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Balances and Checks

While in most cases it's fair to say that refiners know your scrap better than you do, that doesn’t imply that refiners are perfect; they make mistakes, too. And when it comes to this business, a mistake can be quite costly to the customer involved. But if you’ve got a good handle on what you’re using and what kind of filings and sweeps you’re turning in, you can have a similarly good take on what should be coming back to you.

Steve Midgett, a designer from Franklin, North Carolina, has a very distinct understanding of what goes off to the refiner. Because he uses the mokumé gane technique, where layers of metals are stacked and bonded together under heat and pressure, he knows almost to the pennyweight how much of each type of metal is used and how much is left on the bench. This knowledge came in handy a few years ago.

“In my work, I use metals in certain proportions,” he says. “In this case I was using palladium and silver laminated together. I knew what percentage should be silver and what percentage should be palladium. When I got enough together, I sent it in to be refined. Shortly thereafter, I got a check back, and I knew it couldn’t be right.”

As anyone would, Midgett picked up the phone and called his refiner. “I told them I didn’t think their assay was right, and why,” he says. He took the time to explain to the refiner what metals he used and in what proportions; he told them how much he’d sent to them, to the pennyweight. And he asked them to re-assay the lot. The refiner did, and Midgett received a check shortly thereafter for, as he says, “enough to bring it up to what I’d expected.”

That experience changed one thing about Midgett’s refining habits. Now, prior to sending off his scrap, he melts everything down and pours it into an ingot. He drills it and has an independent assay done on the sample before he sends it off. “That way, I have a really good idea of what’s in there, and I can tell if [my refiner] is not finding the precious metal it contains,” he says.

The point is not to suggest that refiners have the final say in the transaction. Rather, it’s to point out that both sides of the refining equation need to be aware of what’s going into the scrap and what’s coming out, and both need to be able to communicate when something seems awry.