# Rock found



## joem (Jul 31, 2010)

Hello
Your thoughts please.
I found this quartz with golden coloured flakes at the cottage lake in southern quebec. It's about 2 iches at the widest point.
The picture does not do it justice.
How would I test to see if it's real


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## Barren Realms 007 (Jul 31, 2010)

Test for what? To see if it is a rock? Put it a bucket of water and see if it floats! 8)


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## joem (Jul 31, 2010)

lol
you're funny
gold flakes seen are gold or just gold colour shinyness


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## Barren Realms 007 (Jul 31, 2010)

AHH the gold color in the rock! Rick the rock man will see this soon and comment on it.


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## dtectr (Jul 31, 2010)

Barren Realms 007 said:


> AHH the gold color in the rock! Rick the rock man will see this soon and comment on it.


 Look for his "Rock Man" thread under "mining, et al" & post it there. Don't worry about the 'double post' - if the moderators are concerned they can remove the duplicate.
jordan


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## Platdigger (Aug 1, 2010)

Break a piece off, mash it up, pan it.


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## g_axelsson (Aug 1, 2010)

It's probably iron stained muscovite.

Here are a number of different tests you could do. Only the last one is definite but every test says something about your sample.

Crystal form - Take a needle and see if you can work your way through the flakes as you would turn pages in a book. If you can then it is probably muscovite.
Malleability - Take some grains of it and crush it with flat jawed pliers, if it breaks it is probably muscovite, if it is squished and expands without breaking it might be gold.
Density - Put the grains in a gold pan with some water. Gold stays put while other minerals moves with the water.
Streak color - Drag a touchstone or an unglazed piece of china against a grain. If it is gold it will create a golden streak. Rusty muscovite will leave a rust colored to white streak. Pyrite leaves a green tinted black streak.
Acid resistance - Test the streak with acid or gold test solution. The formula and usage could be found on the forum.
Chemical reaction - And finally, add a few grains in a test tube. add a few drops of HCl and HNO3 (aqua regia) to dissolve it and then test the solution with stannous chloride. Purple to black, you found gold! No color then it is probably muscovite.

From your description and pictures I would suspect that it is a piece of granite with muscovite that have been rust stained.

/Göran


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## joem (Aug 1, 2010)

Thanks Goran
This is what I needed to hear.
I will try this.
I'm not lookin to strike it rich but just to see what fun things I could do at home. And hey if it's gold great, if it's not then it's the other type of gold - Learning


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## Anonymous (Aug 1, 2010)

Göran the rock has some looks like rotten granite with some quartz through out that should be investigated closer.

The laboratory that worked for Diamet sometimes would cut a cross section from a rock then polish this before submitting the sample under the microscope.

ttys
G


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## g_axelsson (Aug 1, 2010)

gustavus said:


> The laboratory that worked for Diamet sometimes would cut a cross section from a rock then polish this before submitting the sample under the microscope.



That is standard thin section, you use it for optical identification of the various mineral grains. If you keep it without a cover sheet then you can also use it for micro probe analysis in a SEM.

I've never done a thin section myself but I have the equipment to do it, it's just a matter of getting the time to start another project. I also have a TEM and a SEM for analysis but right now they are not set up for running, yet another project that I haven't finished.
To bring this posting back on topic... I've thought about using the vacuum evaporator to melt PM:s in vacuum, should be possible to make small perfect fine silver bars without the oxygen problem.

 

/Göran


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## CHARLIE GREENLER (Aug 2, 2010)

When I look for gold in quarts I look for what we call (BULL QUARTS).You are looking for the rite thing here.Bull Quarts always has what looks like smokey quarts areas in it too and can be high in iron.Once you have high iron the chances go up even more.Buy a mortar and pestil for rocks and powder the heck out of the suspect rock and then pan it in a gold pan.I used to powder it and add it to AR and let it sit over nite then precip the gold or silver once I proved it by paning though.Powder as good as you can because 1/10 of an ounce of gold per ton is just visible ,beond just visible its more than 1/10 oz per ton.Specdimins of gold in quarts can be astetic and expencive too ,so you might want to try for some specimins too if it pans out.Oh and it does look pegmatitic so I would belive that is mica.Keep looking for that bull quarts though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Richard36 (Aug 4, 2010)

From what I can see, it looks like a mix of Quartz and Albite.
That indicates formation within a MonzoGranitic Facie.

Translated, that means that you are in an area that has high probability of containing mineral veins of all sorts, let alone Gold, Silver, and Copper. 

The gray patches are finely divided sulfides within the rock, and therefore the shiny golden spots are most likely a sulfide of some sort as well, but maybe not, you have been advised on how to test it to see if is sulfide, mica, or gold.

The sulfides might contain gold. 
Seeing that the sulfide looks to be an iron or copper sulfide, it probably will contain some percentage of gold per ton of ore, but to know how much would require a Fire Assay. 

I doubt that you will find any Native Gold in that rock if you crush it and pan it. 
You would be better off to use the chemical test to see if it contains gold, than you would be 
to pan it. Your choice though.

The yellow to orange patches on the left side look like they could be a mica as mentioned, or Goethite, (Iron Hydroxide), which is an alteration product produced by the weathering of Iron Pyrite.

If you haven't located the source that sample came from, put some effort into it, and find it.
If it contains much of that gray material, and or pyrite, 
it will be a salable ore for whatever metal it contains, let alone a possible ore of Gold.

Just a thought.
I hope that this has been helpful.
If you find any more samples, post photos, and I'll post what I can tell you about them.

Sincerely; Rick."The Rock Man".


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