them were trial and error followed by post hoc hypotheses, adjustments and retesting, the same sorts of processes the original discoverers went through. He took what is apparently one of the most difficult to work with metal alloys and produced a professional or near professional quality product without even the specialist knowledge in casting, degassing, etc that could be considered a prerequisite. This is a shining example of practical learning combined with creative application of prior knowledge.
@45:30 You could also try annealing the mold + freshly pour metal. As soon as the metal is poured, place the mold in the oven for 30 - 60 minutes to relieve any thermal stresses. This process is common in glass making to prevent from cracking.
There's literally only NileRed out there on RUclips to make me watch a 53 minute long video without skipping all the time. Mesmerising and relaxing are the words that come to my mind watching your videos. Keep up the good work, I love it.
@@arnefines2356 I heard about him, he often makes very long videos a videos. However it's not quite my taste, I am not very interested in body building. But I've heard he is becoming very popular.
by the sounds of it, it performs like a metamaterial, the crystalline structure redirects the light in a way it creates a purple color, whereas the material itself is supposed to be a silvery color. By sanding it, you remove the effects of the crystalline structure, but annealing it restores that crystalline structure, restoring the purple color. Very pretty! Very cool
Was going to say this. I make a lot of titanium jewellery, and it gets its different colours the same way. I'm really curious how this material would behave in the hands of someone with more craft skills.
@@aflameninjaafaik titanium works differently, it's just basically the thickness of the oxides on the surface increasing in thickness, matching the length of the waves of the color you see
@@dimitrijekrstic7567 It isn't changing the wavelenght, but filtering the light in a way that only some wavelenghts get fully reflected back while the others get trapped inside the material just enough so it isn't more visible when it escapes. Blue jay's feathers operates in the same way.
The missing gold is likely caught between the grains of the sandpaper you used. If you carefully burn the sandpaper, collect the dust, and then extract the gold, you'll likely get it back. At least, that'd be my guess.
the way some people think is amazing, this is entirely possible, i freaked out at the mention of him sanding it knowing some of the gold might have been wasted from it 😭
there's definitely some in the sand paper, but its very likely some particles went airborn from, very likely inhaled some of it too, so he won't get all of it back
As a Singaporean, I knew about Lee Hwa Jewellery's purple gold. I thought it was just a gimmick. But I had no idea that purple gold was such a rare metal, and that it was such a hard and tedious thing to make!
Oh my god, nilered. Having been a hobbyist Goldsmith for nearly 6 years, I have never even known about having a metal be coloured like this. The closest unusual colors I could work with were blue titanium, chrome/soapy titanium, pink or green gold (which is an even bigger pain to work with than this), but this, this is so amazing to see. I love how your chemistry path has somehow crossed into what is my passion in a way that inspires me further.
@@kirkc9643 bet. That's why brass, bronze and Nordic gold (variant of bronze) are also so very popular for people to work with, or wear. (Note, coat the brass with something like hairspray so it doesn't oxidize on your fingers).
I am, for the first time in my over 50 years, looking to buy some gold. Just to have it in my hands for the first time. And, as I understand it, it's not a bad investment! It generally doesn't lose value. LOL Back story, when I lived in S Florida, I used to dive, but more often just metal detected the beaches. I accumulated a pill bottle of 'scrap' gold. I really wanted to learn how to purify it. But then I had a roommate that allowed a friend of his to stay on the couch. In short, this person had a drug problem. The rest is obvious. My gold, my Sig P226, my coin collection, much of witch was given to me by my father. All gone. I still push it outta my head when I think back on it. I've considered buying leaf, cuz it't the best, but the geek in me is fascinated by the pure raw material as a sample. Any advice is welcome, and many thanks in advance.
I didn't think I would spend Christmas watching a one hour documentary about making purple gold, but here we are. Amazing work documenting all of your progress!
Right?! It's the 28th at 8pm where I am right now, granted I'm in a +12 timezone but there's no way anywhere in the world was the 25th nine hours ago. Unless youtube is just messed up and when comments are posted isn't correct.
7:57 you definitely got me...😂 I was even thinking before you dropped it about how you were carrying thousands of dollars in that fragile glass beaker.
I am a metallurgical engineer by trade and i have to say its really interesting to see you figure out the stuff we take for granted with our education. Good video! More metals please!
Because when you search the internet it doesn't really show up. I'm sure he'd love to see the link you found on how to make purple gold, cause it's seem like he already looked. @@OscarFerro
Respect. I know first hand how difficult and frustrating it is to cast metal with the minimum kit at home. Many times I’ve been on the tenth attempt to get something right and wasted days sanding. People often say online something cannot be done, until you’ve done it. For what it's worth, I would have CNC'd your walls as thin as possible and built in a little pouring shoot, then the expansion and contractions should break the mold not the ring.
"Gamma phase gold and aluminum structure" refers to the types of crystals and crystallization of the material. For example, steel's Gamma phase is austenite. The way the gold-aluminum alloy crystallizes determines how it looks in visible light and its physical strength.
I when you say it effects how it looks in visible light, do you know how? Would it affect the color (make it more silver or pink) or would it affect it in other, weirder light-is-just-magic-for-scientists ways?
@@Ezekiel_Allium When you look at the close up of the purple gold bar at 30:52, you can see white/gray streaks in the gold inbetween the particles of purple AuAl2. That is the other phase. The proportions that Nile used leads to incongruent cooling (one solid will freeze and then another will form in the gaps). So in this case, the purple AuAl2 phase forms first, and then the gray phase forms second. So yes, it does affect the color because the gold is essentially ~80% purple and ~20% silver.
@@Ezekiel_Allium it's due to the average size of the crystal. For example, regular gold crystals change size from gold to red, depending on how small the crystals are when you make it. Crystal size is determined by the cooling process. In this case, Nile does an anneal after the original cooldown where he brings up the purple gold back to 600 C, which changes the crystal structure of the Au-Al2 (annealing also increases mechanical strength).
In my opinion the gold loss was most likely to occur in the sanding/grinding phases, like getting stuck in the sandpaper. Not sure how you cleaned it up though.
My mom is a jewelry lover, specifically gold jewelry, and she was absolutely fascinated at the thought of purple gold. She told me that you should make chocolate gold and green gold next, since she can’t find it online anymore. 😂
I was thinking about watching a movie and suddenly remembered NileRed and said "eh, why not." This honestly had all the elements I was looking for. A big risk, character development, factual, educational, suspense, a jump scare, ect. Actually turned out to be a 10/10 movie lol Maybe there's a part 2 where the main character gets the girl by giving her the necklace? Only thing that could've made it better.
Idk man, getting the girl is so overdone imo. What about a sequel where instead of the girl, he gets the bro with the pendant, and they embark on a heartwarming tale of chemistry and broship, discovering the alloy for green gold in the process?
The missing gold is possibly brazed to one of the stainless spatulas you dipped in the molten gold. When I was learning gold smithing as a teenager I brazed my gold to a stainless measuring spoon 😂
@@PJ-oe6eu Yes, but if you've watched this channel, you should know how well nigel plans everything out, this video is most likely no exception and these mistakes are painfully obvious. Also, this project was done over the course of a couple months, so he definately had plenty of time to notice these mistakes
As a long time viewer, this has got to be one of if not the most impressive things you've made or done on this channel. The brutal process, the expensive materials, the lack of information available online, and you managed to complete a beautiful and unique piece of art/jewelry/metal. The break in the ring to allow for contraction, while not on purpose, worked perfectly. and you probably would have figured to try it after a few more attempts. Keep up the great work!
@@slevinchannel7589 Gold melted together with aluminum, preferably both be pure. Mix the molten metals together and let it cool into a hard crystal. While it may not look like the final product immediately, rather it'll look like a dark-colored blob of failure; "Simply" (loosely used word) break the product into pieces or in half. If done correctly, you should have pinkish-purple gold. This is mostly a summary of what Nile did. Except, he went through the added steps of completely purifying the gold by giving it a bath in hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. Once he had a form of acid (I don't remember the name) that presented as a bright orange, he washed it with hot water and hot distilled water. He then put in another chemical (very helpful, I know - I don't remember its name either) and shifted the form from a liquid to a powder. This form guaranteed that Nile had an absolute, pure output of gold. From here, he dried it via heating until all the moisture was gone, and he was left with a dry powder. From this point, you can then melt the powder with extreme heat, which will give you a blob of molten gold. As mentioned previously, this is where you add the aluminum, and wait for the final product.
