# just ok, good, great, OMG?



## boarteats (Apr 16, 2018)

I stumbled across gold in my backyard stream. Was collecting magnetite to smelt iron. It never seriously occurred to me that there might be gold in the stream as well. Lol. So, I've now gone from amateur iron smelting to amateur gold prospecting. Here's a nube question for the pros.

Based on the description below, what would your initial gut reaction be if you were me: meh, mildly interested, excited, or OMG!? ...trying to figure out how much time/effort to put into this creek. I plan on working this as a side hobby at least.

I've pulled a few grams of gold from my first test hole. Dug out maybe a cubic foot of dirt in total. Gold has been in the form of a couple tiny nuggets, gold on quartz pebbles, and gold entrained with iron oxides and the such (have to crush up the material to see the gold). I tested the alleged gold with nitric acid as a quick sanity check. I have a few cups of black sands remaining with additional gold that I can see with a loop. I'm not including this gold in the count, since I really don't know how much is there.


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## g_axelsson (Apr 16, 2018)

None of the above...

Skeptical, is it really gold? Testing the material with nitric acid isn't a positive test for gold. I agree that it might not be copper metal, but that's about all. There are a lot of materials and minerals that might look as gold to the untrained eye.

My first "gold finds" were only some yellow mineral grains. When finally being shown real gold found in a pan I realized how wrong I was in the beginning, I never really accepted the thought that I didn't have gold until I was shown how it really looked.

Since you have grams of it, you can't mind doing some destructive testing on it.
- Take one of the nuggets and press it hard with some flat pliers. Gold is malleable, if it breaks it isn't gold.
- Dissolve some in aqua regia, make some stannous chloride and test the gold solution.

Or just post a clear picture of your gold and we could probably tell you if it's even worth testing.

Göran


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## boarteats (Apr 16, 2018)

Göran,

Funny thing is that I found the gold while crushing up magnetite with mortal and pestle. The bit of gold in the pic was mashed against the bottom of the mortar, originally covered in black material. Used nitric to clean it up and it is quite malleable. I've been dropping whatever chunky material I find into nitric acid, since it does a nice job dissolving iron oxides and sulfides (.e.g pyrite). HCL does pretry well with iron oxides as well.

Tried taking a pic of the gold on quartz, but didn.t come out very well. Hard getting good focus with my tablet even with macro lens. Quartz translucency and reflectivity messes with auto focus. No option for manual on my tablet.


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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 16, 2018)

I hate to be a pessimist, but that shape reminds me of the base of a rifle or pistol cartridge. :| Thick around the base and where the primer is pressed in. How long are you leaving it in the nitric? What strength nitric? Are you heating it? Does the nitric take on any blue / green color?

As Göran suggested, you can dissolve it in aqua regia, then test with stannous chloride.

Dave


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## boarteats (Apr 16, 2018)

Dave, good to be skeptical. I’d like to make some AR but can’t find tin! Who knew it’d be so hard to find?

Any good online cem suppliers?

Having said that, I don’t know of any other brilliantly yellow malleable metal that isn’t dissolved by nitric. 

The shape is mostly due to my mashing it about in mortar. Took me a while to notice it since it was originally covered in black material. Was in the shape of a pebble.

Not sure of nitric strength. Bummed it off a guy I know who owns a pawn shop. . However, I did not heat the acid. It is quite caustic. It eats through iron like crazy.


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## cosmetal (Apr 16, 2018)

Do you live in an area with a history of gold discovery and mining?

I ask, because, even though "gold is where you find it", it's more probable to find it where it has been found before. 

James


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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 16, 2018)

boarteats said:


> Dave, good to be skeptical. I’d like to make some AR but can’t find tin! Who knew it’d be so hard to find?


Just buy some solder from any hardware store to make your stannous. There are probably a thousand posts about it here.

You didn't say how long it was in the nitric or if the nitric took on any blue / green color.

Dave


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## kurtak (Apr 16, 2018)

The piece in the pic looks like it might be from a broken piece of jewelry - it DOES NOT look like a piece of natural gold

Take it to your pawn shop buddy & have him do a scratch/acid test (with the acid they use for testing karat gold)

he will be able to tell you if its gold (even in the "unlikely" event it is natural gold) 

Kurt


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## kurtak (Apr 16, 2018)

FrugalRefiner said:


> Just buy some solder from any hardware store to make your stannous.



Dave - you forgot to tell him the solder needs to be "tin" solder & NOT tin/lead alloy solder

To the OP - the stannous test solution is made by dissolving tin in HCl - the solder Dave is talking about is 95 - 97 % tin with 3 - 5 % antimony & works fine for making stannous testing solution --- the stannous testing solution is for testing gold that has already been dissolved in AR - not for testing solid gold

AR is a mix of HCL acid & nitric acid which is then used for dissolving gold 

Kurt


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## boarteats (Apr 16, 2018)

James, yes, In fact gold has been found right near where I live. Mostly found in quartz.

