complete noob, gold containing mud (pictures added)

[electric]

Hi, I have acquired some dense mud like stuff that almost certainly contains gold. You can see the flakes/specs/dust in it. We've been able to get alot of the water soluble and lightweight impurities out of the stuff using just basic water methods. Right now I have about a pill bottle's amount of dense, slightly refined (ie has gone through this water 'washing' several times) 'gold mud'. It's pretty heavy considering the volume of the pill bottle. I realize there is still some water weight in there at the moment as well as whatever other impurities it may contain. But nonetheless quite heavy for it's size.. (i take it that's a good sign)

For what it's worth, the stuff apparently came from the runoff of some sort of old gold operation that dates back to the 60's or so around here. This runoff was found between rocks and cracks/crevices at the site of the supposed operation. The person who gave this to me was walking around just for fun to see the place and noticed some specs in this runoff so we've been playing around with a bit of it for fun. It's a smooth feeling mud, not really gritty at all (maybe a bit before water methods), I wouldn't doubt that there is some sort of clay in the mix. It's very moldable if that makes sense.

Pretty much just looking for a point in the right direction. What could I do DIY at home style without getting into anything too expensive? I wouldn't know where to start. My first thought was just taking a torch to it and seeing if anything 'melts together' and hoping to burn off/vaporize impurities but that probably does not make sense. Should I be looking at chemical methods? mechanical/physical filtering? I have no clue what I'm doing... I could take a macro photo later on if that would help to show what I'm dealing with.

any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Geo]

have you ever done any gold panning? that would be my suggestion.watch this shiney material,does it move around freely in the water? or does it lay still when you move the pan? can you find a piece big enough to pick up? if so, place it on a piece of steel and hit it with a hammer.not hard enough to split atoms but hard enough to break glass.did it crush into dust or did it flatten out?

 

[butcher]

I would pan it, you can remove almost everything but the gold, (putting a tiny piece of lead in the pan , to see if what you think is gold pans out before the piece of lead,(pyrite will just float out of the pan, if it stays in pan with the lead, good chance it is gold, pick out the piece of lead and proceed with your gold), pulverize with mortar and pestle, incinerate it red hot, cool, re- grind with mortar and pestle, and then use HCl wash to remove possible iron from any black sand, rinse well, and then HCl with nitric acid additions to get gold into solution, (as fine as the gold sounds like it would go into solution without in-quartering), once dissolved, heat to gas off unused nitric (depending on amount of nitric usage), dilute let settle, decant, filter solution and precipitate gold, and wash the gold before melting.

Search Phil Dreamers posts I remember him doing this with his placer gold, when he started here, and remember he made a real fine tutorial, including pictures and testing procedures using stannous chloride.
That tutorial would help you more than my answer.

 

[Dr. Poe]

Here's an easy test for gold utilizing a torch:
Obtain a charcoal block from a jeweler;
Hollow a small dip in the charcoal;
Place a small sample of the test subject into the hollow;
Add a small amount of soda ash (bi-carb of soda can be substituted);
Using the tip of the blue part of the flame (reducing flame) melt the soda ash and then the sample with it.
Let it cool;
Handle the bead with your fingers, turning it slightly around while examining it with your naked eyes, then with a loop,
then with a low power microscope.

Results: Yellow flakes or beads are gold;
Milk white beads are silver;
Gray, soft beads with a yellow sublimate coating (yellow when hot) are lead;
Brittle gray beads are antimony;

But, you are wanting gold, so look for yellow flakes and beads.
Dr. Poe

 

[electric]

thank for the advice and sorry for such a late reply back.

I decide to play around with the stuff using water/panning type methods. The flakes/dust seem to be almost ultra fine (I'm assuming this is what they call flour gold). Some of it sinks fairly quickly but some of it takers longer and some of the ultra ultra fine stuff stays suspended in the water for a few minutes.

What I did was pour X amount of my raw material (sand/mud) into a tall glass of water. I then would stir up the full glass until everything was vortexing and well mixed. I would wait about 30 seconds then I would pour off almost all the water into container #2 (larger plastic tupperware type thing) while being careful not to send the 'heavy' stuff flying out with it. I did this several and many times until all I had left was the 'heaviest' particles that would settle within about 5 seconds. The end product of container #1 is definitely not ONLY what I think is the gold, there are some other colored specs in there but for the most part it is a gold powder type mix. Note that everything I am recuperating is what I would call ultra fine category flakes/dust so there are no real significant pieces I can pickup but I am definitely seeing it float around and shine.