I’m studying materials! This was fun from a materials perspective. “Gamma phase” is a type of crystal structure that’s dependent on the alloy percentages and the cooling process (Look up “alloy phase diagrams” and you’ll get some examples) Here, it seems that the crystal structure is what makes that pretty purple color, which is why sanding it causes the alloy to turn silver (destroyed the crystal structure) and why annealing it brings it back (crystal structure reforms during the annealing process).
Thanks for the simple explanation! I was wondering why... any of the colorations were depending on what was happening, and that helps make it clear for a layman like me. Very cool stuff!
@@volbla It really is... Ever have those moments where you just pause to look at what's around you, and think about all of the discoveries and all of the work that has gone into creating what you see? All of it basically just pulled up out of the dirt. It's easy to get cynical about modern technology and modern life... but it's also inspiring, and yeah, just simply mind blowing is the best way to describe it.
Phd student in metallurgy here. Looking at the gold aluminum phase diagram (and it’s pretty easy to predict from Hume-Rothery) gold and Al form a very strong FCC solid solution (gamma phase) up to 78 wt% where AuAl2 starts precipitating. It’s been established that AuAl2 is the purple phase. The silver is not the gamma being destroyed, it is the very brittle inter metallic being pulled out or smeared over by the mechanical action- the silver is simply the gamma matrix- at 30+ at% Al, I would expect the matrix to be mostly silvery, though obviously I haven’t done the band structure calculations to prove that.
I am seriously impressed, not only is the entire procedure mapped out in easy to follow detail, but the explanation of how and why the failed attempts happened... very well done, and this makes me want to try the same concept, maybe a pendant instead.
If you did not work it out the only suggestion I can make is to compress the metal in a ceramic mold in a vacuum chamber, heat it till it is molten, let it cool then anneal it. Get all your robots arms. Heat the bottom half of the mold from 4 sides and plop the metals in then compress the molten metal with a heated top half of the mold, it will push out any unwanted metal and form a perfect shape. Then you can mass produce it.
Some context from a Metallurgical Engineering student: those phases in the patent refer to the Au-Al phase diagram. Basically, you can tell what phases you can obtain depending on the temperature and proportion of the alloy. That's why the attempts in the video are different in color or hardness, he worked with different temperatures. When working with alloys always check the phase diagram to skip the first failed attempts of the video 😅 the final result is truly beautiful hopefully in the future the method is improved. Sorry if there are mistakes, English isn't my first language.
I'm not any kind of engineer but I'm a chemistry/physics psycho who happens to love metal and gems ( jewelries) as well. So I as watching I noticed to what the term gamma phase referred to once he had the point of annealing the color hue. Now I'm thinking to myself do you think it is possible to enhance the metal strength adjusting the gamma phase in order to fix the brittle problem?
@heronnfreitas8835 hello I haven't studied Au alloys yet, but it must be possible by interpreting the phase diagram. A quick search showed "coloured gold alloys" by Elma Van der LIngen, this paper is pretty simple and centered in the color only but surely at least one of the references talks about the brittle problem. It you have problem interpreting the paper you can read "How to Interpret Binary Alloy Phase Diagrams" by Wade A. Jensen. Tomorrow I may check Elma's references and see what I find.
@dougaltolan3017 hello I haven't found any direct answer but you can read "Special Colors of Precious Metal Jewelry: Present and Future High Carat Golds Do Not Tarnish?" It's references seen interesting I'll check tomorrow in detail
Metallurgical Engineer here, good job don’t forget the effect that different phases can precipitate depending on cooling rates. A lot goes into manufacturing
Yeah it would be extremely hard to get it all out. Most sand paper uses aluminum oxide which makes me wonder if the purple gold could have reacted with the aluminum oxide since it has aluminum in it.
Your browser is holding you back. Level up with Opera here: opr.as/12-Opera-Browser-NileRed
Ok
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts 💨
SUUUUPE DUDE
first jk, i love u nile
Hello
Fun fact: in the semi-conductor industry, this alloy is known as “purple plague” because it’s extremely detrimental to parts. Basically, if gold and aluminum contacts touch at high temp, some purple alloy naturally forms. This alloy is both brittle and a poor conductor, leading to electrical or mechanical failure. It was a big issue for a while, and Al and Au are some of the most common contact materials in chips. So yeah, fun facts for ya.
Edit: Wow, this blew up, haha. Glad to start some cool conversations and learning!
Very interesting thanks for sharing
one man's plague alloy is another man's shiny finger trinket
Grats, I give you 100 likes, on this, Christmas Eve.
My gold is better than NileRed’s gold
Glad someone else called it out. It's super obscure unless you're in the right industry, and then you hate it lol
One month on, Singaporean here and I just happened to stopped by Lee Hwa for some jewllery shopping. Asked the staff about purple gold and would you know it, the staff informed that this video was shared all over the company internally. Staff shared that Lee Hwa actually experienced a spike in international sales right after this video dropped, so they have Nile to thank for!
Betting on new jewelry companies to start rising up and making more polished purple gold than what's currently available. The competition begins...
You are correct. Lee Hwa's website have gone from an average of 20k viewers a month to a bit above 290k.
Thanks to Nile they most likely gonna have their best year.
THATS WILD
WHERE'S HIS CHEQUE???
This is so amazing ❤❤❤
Yeah, another future sale here
I love how the chemistry in this video isn’t complicated, it’s just Nile learning that casting metal is complex.
I'm totally down for this arc for Nile. Sometimes he doesn't need insane chemical recipes to make something exciting.
Turns out that materials science is pretty different from chemistry and just as complicated. There's a lot more to making a high performance alloy than just the right mix of elemental metals.
@@iankrasnow5383 but material science is partly chemistry. Especially when this is about alloys.
This video features a lot of manufacturing and material science, two things I did in mechanical engineering. I did very little chemistry in it
@@SURok695 Mainly engineering though
Nile really made himself a name in the history books. Respect. Obviously purple gold has existed before but Nile here just innovated on the fact on how to make this sort of gold economically feasible. Plus the knowledge itself of casting all these metals is always appreciated to be known by those like me who watched this video since the field of metallurgy is incredibly complex and can't be comprehened by those who don't know that much about this field. Awesome video and what an awesome achievement Nile. You should be proud.
The beaker drop had me in shambles until I realized it was just a bamboozle
Oh no....
same lmfaoo
My heart sank when I saw that then I swore at Nile
I about had a heart attack lmao
I literally yelled out loud in anger, frustration, and sadness. But then I realized that it had to be a prank, and I am very glad that it was.
I'm a jewellery maker, and I just watched this whole video utterly fascinated. The chemistry, the complexity of casting metal, and the artistry, all combined into an absolute thriller. When I studied jewellery making, I never got to cast gold for budget reasons, and I only know in theory how gold can be dissolved in aqua regia, and I'm just mindblown right now.
553 Likes And No Replies Let Me Fix That
@LOLOLOL69220 i already know you're a bot
Having studied jewelry making I kept wondering if he knew what a centrifugal caster is. That might have eliminated the last of the bubbles and cast the purple gold into the final form all in one.
@@CalophonMechanoChemistry?
this must be so satisfying for someone in the know lmao
I showed this video to my godfather who owns a large jewelry company and he told me he had tried to make this about 5 years ago and this was some of the finest work he had ever seen
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts.
you have autism@@p-__
That's interesting to hear! Do you think he would try again in the future?
@@p-__congrats? 🤨
Will he make it
The unevenness of the color is likely due to microsegregation of the alloy as it cooled in the mold. The "holes" are likely shrinkage porosity from cooling. You can pretty much weld them together by heating the stock and forging them (rolling) it together while hot.
GAME CHANGING COMMENT
If the holes are shrinkage porosity, then why would have degassing with argon worked? There seems to be a lot of research papers highlighting this as a problem.
The part with the Aqua Regia is exactly how George de Hevesy hid 2 Nobel Prize medals during WWII. To the soldiers who looked around his lab for valuable things, it just looked like a beaker of orange chemicals. After the war, he precipitated the gold back out and the Nobel Committee recast the medals from that gold.