Dave, turned brownish yellow, guessing due to the iron. Only kept it in nitric for maybe 5 mins. No heat. Putting nitric on it after cleaning (after removing iron oxides) didn’t cause acid to change color.

Kurt, odd shape is due to my grinding it and mashing it about with a bunch of other rocks. Originally, looked like a black pebble.

All, thx for info about AR and tin! Need to buy nitric. Only have a small amount. I’ll look through posts for suggested sources, but would appreciate suggestions.


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## silversaddle1 (Apr 16, 2018)

for a buck shipping you could ask and send it to a member and have them test it for you. All a pretty good bunch of guys here, willing to help out.


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## boarteats (Apr 16, 2018)

silversaddle1 said:


> for a buck shipping you could ask and send it to a member and have them test it for you. All a pretty good bunch of guys here, willing to help out.


Wow. That'd be great! I feel the need to do some more work on this before asking anyone else to spend their valuable time. At a minimum, I'd want to do stannous chloride test. Have been reading up on the topic. Toughest thing will be getting the ingredients. 

Having someone who could validate my testing would be invaluable!


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## boarteats (Apr 25, 2018)

Ok. I smelted/melted all the concentrates from my first test holes. This included the iron+gold from my first attempt at smelting. This time, I threw in 23 grams of silver in the hopes that any valuable metals would preferentially collect together with the silver over the iron. Worked pretty well. Not perfect. I ran out of gas, so didn't keep the heat on as much as I'd have liked. Also, didn't get as hot as I planned. Biggest problem is that I have a chunk of material still stuck on the bottom of my crucible. Couldn't reheat it since I ran out of fuel.

Even with all the aforementioned difficulties, the silver plus whatever mixed with it was about 3.5 grams more than the silver I started with. Still have some gold mixed with iron since I didn't get my furnace hot enough to melt the iron. The iron+gold is not part of that weight. See picture below. The iron+gold pieces are the bits not circled. The rest is silver, some gold, and other metals that mixed in with the original silver.

Am I correct that gold, silver, and PGMs will preferntially alloy/mix with silver? Should I expect that other metals like copper will do the same? Is it time to invest in a back-hoe and Champaign? :wink:


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## silversaddle1 (Apr 26, 2018)

Well, still guessing? You should have just sent some samples  to someone who could have tested it and you'd know by now.
............................................................Where the hell did that ^ come from?.............................................................................


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## boarteats (Apr 26, 2018)

I know. I think that I needed to convince myself that the first piece of gold I found wasn't a fluke. Need to go back to my test site and get more material, sometime this week. Once I do that, I'll be taking up the generous offer I received earlier from one of the forum members.


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## cosmetal (Apr 26, 2018)

boarteats said:


> James, yes, In fact gold has been found right near where I live. Mostly found in quartz.
> 
> Dave, turned brownish yellow, guessing due to the iron. Only kept it in nitric for maybe 5 mins. No heat. Putting nitric on it after cleaning (after removing iron oxides) didn’t cause acid to change color.
> 
> ...



Any chance an old ore smelter was running nearby? If yes, use Google Earth to locate it's past location. See if you can locate old slag piles from the smelter.

It maybe a very long shot. But, what you have been describing in your posts could be "prills" of PM and noble metals run through a smelter already. Maybe your creek is washing through old smelter slag.

:?: James :?:


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## boarteats (Apr 26, 2018)

silversaddle1 said:


> Well, still guessing? You should have just sent some samples  to someone who could have tested it and you'd know by now.
> ............................................................Where the hell did that ^ come from?.............................................................................



Don't forget much of that is silver that I put in the crucible to pull gold out of solution and to prevent it from mixing with iron. Only about 3.5 grams of that is gold, etc. that came from my initial 1 cu. ft test hole.


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## boarteats (Apr 26, 2018)

@James, not likely that there was a ore smelting up stream. The creek isn't connected to a larger body of water. I think that it was dug out about a hundred years ago or thereabouts for drainage reasons when the first houses were built here. Also, I pretty much only collected magnetite and hematite.

Of course, anything is possible. Every once in a while, I run across tiny bits of stuff that strongly resemble slag from iron smelting.


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## boarteats (Apr 28, 2018)

Getting more interesting material the deeper I dig. About a foot deep, I found the rock on attached picture. Looked different than anything that encountered so far. I roasted it along with some other rocks the transformation was amazing. The picture doesn’t do it justice. Completely covered in what appears to be gold...soft, yellow, malleable. 