I basically repeated this with contents of container #2 until the 'top water' was no longer muddy and brownish looking. What I poured off from container #2 was poured into funnel and jar setups with coffee filter or doubled-up paper towel filter in the funnels. I kept the catch from the filters because if this is indeed micro flakes of gold there is quite a bit that accumulates in the filter papers.

So at the moment, long story short, I have 3 different 'grades' of somewhat purer stuff than what I started with. Obviously none of the 3 are what I would call pure gold flakes but if this is indeed gold and not mica/fool's gold/pyrite flakes or dust, it accounts for a strong percentage of each of my 3 different weight categories of flakes/dust.


I will take some pictures of each of my 3 end products to see what you guys think. Is there any particular lightsource I should use that would help to better differentiate it from pyrite? As in no flash, under bright incandescent light, fluorescent light, etc?

 

[patnor1011]

Do you have stannous?

 

[electric]

^no, I do not have nor have access to any chemicals, yet. I'm in Canada so I'm going to assume that obtaining some of the common chemicals is going to be a pain in the arse.


first two pics are of the 'heavy' stuff from container #1, there's a fair bit more of it but I put a pinch in some water to show it's reflectiveness better. There is one picture with flash and one without.
3rd pic is container #2 which is where the bulk of it ended up staying. (medium weight stuff)
last two pics are of the paper filters and what kind of stuff they caught. (the "lightest" stuff)

I could surely keep separating the stuff in the same manner and end up with 5 or more weight grades but this was done really quickly.

What do the experts think? I don't know how accurately the color is being represented as I was taking the pictures under big incandescent vanity bulbs over the bathroom mirror, plus the flash could be throwing it off. It doesn't 'glitter' like I've been reading the pyrite does. But it also does not appear as 'yellow' as some picture of gold flakes/dust I've seen. It's just very 'gold' looking.

 

[Geo]

well, it certainly looks good. use tweezers and catch the largest piece you can and flatten it with a hammer. this will tell you for sure whether its metal or not.

 

[electric]

That's the problem though... there is not one piece that is significantly large enough to even do that with. Everything you see in those pictures is miniscule flake/dust like material. Any piece that I try to grab with tweezers from the 'big stuff' is still so small that it's kind of already flat.

I attempted the test that Dr.Poe mentioned above but I did not succeed as I apparently need a smaller/finer pointed torch. I used a piece of hardwood charcoal (bbq stuff) that I bored a hole into with a flat head screwdriver and did as was instructed but the flame (even reduced as much as possible) was still too large and strong and started to burn away and crack the charcoal before any kind of metal melting could be seen. I just ended up with a burnt topping of baking soda and my concentrate was still in the same state underneath it.

I'll try to grab a smaller butane type torch and a soft firebrick or ceramic blanket to try it again in the next few days. Either that or I'll say screw it and just order a goldhunter.net test kit or something.


edit; I noticed the views have went up quite a bit and no one has straight up said that it is pyrite yet... should I take that as a good sign or is it just too hard to tell by pictures most of the time?

 

[Geo]

take a small sample (say 15-20 flakes) and put this in a test tube. add to this a few drops of hcl, then add a drop of bleach (household bleach) and shake. use a Q-tip and a drop of stannous chloride to test for gold. hcl is muriatic acid or brick cleaning acid. use this acid and some lead-free solder to make some stannous chloride.

 

[electric]

I would in a heartbeat but as I mentioned above, I have none of this stuff on hand nor do I know where I could easily and quickly acquire it. (bleach aside)

 

[Geo]

any reputable building supply should have muriatic acid or ace hardware. if all else fails, order enough from Ebay to test this because you cant know for sure without this test.

 

[electric]

annnnnd of course homedepot.com brings up a gallon of hcl for 7$ and homedepot.ca (or any other canadian equivalent) brings up nothing...god i hate this country sometimes

 

[qst42know]

Have you tried Lowes.ca?

 

[electric]

yes but lowes in fairly new to this country and their website is garbage and pretty much emtpy. They don't seem set up yet for online selling..

so far my lead is that a pool/spa supply place should have it.

edit; success... Out of all the similar big box stores it ended being easily found at one of our smaller cross country chains (home hardware) http://www.homehardware.ca/en/rec/index.htm/Paint-D%C3%A9cor/Surface-Preparation/Cleaners/ACID-MURIATIC-1L/_/N-ntmg1Z2pqfZ67l/Ne-67n/Ntk-All_EN/R-I1620838?Ntt=muriatic+acid

canada, muriatic acid, hcl, hydrochloric acid (search tags, hopefully this post helps someone in the future)