Dude, that is amazing! Thanks for sharing!
didn't know this story. so cool
I knew that story from wayyyyy back in chemistry lab when we were playing with strong mineral acids.
Science wins again! Love it.
This is an amazing story. I think this would have been cool to hear in the video.
Remember that aluminum immediately passivates into aluminum oxide, so all bulk "aluminum" contains surface layer of aluminum oxide. You need to use chemistry magic to add PURE aluminum to the liquid gold with no surface layer. Perhaps suspended in a liquid. Add the liquid to the crucible with bubbling argon and slowly warm up the crucible evaporating the suspended liquid. Now you have pure aluminum you can add gold to.
You're also sanding / polishing with aluminum oxide. This is why it remained silver.
Do this: mix pure aluminum with no aluminum oxide, pure Gold. Bubble some argon. Pour into a mold, and put DIRECTLY into a furnace and do not let it cool below 600C. Let it sit at 600C for 24 hours, and cool down to room temperature over the following 24 hours. Then polish with stainless steel, stone, or some non aluminum compound.
I am going to do my own work with my goldsmith friend but you have much more resources.
Finally, you say you don't knowing where the gold went... But you were sanding for 10 hours (!) multiple times (!) and you ONLY lost 5 grams?
Burn the sandpaper! Burn it, I say! (I suspect it's in the crevices)
I had exactly the same thought @Wireball
The sandpaper had increased his value with those gold between de crevices 😂
@@Wireballthis was my guess too. Fun fact: gold purifying plants burn disposable bodysuits and air filters for extra gold recovery
It can hide in places you might not expect
@@Wireball Even just completely washing it might have recovered some of those lost 5 g. :p
Even if the paper doesn't require it, using water while sanding metals makes it easier to recover them because they'll be a slurry instead of dust that can get anywhere by just blowing in the general direction...
Whats crazy is you've advanced a field. no one makes cast purple gold jewelry because of the complications. You are now one of the best in the world at that specific task and made it look like a college students term project.
To be fair bro has a 6 figure laboratory
@@Devblivion 🤣 You're not wrong
Purple gold is ugly but...
He's a chemist doing material science lol
@@Devblivion That certainly helps in figuring out the correct process. But the actual gear you really need doesn't seem that expensive.
I mean, you need the beaker and the acids to pulverize your gold (and that seems to be optional, you can use other methodes) - you need some way to melt the gold, the argon-setup and a way to get your molds.
I think some mid 4 figures of gear and material (excluding the gold) to start you off.
Hi Nilered & subs, I use to work for a manufacturing jeweler and they use to keep all findings of precious metals, eg. Sweeping up after the day to collect all the precious metal dust made by eg. sawing or polishing down the jewelery, and that would be send to the metal refinery where they melt it down and extract the precious metal in it to buy it from you. Nothing goes to waste😊
It's absolutely fascinating that you ALWAYS include processes that went wrong or produced unexpected results. It makes me appreciate the hard work, time, and patience that you put into all of your projects even more.
I appreciate that he shows this because as anyone who’s taken a chem course can attest to, experiments never go how they’re planned so it’s nice to see that that’s not just a problem at the student level
Honestly that's by far the best part of his videos, the problem solving. If it was just a step by step on how to do chemistry it would be like reading a recipe, it isn't exciting. But finding roadblocks and manouvering around them with relatively limited equipment is a testament to ingenuity, creativity, and the indomitable will of human beings.
The failures are sometimes the funniest parts. It was fun seeing him make the cherry soda from the paint thinner, but it would not have been the same experience without including the mistake where he accidentally tear gassed himself.
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts 💨
@@p-__me too💭😫
I'm from Singapore and i grew up seeing Lee Hwa's purple gold ads and shop displays. I didnt know the purple gold was legitimate gold! My husband also thought there was a coating of purple substance, not actual gold. This is so interesting. Good job Nile on replicating it so perfectly.
I would have just used 24k casting grain like most sane jewelers would do.
Purple Gold was found and patented by a Professor in Singapore. Then Lee Hwa Jewellery brought the formula rights, and then make it Gold Heart’s exclusive. I used to work with Lee Hwa Jewellery, therefore, it’s part of the training.
spraying the gold purple and lacquering it would be a damn sight easier.
I was in Singapore back in 07 for some courses through the company I was working for. I remembered walking past some jewellry stores and they had purple gold jewellry for sale. As I had previously worked in a gold refinerary doing the Aqua Regia making 99.999% or Five Nines (sometimes higher) I was curious as to the process of making the purple gold. The sales team couldn't tell me the exact process but there had been a patent taken out on it.
well it's not actual gold, it an ally of about 80% gold and aluminium. Like the other gold ally with silver, or copper, that the jewelers sell as "gold".
"Im not usually into jewellery"
*Nile casually making himself grillz a few months ago*
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts 💨
He's right tho. He's unusually into jewelry.
@@kphaxx Exactly
He’s right tho
In the grillz video, he mentioned that grillz was really the only jewellery he liked.
You are simultaneously living my childhood potion making AND pirate treasure hunting dreams
This has to be one of the most well deserved patents. Not only figuring out how to make purple gold but refining the process so it can be strong and once it’s set into a shape then annealed into the crystal structure that gives it the purple colour. It must be near impossible to rediscover this without a deep, deep understanding of metallurgy.
Plus: Stuff disclosed actually works as described. Not all heroes wear capes, some sell jewelry.
He probably payed a lot of money for the patent
Metallurgy is freaking magic. I have an insane amount of respect for the researchers, engineers, and artisans that have put in the time and effort to understanding it. Every time I look at a phase diagram, I am reminded that there are some real geniuses out there.
Imagine making this stuff 1000 or so years ago. You'd be some kind of wizard/witch!
@@CrimsonA1 given the technology back then and the challenges involved I'd agree with the town folks ;)
i am a jeweler and goldsmith apprentice and seeing you drop the beaker "full of gold" game me heart palpitations and i almost started crying in Italian
yeah i seen that and was like "oh my god WHAT?"
MAMAMIA THE GOLD
@@pohkuangda6662I literally cackled when I read this
😂😂😂
Before he dropped the beaker I was thinking "Wow it would really suck if you dropped that..."
Casual 8k CAD beaker
The loss of Gold was almost certainly connected to the Sanding portion of your working with it. You likely have a significant amount that is still in the matrix of the sandpaper you used, and there is also a loss of gold in dust form through air movement. I would suggest using a wet sanding method in a container or water where the gold dust will be collected in the water of the container. I also saw when you hammered earlier pieces of purple gold, small pieces flew off due to the brittle nature of the metal. and because gold is so heavy it doesn't take much gold loss to amount to 5 grams. but it is still a lot of gold to lose. so, if and when you decide to work with gold alloys again, make sure you are using a vacuum with a filter that can collect the gold dust or better yet just sand the gold inside of a water filled container to that all of the abraded gold can be kept from being lost. Also not go hammering any of those pieces anymore because metal does form into crystals when freezing and if it is brittle like the purple gold, you made hammering it will cause the crystals to break apart and some of them will shatter. to get an idea of how to keep all of your gold in a form that will minimize loss you should watch Sreetips and his gold refining videos, but it does little to show how to keep your dust to a minimum. Work your gold in a different medium than air, work it in water, or rather sand it in water. Your Dremel can be hooked up to a flex shaft and you can do your shaping of the gold in water as well. this will prevent loss but may not stop it all. when working with precious metals, jewelers have to accept a certain amount of loss, and this loss is figured into the price of the Jewelry being made. Sure, jewelers collect as much dust and granules of the precious metals they work with but it can never be truly all accounted for This is just the nature of the world we live in.
Yeah it's absolutely hilarious that he says he has no idea how he lost it! The whole video long he's smashing stuff and pieces are flying off, tons of it going into the sandpaper, random blobs splashing out of the crucible, ...
I was watching the sanding.. I agree.. he was also pretty aggressive.. plus the dremel tool .. that’s a lot of loss .. but makes sense
Liked the comment so that Nile sees this.
My suspicion was it went into dust form and just kind of permeated his environment. But likely a good floor sweeping, plus brushing his clothes, and recovering metal from the sandpaper, would help.
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts
Same thoughts here.
