Old jewelry scrap being weighed in upon receipt.

The scrap in front of the crucible and furnace.

The scrap being loaded into the crucible that has been placed into the furnace.

Once melted the scrap is stirred to ensure that is completely melted and well mixed.

A pin sample that was just taken being removed from the furnace.  A pin sample is obtained by inserting a thin evacuated glass tube into the molten metal.  The hot metal melts the end off the tube and the vacuum sucks the molten metal up into the tube.  The temperature of the tube above the melt being much less than the molten metal causes the metal sucked up to solidify immediately.  The pin is then withdrawn which is what you see here.

Here are three pins, two that have already been cleaned.  The third is having the glass tapped off.  Later small pieces (about a gram or so) will be cut from the pin and will be analyzed in an X-ray fluorescence machine and/or sent for an even more accurate fire assay.

The gold is poured into a form.  After pouring the crucible is examined carefully (and scraped out if necessary) to make sure all the gold has been removed.

The form is flipped over and the bar removed.

The bar is cooled in a bath of water and slag clinging to the bar is chipped off.  The slag comes from borax which is added as a flux and other things such as glass and stones that might have been in the jewelry.

The bar is further cleaned after removing from the water bath.

It is cleaned against a wire brush to ensure all extraneous material is removed.