I only just started roasting my material due to what I’ve read in this forum and elsewhere about sulfide ores. Thank you for the info!!


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## cuchugold (Apr 28, 2018)

OMG if it is true. Really cheap and easy to find out.


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## boarteats (Apr 29, 2018)

cuchugold said:


> OMG if it is true. Really cheap and easy to find out.



Thanks @cuchgold! I'm collecting samples now from different parts of the stream that I will have assayed. Figured best to do it all at once. I'm limited by the amount of time I can spend back there without getting complaints from the wife and the amount of work that I can do without piquing neighbors' curiosity.  

However, when I run across some particularly interesting stuff, I'll poke at it a bit to better understand what I'm seeing. So, for example I crushed up that rock and smelted it using Chapman flux and silver as a collector metal. See attached pic. Color is not the best in the pic, but good enough to see that there was a nontrivial amount of gold in the rock. Can't say how much, since I couldn't get everything out of the crucible (still a learning process -- need some Chapman flux thinner, I think.) About a third of my collector metal is still in the crucible along with whatever it was that it collected.


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## Dr.xyz (Apr 29, 2018)

I´m no expert, but nothing in those pictures look like gold, more like leftovers when someone tries stick welding for the first time. Plus some fools gold.


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## boarteats (Apr 29, 2018)

Dr.xyz said:


> I´m no expert, but nothing in those pictures look like gold, more like leftovers when someone tries stick welding for the first time. Plus some fools gold.


Not a question if you see them in person. Pic color is off. 

Also, not attracted to magnet, so no ferrous metals present.


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## canedane (Apr 29, 2018)

I´m no expert, so i would do a stannos test.


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## boarteats (Apr 29, 2018)

canedane said:


> I´m no expert, so i would do a stannos test.


Planning to test what appears to me to be some nontrivial amounts of gold. ...hopefully assays will support this assertion. 

Was really just thanking the folks in this forum for all the great info/ideas, etc. It's a tremendous resource. Lots of good reading.


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## cuchugold (Apr 30, 2018)

Hi boarteats. Here's a revolutionary idea: Crush it to 100 mesh and pan it. Leave the assays for the 'experts' that want to know the exact content to 6 decimal places. You only need a go/nogo (dig / no dig) indicator. :G


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## boarteats (Apr 30, 2018)

cuchugold said:


> Hi boarteats. Here's a revolutionary idea: Crush it to 100 mesh and pan it. Leave the assays for the 'experts' that want to know the exact content to 6 decimal places. You only need a go/nogo (dig / no dig) indicator. :G



Already did. Also, smelted the resulting material using silver as a collector metal. Then I calculated the specific gravity of the metal beads to determine that the rock had about 1/3 grams of gold (i.e., 1/3 grams of something with a higher specific gravity of silver). Couldn't get a direct weight since some of my collector metal is stuck to bottom of crucible. ...will get that later. The pan also showed gold, btw.

The above mentioned assay is to determine how much/little precious metals are in the stream using multiple samples from different locations, so I'll know to treat it as a fun hobby or something more serious. I'm paying an expert to do the assay work. I don't have the chemicals, skills, etc to do it myself.

As an aside, the well informed skepticism that I've read in this thread is one of the things prompting me to get some expert info. I'd rather not go along happily just assuming that all the yellow stuff I am seeing is gold.


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## Dr.xyz (Apr 30, 2018)

If I had few grams of gold per cubic foot of dirt in my back yard, there would already be some heavy machinery excavating.


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## boarteats (Apr 30, 2018)

Dr.xyz said:


> If I had few grams of gold per cubic foot of dirt in my back yard, there would already be some heavy machinery excavating.



Lol. That was a great spot for sure or so it appears so far. Off to my day job which is far less exciting.


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## Rachello (Jun 23, 2018)

Am I crazy? 

Or just the only one that wants to know more about the penny? Like the year it was made etc...it is not past impossible that it could be the gold mine you are looking for...

Rachel


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## boarteats (Jun 24, 2018)

Lol. I have a ziplock bag full of wheat pennies. Pretty sure that I’ve looked at all of them and none are super valuable. I always use one to show scale in pics. You’re the first person to ask about them!  

They certainly cannot compete value-wise with rocks like this.


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## Rachello (Jun 24, 2018)

Not if it’s a 1943 copper wheat penny :wink: 

Good luck with your creek! Keep us posted on the values you get & your testing results  

Rachel


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## boarteats (Jun 25, 2018)

Rachello said:


> Not if it’s a 1943 copper wheat penny :wink:
> 
> Rachel



That’d be so awesome but alas don’t have one of those


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