The little arms of the ring are giving a little congratulatory hug. Job well done.
recap:
81 wt % GOLD
19% wt % ALUMINUM
- Prepare an inert gas (such as argon) and a melting station such as a furnace with a bubbling-capable apparatus made out of fused quartz (Alumina could be an alternative but must be tested)
- Make sure the gas if flowing towards the melting chamber (no bubbling needed yet) and it has removed as much oxigen/water as possible
- Melt the gold, the finer the particles the easier to measure and to melt too, precision is a MUST
- Throw the aluminum pieces on top of the gold puddle to allow easy melting and mixing with the gold
- Let it melt completelly, the hotter the easier to mix, but be careful because hot aluminum is VIOLENT. mix with graphite rod if possible, but make sure it's properly mixed.
- Proceed to the degassing phase, lower the bubbling apparatus and let it degas for AT LEAST 20 minutes, the bubles MUST be at a constant and decent rate. (ultrasonic vibrations may be used instead or in a combination, but the results must be tested still)
- Heat up a mold as much as humanly possible to avoid the alloy to freeze too quickly.
- pour the alloy into the mold and let it cool down slowly until room temperature.
(- at this point you can finish the shaping process, cutting the excess metal. remember that this alloy is not really workable.)
- Sand it and polish
- Anneal at 600ºC for about 20-30 mins
- Fall in love with the finished product.
thank you Nile for going through such an annoying process and explain us the process you followed so well. i'm on my quest to make a unique ring to propose to my girlfriend (but being poor sucks a lot) and my only desire is to home made it (to make it even more special) my idea is to accompany it with some artificial sapphire or ruby too (yeah, dreaming too high)
i'll make sure to show up on the patreon as a way to thank you.
Pin this.
Bro posted the recipe 💀
Good luck with your proposal dude :)
@@Flesh_Wizard Let him cook
7:50 As soon as the gold was completely dissolved, I thought to myself, man, the worst thing that could happen is if he spilled this beaker of $5,700 orange soda. I basically yelled out loud when I saw it slip.
dude, this exactly hahahaha i flipped out
I pictured dropping or spilling it as well! It definitely put me on edge haha.
He did the same thing with bromine lol
I was expecting the prank. Still gave me a heart attack
That was such an easy joke, considering he already did it once)
Aluminum die caster here. We have graphite tubes with hundreds of little holes in them. Think like a fish tank bubbler rock. The sole purpose is to degass our molten aluminum with argon! It was fun to watch you figure this out on your own. It took the casting industry about 50 years to do it!!!
Edit: we also put negative draft on all of our molds. I think you now know why!!! We have very expensive mold design and testing software that I would be happy to use to help you if you want to make another mold. Just let me know!
I hope he sees this and tries this once more.
Agreed
Uninterested in getting some of those tubes.
I wonder if the tubes are like fritted glass which makes mucho bubbles
its pretty cool to see two different sources, both professional and personal "hobby" project arrive at the same solution for a problem like this.
I used to work for a company that produces industrial compressors and vacuums like the ones installed in hospitals for their pneumatic equipment (think the tube a dentists uses to pull excess water and saliva from your mouth while they do cleanings an such.) we always installed "brass sponge" mufflers on our units for all of the exhaust and drain pipes. The brass sponge fittings also have tons of holes but I guess wouldn't work under such high heats. However I have seen them used alternatively as percolators for fume filters an such
A man approaches you, he smells of Raspberry perfume and hes wielding a Bismuth knife. His finger is adorned with a rare purple gold ring. Intoxicated by his homemade toilet paper moonshine, he smiles at you exposing custom gold grillz.
What do you do?
Can we just appreciate the fact that this guy took an arcane process only known to a few specialists and made an entire YT step-by-step that everyone can now see.
Congratulations, man!
Lee Hwa's not going to be happy 😂
"Purple gold is super difficult to work with" meanwhile he's making a whole ring of this stuff.
@@SkyEcho751lee hwa probably trying to scare away the competition
@@yanuk818They’re gonna be very exited. Millions of people now know that purple gold jewelry exists.
Lee Hwa Jewellery may be putting a hit out on him.
This is legitimately some stuff that may have never been recorded on camera let alone documented in this way. Fantastic work, NileRed. You should be very proud of this one.
May even help future companies that want to try and make this stuff. This video was very impressive.
I never knew elixir was real irl
He's the local chem wizard of YT. This is what youtube was made for. 💙
From now on jeweleries from all over the world trying to make purple gold will look at this video the same way we look at those extremely detailed answers from 2007 forums for ridiculously niche questions
Man really just spent $8000 on gold, bought a CNC machine, and spent days purifying and re-smelting metal just to make a ring he doesn't think he will wear all that often. Legendary.
It's about learning something, not having the thing you learned to make. I have a shop full of them too! Lol
But look, it's purple!
that's how sciene works
Anything for the content 😂
tbf the $8000 he spend will be still worth $8000 if he ever wants to sell it again
Nile is the modern Sauron making the one purple gold ring to rule them all
Love way you introduce the metals. Like, “here is my 5000 dollar bar of 24k gold, i considered smashing it, here’s me throwing it on the ground. Im going to disolve it now..” and then “i bought this aluminum off ebay, here is me showcasing it on the table, im not going to do anything to it it’s staying like this.”
I enjoyed that too. Also, good to see I'm not the only one it pushed this video to this week.
Right before he redissolved it again for the first time I thought "Wow he spent 5 grand and now it all looks like a bunch of grey junk". For some reason the thought didn't occur to me that you could just put it back in the aqua regia.
I feel like this man single-handedly expanded the purple gold community from almost nothing to something in the eyes of the people
frrr
A hundred percent
Smart marketing 👀😅
He just filled the entire Wikipedia page single handedly,
The patent US6929776B1 looks to have expired in 2020. Maybe there will be more purple gold jewelry coming around using this method.
Dude just completely reverse engineered, fully documented, and probably even improved a deeply proprietary jewelry process based on a one line recipe in a patent, what an absolute beast. I'm thinking most of your gold loss was in the sanding and grinding, especially if you didn't chemically extract the gold from the used sandpaper.
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts.
and now its public and non-proprietary, not requiring a patent!
I'm guessing that he did extract it chemically...
@@p-__ Scientifically impossible. Go away
@@kitsunekaze93 The entire point of patients is that you share the information with the public (no reverse engineering needed) and then the exclusive right to use it, defending with lawyers instead of secrecy.
That's amazing work. I love that you decided to just go with your last attempt. While not a perfect ring you'd get from a jeweler, what you have is something with charm and uniqueness. Every time you look at it you'll be reminded of the trials it put you through, only to come out as a success. It's a beautiful ring, well done!
He didn't have "steady hands" is all. XD
Smelting and casting are vastly complicated. I'm really impressed with how you trial-and-errored your way to the finish line. The ring is gorgeous
He finally reached level 2 in smelting!
The missing gold is likely from the sanding and polishing. Even if you got all the fine dust that piled up, there was still probably some left on the sandpaper, especially with the finer grains.
My farts are more purple than NileRed’s farts 💨
And casting. Some of the gold stuck to the crucible, unless Nile managed to get it out.
I agree atleast 95 percent of that 3 lost after the initial 1 percent lost from the 99.9 was from the sanding, the rest could have been some percent from the none gold or lost from the beaker.
You should attempt to make blue gold, it's a rare alloy of gold made possible using indium or galium in combination with the gold. The result is a really nice blue or cyan color.
YA it's so pretty aswell
Agreed. Would like to see him try it
Please do this
Please do this! Would be an awesome sequel to this video
I'd love to see this! I hope it won't be as hard as the purple gold.
MY HEART FRICKING SKIPPED A BEAT 😂7:50
Dude this is huge. You just provided a production process to small independent jewelers all over the internet for a really cool thing that the greater jewelry industry has dismissed as unprofitable. I have several ideas for how to improve your processes, based on my own past jewelsmithing experience as a hobby, and once I get my garage workshop set up, I can definitely see myself making some purple gold jewelry. Big thanks for sharing the info!
I hope you realize I'm subscribing to your channel and waiting patiently for you to join some of the few souls who've been willing to try their hands at AgAl alloy jewelry-ing! Here's wishing you good luck and god's speed on getting that garage workshop set up! I believe in you!
Good luck. Would love to see results
Rad. Artisans at work. Best of luck.
