Refiners: Who would y'all suggest?

Head hurts I'll just send my stuff to ewasted!!! He can do all the comparisons he wants with the refiner.
Ahh headache gone. I didn't know he was a doctor too...
I know this is an old post.
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Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks

The best way to make sure each refiner is being fair, is to process your material and take 3 correct representative samples of the resulting material. In this way the refiner knows you are serious and is far less likely to rip you off. They take one sample and do an assay on your material, then gives you the results. Then you take a sample for yourself, and a ref sample. If you disagree with their assay, you have yours assayed. At that time you can either decide to split the difference between the two samples and come to a compromise, or you can have the third sample assayed by a referee assayer that will not be bias towards either party. At that point you can either take the ref assay, or decide to average the three, it all depends on what type of contract you sign for processing.

My point is that you should be properly representing your material, having a representative sample taken, assayed, so you at least know what the average yield should be once your material is fully processed. You should also make sure that you are getting a "full accountability". If not, they will not pay you on the other metals that are not specifically mentioned in any contract you sign to process your material. Full accountability means you want to be fully paid on all values, including Pb, Cu, Zn, Sn, etc etc etc. In large amounts these other metals add up fast.



Also, make sure the refiner you are dealing with is doing the actual refining, a lot of places send material out to secondary refiners to process. There are several people in Northern California who will accept material, lead you to believe they are processing here, but they ship it out of state to do so. The cost in shipping obviously will affect the yield, even if they are not telling you it does, it simply costs more to process.



I didn't take any offense. When I stated "who cheats you least" I really meant "why let anyone cheat you". It's similar to when I hear people say they are going to vote for the lesser of two evils. My view is why vote for anyone if they are all evil, you are in the end still voting for evil. Fortunately with refiners, if you conduct yourself well, and represent your material properly, you leave little room for them to cheat you. It's just like my mechanic analogy, if you are timing them on your watch, and watching what they do, they will be far less likely to cheat you or claim more labor was involved than there actually was. Also, refiners are just like mechanics, it's hard to find an honest one, so if you do keep them close and treat them right.

Scott