4metals said:As it will turn out, the only gold in that pile is the 1.5 grams that were in your sample. guarantee, I've seen it many times with guys who bought piles of African ore that assayed high. This scenario is a classic.
Thanks for the warning. However I don't think there could be an fraud of such nature. It was casual encounter and I wasn't looking anything to buy neither he was looking anything to sell. It is only after 1 hour of conversation , when he understood my passion for finding gold that he offered this. And we don't know if the owner will sell this pile of mud, because he probably could suspect there is something in it. So I am worried more about measuring the amount of gold, and extraction costs , if there is any gold there, because the old man may be wrong too about the 500 grams of gold per ton.
BTW, I was reading the book you recommended (Hokes) and on page 17 he says:
Code:
Crude gold ore sometimes contains arsenic, selenium, tellurium,
and other of the less common elements. These do not come within
the scope of this book, and materials containing them should not
be refined according to the methods here given.
And that could be my case, so I wonder if dissolving this mud sample in aqua regia and them precipitating it with Na2SO3 will work at all?