Except for one thing; the patent. It’s one thing to make small samples for personal use (like NileRed did here), but if you try to use this and sell the results, you’re going to have a lawsuit on your hands, or at least angry lawyers showing up with cease-and-desist orders. 😢
Tell us what you figure out. I'm not a jewelsmith but I love seeing people talk about things they love
I come from a family of Jewelers with an over 50 year history of being in the business. Purple gold is not the only interesting color you can find the alloy in. In the early 2000s Green Gold suddenly became very popular for a brief time. Rose gold has been very common place for a long time as has white gold. The most striking color of it in my opinion is an alloy of either gallium or indium. It looks kind of like Cobalt. When I heard you wanted to break that bar down with a hammer my heart skipped a beat. Gold is incredibly mailable, the purer the bar the soft it is. You can also get a Jewelry Workers Kit for very cheap and it should have all the tools you need except for the for maybe the Manual Rolling Mill Machine.
my farts are better than NileRed’s farts 💨
@@p-__ he can chemically synthesize farts (video idea)
Do you have any more tips? I want to handcraft a set of rings by hammering, primarily for the look of a hammered surface.
I plan for them to be durable, reworkable, and entirely made of precious metals and/or their alloys.
I might make a piece for a necklace later on, idk
Amateur jeweler here, played with alloys of gold back in the early 2000s. You can also get various shades of pink. Purple is fun, maybe Nile will start a trend.
Tempting to go back to jewelry. So much you can do with semi precious stones and metals.😊
Wow that sounds so cool! Can I intern for you guys lol 😂
I love the premise of Nile coming into the jeweler space with his chemist perspective and finding a more convenient way to work with a difficult alloy.
Worked better than when he tried to do the same with cookies.
He should patent his adaptations to the process.
He should team up with a youtuber that focuses more on metals like CodysLab or a materials scientist like Alpha Phoenix.
Watching this felt like I was watching alchemist from medieval times create the Philosopher's Stone. Amazing as always!
There is also a "blue gold", that means a gold intermetallic phase with indium or gallium. Purple gold is also known as purple plague because it is an unwanted corrosion process of gold junctions in microchips.
Green Gold exist too😮
75% of gold, 15% of silver, 6% of copper and 4% of cadmium. This alloy is of dark green color.
@@CUBETechiebut it's dangerous to wear cause of the cadmium right?
@@naftyloescher I believe so, since it's toxic
@@_Yuki.v. well in jewelry production and gem stone treatment are multible toxic and even radioactive means used. the manufactures use unharmful amounts
Nile: "I have no idea where all the gold went!"
Also Nile: *sanding, grinding, hammering*
💀
It's hilarious watching how Nile's knowledge base is kinda a mile deep, and an inch wide :D
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts
He said in the video that he collected all the dust and dissolved it with the rest.
Smashing some chunks through the lab 😂
I worked in a Aluminum foundry. For degassing the metal the graphite rod had to be spinning with teeth at end to "chop up" the argon to grab more hydrogen. We also added strontium (less than 2%) to make the parts stronger
Woah what’s this about strontium? Lol
This is such a genuinely cool and insightful comment. It's so cool that you were able to bring experience from your work life into this neat purple gold video!
hope nile sees this
O hello fellow foundry man. I am currently studying to work in a foundry
@@fromthefire4176yeah would love a follow up on that Strontium business.
I can’t remember the last time I watched a full 50min video. This was just awesome!
2:06 “But for some reason, I really felt that I can do it”
*50 minutes remaining*
Nile, you’ve done it again
I felt this in my adhd
This guy could get any freakin job he wanted and he's a chemist on RUclips
Wth I didn't even know that I just finished a 50min video until I read this comment...
Hello, metalsmith and jeweler here! This process looked BRUTAL, especially as someone who consistently works with metal to shape it into something new. You did a fantastic job, though, and your resilience is insane!
How would you have done this?
When he said "This wasn't as bad as I thought it would be" ... my first thought was "you've got more patience than I do buddy"
@@takumi2023 honestly probably no other way to do it, with metals you usually are able to plastically shape it, but this thing can't even be bent😅 closer to working with a stone than to metal
@@RENO_K Not all metals are malleable or ductile, including a lot of steel alloys. They can only be shaped by grinding and cutting. You can't reshape knife steel after it's been quenched for instance. For some brittle metals with a super high melting point, like tungsten, you can't even really cast them- any material you would use as a mold would melt too. Tungsten is actually formed by sintering. Metal powder is put in a mold or built up in layers and each one is melted or heated to near its melting point with a laser and then it fuses to a single piece. But this limits the applications for the metal since it will have very small, jagged crystal structure and be brittle.
I took jewelry in high-school. We used a wax reverse casting. And then we measured out the metal we need in a crucible. We then had a sort of centrifuge arm that held the cast and crucible and would spin around forcing the liquid metal inside.
Sadly I don't know how to do that without a whole chamber filled with Argonne to for the purple gold.
I like that you don't just act like you researched and got it right first try. Showing your trials and errors along the way, and bringing us all on the journey with you is what makes this channel truly special.
124 likes and no comments? let me fix that
True
And that’s what makes it interesting and fun
my farts are better than NileRed’s farts 💨
Great job Nile! That's truly a one of a kind ring. Very nice!
I honestly like the gap in the ring, it's unique and looks way nicer than I thought it would.
My farts are better than NileRed's farts
My thoughts exactly. When I saw the gap in the mold, my creative mind just kept yelling like; Keep it! Embrace it! Work with it!
@@p-__why the spam, man?
@@existenceispain_geekthesiren I saw a theory - he's satirizing the bots. (I'm surprised and a little impressed hat satirizing is an actual word, and not just one I created)
yeah
50:00 Remember the sanding? There is your gold, it got stuck in the sandpaper, or pushed onto the floor, or in the air, you get the point.
Or you inhaled the gold dust into your lungs.
@@UTurnAtTheWelcomeCenterYe and it is possible because just for the first time he sanded it he said he sanded it for around 10 hours which is a lot of time to lose gold
@@UTurnAtTheWelcomeCenter alr
Exactly what I was thinking. He collected the dust that fell off but didn't extract directly from all the sand paper.
This is why when sanding you should have something to collect your dust. So you can melt it into more gold if you mess up.
As someone who uses sandpaper a lot, I can almost guarantee that the gold that you lost simply just got stuck in the sandpaper. Soft metal is very good at clogging sandpaper grit and with as much sanding as you claimed to have done, I'm genuinely surprised you didn't lose more than you did lol
Yea metals u gotta grind and he didn’t grind it cuz sanding it didn’t work but grinding it would definitely work
WooooW!! I didn't think about that 🤔 sheer simplicity...brilliant!!
I'm pretty sure he'd have had to have recovered the gold from that. It's pretty simple if you just burn the paper. Getting the sand out would be harder though.
@@GameDesignerJDG and you also have to remember that a lot of that “sand” is actually aluminum oxide. I’m no chemist, but I would think that introducing other chemicals into the mix would make recovery a bit more challenging lol
Thats so obvious, he must have thought about that and just dumped the sandpaper into some acid to dissolve everything but the gold
That looks absolutely BEAUTIFUL! I really dig that unintended design that it has! But I do think it would be a great idea to apply a layer of clear coat on it, which can help to minimize/prevent discoloration from occurring, from oils from your skin coming into contact with the purple gold itself; Thus being able to keep the ring more shiny for a longer period of time.
I wouldn't be surprised if this video has a genuine impact on the jewelry industry and purple gold becomes a lot more common because there is now a visual tutorial on how to do this stuff
Well theres a patent on the process he used so only the company that owns is can sell it commercially.
I looked up the patent and I think I found the right one
I don't know a ton about patents, so I'm probably reading this wrong, but it seems like it's expired
I don't know for sure because it was submitted in 2000, but it wasn't granted until 2005, it lists an expected expiration of 2020, but because it's only listed as expected and it was granted in 2005, it's either already expired or it's going to expire in 2025
@@snod5436 there also are countries that will just not care about the US-based patent
@@snod5436 What process would that be? It's not clear that the patent was required here for anything other than some essential information about "purple gold".
I'm pretty sure that the general method smelting metal and adding a second metal to create an alloy isn't patentable. Annealing is also a ancient and standard metalworking process.
