# Am I sitting on a fortune?



## crosswalk (Feb 15, 2016)

So I don't really have any experience of which to speak. However, I feel like I may be on the verge of hobbyist refining. I live in NH and have a 600' well. About 10 years ago we had a fairly sustained "drought" during a time I was on vacation. By the time I got back home my well was sucking up all the sediment and emptying it into the back of my toilet tanks.
A few years goes by and every so often some more sediment gets sucked up and empties into either a shop sink or all 4 toilet tanks. One thing leads to another and I notice stuff in the sediment that looks a bit like gold/silver dust or something shiny, could have been nothing at all. 
I had a family member that is in the metal business test the material and get a composition of it. Without getting percentages it definitively contains gold and silver. Now I have buckets of this stuff dried out and lying around that I just scrapped out just in case. The foundation of the house has a massive amount of granite and I know that veins can grow in that. 
NH has had a few minor earthquakes over the last 10 years and the well has been frac'd a couple of times but I'm curious if that was enough to loosen up a little more sediment. 
So my question is. I know that it's not worth digging up my well without getting a better knowledge of the composition of sediment but it there a good method of separating the "black sand" from the gold that doesn't require an incredibly expensive centrifuge system or does anyone else have experience in something like this that could tell me outright if any of this seems worth the trouble?
I could also probably upload a picture of the stuff if that might help anyone get a better picture of the sludge I'm dealing with.

Thanks in advance.


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## FrugalRefiner (Feb 15, 2016)

Buy a gold pan and try panning some out. If it's gold in particles big enough to see, you should be able to pan them out.

Dave


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## crosswalk (Feb 15, 2016)

FrugalRefiner said:


> Buy a gold pan and try panning some out. If it's gold in particles big enough to see, you should be able to pan them out.
> 
> Dave



Hey Dave. Yeah I've tried panning it, got some Jet Dry to help it along but I didn't get much out that I could tell. I mean if this is gold dust I'm seeing then it is super super fine, I might not have the correct technique.


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## g_axelsson (Feb 15, 2016)

Gold isn't easy to dissolve but there are other metals that are. My first guess on any sediments coming up from a well is iron. It can dissolve or precipitate based on pH and also form shiny flakes.
Carbon dioxide can be dissolved in water under pressure and then when it reaches the surface it will gas off, raising the pH and precipitating iron hydroxides. Water from wells in granite is commonly aerated to remove radon and that changes the chemistry of the water too.

Other minerals also break down via chemical reactions and forms clay that can move through fractures with the water.

If you still think you might have something, send it in for a fire assay. That way you will know.

Göran


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## crosswalk (Feb 15, 2016)

g_axelsson said:


> Gold isn't easy to dissolve but there are other metals that are. My first guess on any sediments coming up from a well is iron. It can dissolve or precipitate based on pH and also form shiny flakes.
> Carbon dioxide can be dissolved in water under pressure and then when it reaches the surface it will gas off, raising the pH and precipitating iron hydroxides. Water from wells in granite is commonly aerated to remove radon and that changes the chemistry of the water too.
> 
> Other minerals also break down via chemical reactions and forms clay that can move through fractures with the water.
> ...



Hey thanks a lot Göran, that is extremely useful info. I can definitely see iron in it and that portion is magnetic. I am seeing a lot of yellow colored flakes as well. Does that still seem to fit your theory or should I literally just send it out to get melted?

John


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## g_axelsson (Feb 15, 2016)

Still sounds like iron to me. Yellow flakes are common if it precipitates on a surface and later flakes off.

A gold flake would be conductive, a simple multimeter could measure the resistance in seconds. A gold flake would seem like a short circuit to it.
For the mineral collector it's an easy way (but not well known) to discern between silicates (insulators), oxides (100's of ohms), sulfides (10's of ohms) and metallic elements and graphite (short circuit). This is just a general rule and the values could vary between different minerals.

Göran


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## Harold_V (Feb 16, 2016)

Considering the specific gravity of gold or silver, I am highly doubtful that your well is producing same. What it may be doing is picking up minute particles of mica, which is often confused with gold, and is light enough to get and stay suspended. That you are not successful in panning gold is, to me, good evidence to support my thoughts. 

Harold


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