Attempting to prevent oxidation or another gas sneaking in when the hydrogen leaves by surrounding the metal with a "noble gas" isn't exactly novel.
The exact ratio of Gold (Au) to Aluminum (Al) and other elements used for a company's product might count as trade secrets if they were kept private, but also isn't patentable info afaik (i.e. the 81:19 ratio).
It might be challenging to mass produce it and sell products (especially jewelry) due to the risk of patent infringement. And having read the patent and used thatinformation could complicate the situation.
But I think this guy can probably make and sell as many purple gold bars as he likes without a problem, as long as he's doing just what's shown in the video.
@@Nworthholfwho cares about murica
Hi, was a jeweler when I was teen, and we'd sell used polishing pads to larger jewlers since lots of the gold we'd polish would microscopically end up there. So I'm sure the sandpaper and whatever you used to polish has some gold in it. So I wouldn't throw away any sandpaper or pads you used to polish if you wanna salvage some gold, cause it adds up quickly
This is gonna be it, plus the stuff that sticks to the crucibles
Thats probably where he lost the 4.9 grams
I thought this too, as sanding is removing material. He didn’t show what happened to the sand paper, but did show multiple new sheets across all the attempts. 5g isn’t all that much, so it’s possible it got sanded away, dremeled, and polished away. Recovering the gold from those would interesting to see, though I imagine it would be time consuming.
@@BenjaminSeuser It actually wouldn't be all that hard but yeah time consuming. The good part is he has that part down already. Reduce the sandpaper to ash, Run the acid extract. Filter any trash out then pull the gold from the acid. I was going to use a method similar when I was extracting gold from pc components. ROM Chips using micro gold wire inside of them and incineration was the best method i found to get that out.
This would also explain why it would turn silver when he sanded it that's for sure where the gold went
this isn't just a video of somebody making a ring out of purple gold, it's an entire story on the issues and even teaches us a lesson about crafting metals, to be resilient and keep trying
I wonder what the addition of other metals to the mixture would do to the properties and color of the final product.
Or get lucky like the guy who accidentally made Nitinol by mixing Nickel and Titanium, bending it and leaving it under a heat lamp by accident. When he came back, he found out it bent back to the original form and the first shape memory allow was made :)
ywnbaw
WHY DID THIS GET 800 LIKES IN UNDER 6 DAYS WTH
Common trans pfp W
In the 80s at a company that made YAG lasers for industrial marking we wanted to try to put a darker mark on gold plated integrated circuit packages. For a POC, we sandwiched gold and aluminum using a yag transparent ceramic. We then flooded the laser chamber with argon to get the oxygen out and then blast it with the laser.
The attempt totally failed but what we saw was the aluminum foil would turn to plasma which is what we wanted but that the gold itself no matter how much energy we threw at it would just move the heat away and would not melt or enter any state that would combine with the aluminum.
It was a fun thing to try at least.
This man just casually playing with $5700 of gold, throwing it in chemicals, melting it into random shapes, and sanding and heating it like he knows what he's doing or something...
Man, I am quite jealous of this dude's knowledge of chemistry. And now also his one-of-a-kind purple gold ring. That thing actually looks pretty cool.
Not that complicated. Hillbillys during the gold rush have been doing it for hundreds of years dissolving gold with aqua regia or mercury
You’re not going crazy about the gold loss - in my workshop, we call it ‘Fairy Tax’ - a tax paid to the fairies for good luck on the piece. Works every time 😅
Oh, interesting....kinda like the Angel's Share in distillery work. A little of your liquor volume is lost during the fermentation process due to evaporation~
That’s perfect 😂
i thought the angel's share was the part lost during aging? @@firegodessreiko
Pretty sure he didn’t add the stuff he sanded away , seems about right for the amount lost
@@Element0145 He properly did. But properly not the dust stick to the sand paper. You can only recover them by burning(or use the acid) the sand paper to ashes.
NileRed videos are honestly a perfect example of why “if at first you don’t succeed, try again” is a common phrase for a reason. Seeing how he continues to deal with problems as they arise and the suffering as more and more problems mount is pretty inspirational.
If at first you don't succeed, Blast them with your blue eyes white dragon again
my farts are better than NileRed’s farts 💨
You have a gift of explaining in a way that has your audience understanding effortlessly.
More teachers need to get their students engaged like this
As a chemist who is way older than you, I am floored by what you accomplished.
Having RUclips money to piss away on sweet equipment can't hurt.
Tell more
And continuing like my heart wasn’t beating out of my chest.
@@chrisprysok7634 he is still way smarter than you bud
@@maxballdepth6055 i dont think they meant that in a rude way just a vulgar term
50:00 as someone who visited the West Australian Mint they ran sessions showing melting gold and explained that a small percentage vaporised into the air. So its on your ceiling, walls etc
IT'S IN THE GODDAMN WAALS!
... in your lungs ... etc.
time to dissolve the building
nile can now say that his lab is made up of gold
@@delphicdescantit makes my dookie twinkle baby
Hi Nigel, its very common for sandpaper to cling on to some amounts of the item they are sanding. Usually as the item is sanded, some of it becomes powder fine enough that the moisture makes it cling to itself, or sometimes to the sand paper's grit. While careful preparation (i.e. using specific types of abrasive papers/belts) and environmental controls can help mitigate it, it is hard to reduce it to zero. This clinging is also why sandpaper loses its abrasiveness as you use it and have to be replaced once it gets fully gunked up.
This was my first thought, too, having just casually sanded a lot of sets of dice to mirror-shines.
He needed a file.
Lots jewelers use files for roughing
yes i have found that you can treat the sandpaper beforehand to midigate the sticking of the material. i use this to save the sandpaper. but that might contaninate the experiment. i use chalk to do this.
I was about to suggest this, along with suggesting that if the sandpaper hasn't been thrown out, trying to refine the gold back out of it would be a good way to test this theory.
Also, once the abrasives are loose from the paper, they can contaminate the metal.
Just something to think about when casting
I truly support you in this video, bc you did your best, tried and tried until you succeed, you didn't give up, you stayed motivated until you made what pleased you, you fr knew what "patience is key" meaned
In case nobody's mentioned, your typical sandpaper is made of aluminum oxide, and it's possible the friction of sanding your piece was reapplying the oxide 😅
My partner is a machinist and has been teaching me lots about abrasives as we've been experimenting with lapidary over the past few months. He's the one who introduced me to your channel and I know he'd be thrilled to consult on that kind of stuff if you're interested 😊
lol i didn’t know that, funny but interesting and educational 🤦♂️👍
Sandpaper that jewelers and other metalworkers use is generally silicon carbide, so using aluminum oxide would have been a strange mistake to make for someone so experienced and thorough. (Then again, it's weird he never mentioned let alone used gold dust, so who knows?)
Didn't think about that, but that does make sense. I was thinking maybe it might be a crystalline structure thing where sanding the metal down breaks down the crystalline structure so it reflects light differently and looks silver instead of purple
@@calmbbaer yeah my partner and I have been using silicon carbide and diamond paper for working obsidian over the past few months, so I happened to have the different types of sandpaper top of mind :) lucky that this video came out around the same time!
I just considered the difference between polished metal and etched metal. Often when metal it polished the crystal structure is interrupted leading to a different appearance to that of etched metal, where the crystalline structure is maintained. Seemed reasonable to assume that the act of sanding the metal was changing the way the surface interacted with light and as such changed the colour.
Annealing appears to reset the metal structure in such a way as to re-establish the purple colour
The really cool thing about NileRed’s process is that at several steps he is essentially rediscovering several known phenomena and problem solving routes. Some of them were him reading the patent or metal working articles, yes, but some of them were trial and error followed by post hoc hypotheses, adjustments and retesting, the same sorts of processes the original discoverers went through. He took what is apparently one of the most difficult to work with metal alloys and produced a professional or near professional quality product without even the specialist knowledge in casting, degassing, etc that could be considered a prerequisite. This is a shining example of practical learning combined with creative application of prior knowledge.
Yep. That's what every woodworker goes through, sculptor, artists.
I could not have summarized why I like watching his videos better.
@45:30 You could also try annealing the mold + freshly pour metal. As soon as the metal is poured, place the mold in the oven for 30 - 60 minutes to relieve any thermal stresses. This process is common in glass making to prevent from cracking.
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts 💨
17:23 The fact that this random redditor just had his ring turn purple without any efforts baffles me
There's literally only NileRed out there on RUclips to make me watch a 53 minute long video without skipping all the time. Mesmerising and relaxing are the words that come to my mind watching your videos. Keep up the good work, I love it.
Sam Sulek..?
@@arnefines2356 I heard about him, he often makes very long videos a videos. However it's not quite my taste, I am not very interested in body building. But I've heard he is becoming very popular.
holy shit didnt even realise it was 53 minutes.
💯
And I know that we want it to be longer
The split in the ring is actually really beautiful. I like how you managed to make it symmetrical along the split too.
My farts are better than NileRed's farts
@@p-__ Bro what
@@p-__hope someone sees this
by the sounds of it, it performs like a metamaterial, the crystalline structure redirects the light in a way it creates a purple color, whereas the material itself is supposed to be a silvery color. By sanding it, you remove the effects of the crystalline structure, but annealing it restores that crystalline structure, restoring the purple color. Very pretty! Very cool
Was going to say this. I make a lot of titanium jewellery, and it gets its different colours the same way. I'm really curious how this material would behave in the hands of someone with more craft skills.
Those sure are some big words, but redirecting light doesn't change it's wavelenght/color 😂 nice try tho
@@aflameninjaafaik titanium works differently, it's just basically the thickness of the oxides on the surface increasing in thickness, matching the length of the waves of the color you see
@@dimitrijekrstic7567 It isn't changing the wavelenght, but filtering the light in a way that only some wavelenghts get fully reflected back while the others get trapped inside the material just enough so it isn't more visible when it escapes. Blue jay's feathers operates in the same way.
@@dimitrijekrstic7567yeah nah what they said checks out. As an optician I know my way around how light works oddly with some materials
My heart just dropped when the beaker dropped💀😭
The missing gold is likely caught between the grains of the sandpaper you used. If you carefully burn the sandpaper, collect the dust, and then extract the gold, you'll likely get it back. At least, that'd be my guess.
the way some people think is amazing, this is entirely possible, i freaked out at the mention of him sanding it knowing some of the gold might have been wasted from it 😭
there's definitely some in the sand paper, but its very likely some particles went airborn from, very likely inhaled some of it too, so he won't get all of it back
@@Lucas-po6mn He can try to extract his lungs and make it burn to get all the gold he inhaled
@@paulsernine5302🤣
It's Definitely in the sandpaper and dust created.
As a Singaporean, I knew about Lee Hwa Jewellery's purple gold. I thought it was just a gimmick. But I had no idea that purple gold was such a rare metal, and that it was such a hard and tedious thing to make!
Yea this is so normal here that I was surprised to hear that it only exists in SG.
It's not a single metal, it's an alloy
oh I love your nickname so much!
I just rewatched it two months ago. I wish they'd release more...
@@adeemuff did you watch the latest card captor sakura clear card season?
@@everope aye, you know what I mean 🙂
Oh my god, nilered. Having been a hobbyist Goldsmith for nearly 6 years, I have never even known about having a metal be coloured like this. The closest unusual colors I could work with were blue titanium, chrome/soapy titanium, pink or green gold (which is an even bigger pain to work with than this), but this, this is so amazing to see. I love how your chemistry path has somehow crossed into what is my passion in a way that inspires me further.
One of the main appeals of gold is the gold 'colour'.
@@kirkc9643 bet. That's why brass, bronze and Nordic gold (variant of bronze) are also so very popular for people to work with, or wear. (Note, coat the brass with something like hairspray so it doesn't oxidize on your fingers).
Wayyy
I am, for the first time in my over 50 years, looking to buy some gold. Just to have it in my hands for the first time. And, as I understand it, it's not a bad investment! It generally doesn't lose value. LOL
Back story, when I lived in S Florida, I used to dive, but more often just metal detected the beaches. I accumulated a pill bottle of 'scrap' gold. I really wanted to learn how to purify it. But then I had a roommate that allowed a friend of his to stay on the couch. In short, this person had a drug problem. The rest is obvious. My gold, my Sig P226, my coin collection, much of witch was given to me by my father. All gone. I still push it outta my head when I think back on it.
I've considered buying leaf, cuz it't the best, but the geek in me is fascinated by the pure raw material as a sample.
Any advice is welcome, and many thanks in advance.
@friskfromutoh I'd love to see that too
7:49 i felt that. it sent chills down my spine
I didn't think I would spend Christmas watching a one hour documentary about making purple gold, but here we are.
Amazing work documenting all of your progress!
😂😂 I didn't realise I spent an hour watching this
Its the 26th wdym
Something about timezones are VERY confusing right now.
Right?! It's the 28th at 8pm where I am right now, granted I'm in a +12 timezone but there's no way anywhere in the world was the 25th nine hours ago. Unless youtube is just messed up and when comments are posted isn't correct.
@@NFBartos like its 2 40 pm on the 28th for me and 14 minus 23 hours means it was on the 27th. I just messed up the math earlier.
Never in my life have I made it through 53 minutes of chemistry, but this channel is gold… pure purple gold
Wait til you see him turn gloves into grape soda
Ummmmmmhhh actshually pure purple gold doesnt exist since its alloy🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓
I truly believe that purple gold will become much more popular in jewelry after this video.
From people wanting it, From people finding out how to make it or both?
@@arran4285 a bit of both.
I thought the same thing. I really want the heart-shaped earrings they sold on the site.
yes
Or use it to hide your stash
7:57 you definitely got me...😂
I was even thinking before you dropped it about how you were carrying thousands of dollars in that fragile glass beaker.
I am a metallurgical engineer by trade and i have to say its really interesting to see you figure out the stuff we take for granted with our education. Good video! More metals please!
That's what I was thinking all the time: why doesn't he just ask someone who knows?
@@OscarFerro its always more fun to figure stuff out yourself
where do u get that sort of education? do universities even know how to teach that stuff?
Because when you search the internet it doesn't really show up. I'm sure he'd love to see the link you found on how to make purple gold, cause it's seem like he already looked.
@@OscarFerro
@@Dark.Syndicate Yes, materials engineering
Respect. I know first hand how difficult and frustrating it is to cast metal with the minimum kit at home. Many times I’ve been on the tenth attempt to get something right and wasted days sanding. People often say online something cannot be done, until you’ve done it. For what it's worth, I would have CNC'd your walls as thin as possible and built in a little pouring shoot, then the expansion and contractions should break the mold not the ring.
hi
@@EdiiEliHi
Why not just CNC the ring instead of casting it?
@@paranoidzkitszo Because it's cheating 😂
HEY BRAINFOO
"Gamma phase gold and aluminum structure" refers to the types of crystals and crystallization of the material. For example, steel's Gamma phase is austenite. The way the gold-aluminum alloy crystallizes determines how it looks in visible light and its physical strength.
I when you say it effects how it looks in visible light, do you know how? Would it affect the color (make it more silver or pink) or would it affect it in other, weirder light-is-just-magic-for-scientists ways?
@@Ezekiel_Allium When you look at the close up of the purple gold bar at 30:52, you can see white/gray streaks in the gold inbetween the particles of purple AuAl2. That is the other phase. The proportions that Nile used leads to incongruent cooling (one solid will freeze and then another will form in the gaps). So in this case, the purple AuAl2 phase forms first, and then the gray phase forms second. So yes, it does affect the color because the gold is essentially ~80% purple and ~20% silver.
@@Ezekiel_Allium it's due to the average size of the crystal. For example, regular gold crystals change size from gold to red, depending on how small the crystals are when you make it. Crystal size is determined by the cooling process. In this case, Nile does an anneal after the original cooldown where he brings up the purple gold back to 600 C, which changes the crystal structure of the Au-Al2 (annealing also increases mechanical strength).
At 39:00 I had a passing thought that you were going to lick the gold off the spoon as if you were cooking. Lol
In my opinion the gold loss was most likely to occur in the sanding/grinding phases, like getting stuck in the sandpaper. Not sure how you cleaned it up though.
You could burn the sand paper away or just dissolve the gold left on it, he was pretty careful about not losing any of the loose dust.
I was going to say the same exact thing, but I figured I would find a comment similar to what I was going to say lol
My mom is a jewelry lover, specifically gold jewelry, and she was absolutely fascinated at the thought of purple gold. She told me that you should make chocolate gold and green gold next, since she can’t find it online anymore. 😂
There is green gold, I have a green gold band.
Blue gold?
@@orientof So plutonium?
the chocolate gold is just chocolate wrapped in foil ;)
green gold is corroded copper lol.
I was thinking about watching a movie and suddenly remembered NileRed and said "eh, why not." This honestly had all the elements I was looking for. A big risk, character development, factual, educational, suspense, a jump scare, ect. Actually turned out to be a 10/10 movie lol
Maybe there's a part 2 where the main character gets the girl by giving her the necklace? Only thing that could've made it better.
Idk man, getting the girl is so overdone imo. What about a sequel where instead of the girl, he gets the bro with the pendant, and they embark on a heartwarming tale of chemistry and broship, discovering the alloy for green gold in the process?
When I heard he was turning it into a ring I was hoping for a surprise proposal. I don't even know if Nile is single or not.
@@bungerbungerbunger246 100% something I would watch and stan. Pure art
"This honestly had all the elements I was looking for." is the perfect review for a chemistry video lol
@@biffwellington5509 bruh I didn't even realize that XD
12:05 GOOD MORNING WHOEVER IS SLEEPING
wow thats bright
The missing gold is possibly brazed to one of the stainless spatulas you dipped in the molten gold. When I was learning gold smithing as a teenager I brazed my gold to a stainless measuring spoon 😂
yeah ands the sand paper probably
He claims that he was extremely careful with all that stuff, I really doubt he is dumb enough to make such mistakes
@@Bo0mberNo one is above making a mistake, even when they are being careful.
What should have been used other than the spatula to avoid ruining the yield? Or how could he have removed the gold from the spatula afterwards?
@@PJ-oe6eu Yes, but if you've watched this channel, you should know how well nigel plans everything out, this video is most likely no exception and these mistakes are painfully obvious. Also, this project was done over the course of a couple months, so he definately had plenty of time to notice these mistakes
As a long time viewer, this has got to be one of if not the most impressive things you've made or done on this channel. The brutal process, the expensive materials, the lack of information available online, and you managed to complete a beautiful and unique piece of art/jewelry/metal. The break in the ring to allow for contraction, while not on purpose, worked perfectly. and you probably would have figured to try it after a few more attempts. Keep up the great work!
In Short, the Recipe is what?
@@slevinchannel7589 Gold melted together with aluminum, preferably both be pure. Mix the molten metals together and let it cool into a hard crystal. While it may not look like the final product immediately, rather it'll look like a dark-colored blob of failure; "Simply" (loosely used word) break the product into pieces or in half. If done correctly, you should have pinkish-purple gold.
This is mostly a summary of what Nile did. Except, he went through the added steps of completely purifying the gold by giving it a bath in hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. Once he had a form of acid (I don't remember the name) that presented as a bright orange, he washed it with hot water and hot distilled water. He then put in another chemical (very helpful, I know - I don't remember its name either) and shifted the form from a liquid to a powder. This form guaranteed that Nile had an absolute, pure output of gold. From here, he dried it via heating until all the moisture was gone, and he was left with a dry powder. From this point, you can then melt the powder with extreme heat, which will give you a blob of molten gold. As mentioned previously, this is where you add the aluminum, and wait for the final product.
29:51 when you get up to grit this high, it really pays to start wet sanding. It helps avoid those clumps on the paper, and helps get a better finish.
My farts are better than NileRed’s farts.
@@p-__lol
@@p-__what the fuck is that supposed to mean 💀
I'm not totally sure how I ended up here, but I'm glad I stayed for the entire ride
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I’m studying materials! This was fun from a materials perspective. “Gamma phase” is a type of crystal structure that’s dependent on the alloy percentages and the cooling process (Look up “alloy phase diagrams” and you’ll get some examples) Here, it seems that the crystal structure is what makes that pretty purple color, which is why sanding it causes the alloy to turn silver (destroyed the crystal structure) and why annealing it brings it back (crystal structure reforms during the annealing process).
Thanks for the simple explanation! I was wondering why... any of the colorations were depending on what was happening, and that helps make it clear for a layman like me.
Very cool stuff!
Ooh, that's awesome! Materials science is always kind of mind blowing.
@@volbla It really is... Ever have those moments where you just pause to look at what's around you, and think about all of the discoveries and all of the work that has gone into creating what you see? All of it basically just pulled up out of the dirt.
It's easy to get cynical about modern technology and modern life... but it's also inspiring, and yeah, just simply mind blowing is the best way to describe it.
This is exactly what I was thinking, just like magnets!! Thank you for confirming!
Phd student in metallurgy here. Looking at the gold aluminum phase diagram (and it’s pretty easy to predict from
Hume-Rothery) gold and Al form a very strong FCC solid solution (gamma phase) up to 78 wt% where AuAl2 starts precipitating. It’s been established that AuAl2 is the purple phase. The silver is not the gamma being destroyed, it is the very brittle inter metallic being pulled out or smeared over by the mechanical action- the silver is simply the gamma matrix- at 30+ at% Al, I would expect the matrix to be mostly silvery, though obviously I haven’t done the band structure calculations to prove that.
I am seriously impressed, not only is the entire procedure mapped out in easy to follow detail, but the explanation of how and why the failed attempts happened... very well done, and this makes me want to try the same concept, maybe a pendant instead.
That's just Good Science! Clearly explained, repeatable, and open about errors and their results! Hell yeah
End product looks cool af. And considering you're a chemist and not a jewelry maker, I'd say you did an excellent job.
After seeing him making grills, I had no doubt in his ability while watching this video
yeah I like it too !
If you did not work it out the only suggestion I can make is to compress the metal in a ceramic mold in a vacuum chamber, heat it till it is molten, let it cool then anneal it. Get all your robots arms.
Heat the bottom half of the mold from 4 sides and plop the metals in then compress the molten metal with a heated top half of the mold, it will push out any unwanted metal and form a perfect shape. Then you can mass produce it.
Some context from a Metallurgical Engineering student: those phases in the patent refer to the Au-Al phase diagram. Basically, you can tell what phases you can obtain depending on the temperature and proportion of the alloy. That's why the attempts in the video are different in color or hardness, he worked with different temperatures. When working with alloys always check the phase diagram to skip the first failed attempts of the video 😅 the final result is truly beautiful hopefully in the future the method is improved. Sorry if there are mistakes, English isn't my first language.
I'm not any kind of engineer but I'm a chemistry/physics psycho who happens to love metal and gems ( jewelries) as well. So I as watching I noticed to what the term gamma phase referred to once he had the point of annealing the color hue. Now I'm thinking to myself do you think it is possible to enhance the metal strength adjusting the gamma phase in order to fix the brittle problem?
Would it be maleable at higher than room temperature, enabling hot forging to make a ring?
@heronnfreitas8835 hello I haven't studied Au alloys yet, but it must be possible by interpreting the phase diagram. A quick search showed "coloured gold alloys" by Elma Van der LIngen, this paper is pretty simple and centered in the color only but surely at least one of the references talks about the brittle problem. It you have problem interpreting the paper you can read "How to Interpret Binary Alloy Phase Diagrams" by Wade A. Jensen. Tomorrow I may check Elma's references and see what I find.
@dougaltolan3017 hello I haven't found any direct answer but you can read "Special Colors of Precious Metal Jewelry: Present and Future High Carat Golds Do Not Tarnish?" It's references seen interesting I'll check tomorrow in detail
Metallurgical Engineer here, good job don’t forget the effect that different phases can precipitate depending on cooling rates. A lot goes into manufacturing
I think we need a NileGold channel where Nigel does metalworking like this. I love the new kind of thing with his usual style.
This is such a good idea !
NileJewelery
He should team up with a custom jeweler who can help him make this stuff even better
Most of your missing gold is probably on the sanding paper sheets! Great work! Looks amazing!
This was exactly my thought too. I would almost guarantee this was where a portion of the missing gold wound up. :)
YUP @@rickhunter1614
Indeed.
Yeah it would be extremely hard to get it all out. Most sand paper uses aluminum oxide which makes me wonder if the purple gold could have reacted with the aluminum oxide since it has aluminum in it.
my thoughts exactly