Iridium & Gold Processing For Beginners

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Ashtonshep

New member
Joined
May 3, 2019
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4
Hello everyone, I’m new to goldrefinngforum.com. I just barley made my account today because I don’t know where to turn. I’m no professional at refining, I’ve done some stuff and other stuff leaves me thinking “what the??”. I’ve been to countless other places and haven’t received much help at all, so I’m really hoping someone here can help me. About 2 years ago I can across some ore that was exponentially marvelous, the scans where so high In iridium and gold I had people scratching there head in amazement. Thing is though, yeah I may have come across potentially hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of material, I don’t know what to do with it? For the last 2 years I’ve tried numerous different ways of trying to process the material out with no luck... and I have divulged hundreds of dollars into the project in hopes that I would be able to process it out but still have had no luck, other than one method and that was taking a crucible and And Oxy acetylene torch and putting some of my best material in the crucible and basically just frying it until I come up with a button of the precious metals that’s in the material. But it’s not a very effective method of doing this. Other than that I don’t know really what to do. I’m just looking to get me some money out of the the project immediately or ASAP, I know there’s a lot of different ways of doing things, but all I really need right now is some material I’m my hand that I can sell to turn a profit so to speak. So that In turn I can continue to move forward in the project. So if anyone on here has came across high amounts of iridium and gold in ore and have found a way or knows of a way to help me process this crap out, I would be forever in your debt... thanks for reading and have a nice day.
 
I don’t have an assay sheet, I should’ve got one when I had done the test. I came in contact with a guy by the name of Daniel Kensliy and he had been processing precious metals his whole life and had a XRF gun that costed him a hefty sum. We had tested a lot of rocks that I thought might have been gold but it was just sulfide rich ore with a lot of iron pyrite, but towards the end of the scans that we had done the last rock hit us, it had about 3.53% Gold 0.68% Silver no Platinum or Palladium but 21.76% Iridium and obviously trace elements like lead, ext... when it came across the screen dans face dropped and he couldn’t believe it. I should have had him print it for me, he even said he would I just didn’t take him up on the offer. He was planning on teaching me how to process it out but a month later his wife developed lung cancer and was expecting to live only a few months so they moved back east so she could be with her family and he was never able to teach me. I’m trying to figure out how to post a picture of an example piece but I can’t figure out how? It’s definitely a sulfide rich ore.
 
Take proper ore samples of the ore you plan on mining, the core samples should be of the whole ore body, not cherry-picking the good looking ore samples, the sample should represent the ore body as a whole the rich and the poor of the vein or strike of the ore body planned on being mined.

Poor sampling would be just as disastrous as trusting an improper assay.

Understanding the chemical makeup of the ore will give you the information needed to determine the best possible methods of treating the ore, and also understanding the dangers or problems involved in the recovery process.

I would not trust the XRF gun. Get proper samples and a proper fire assay's of the ore body as a whole, taking drill samples in several areas of the planned mining operation.

Without proper sampling techniques and a proper assay of the samples, with a good understanding of the chemical and metal makeup of the ore body, your working blind, with nothing to go by but your own gold fever.
 
20190404_112737.jpg
The alloy in this picture has 0% Iridium, XRF says ~45%.
You need to understand the limitations of the technique; in your case I think the same has happened.
 
For a start, grind the material to 100 mesh and enrich by panning/centrifugation, take the heavy part to chemist/assayer
 
Now when I got the ore screened I had crushed the rock down to 100 mesh and that’s what the scan said after doing so. But since that fellow left back east I don’t know where to go locally or whether or not to send my samples somewhere via mail? I live in Utah, about an hour south of Salt Lake City. But I’ve talked to people and they’ve stated not to trust assayers around, because of many different reasons and I’m kind of confused on what I should do and where I should send my samples? Also people have stated to be super careful because of what the screenings have said and that people get crazy when it comes to things like this. Dan was super concerned about me telling anyone because you just don’t know who to trust, but I’m at a lose and am just really hoping that reaching out to people on here won’t turn back and bite me in the butt... but I figured if someone “trustworthy” on here can help me, why not try to reach out you know.
 
I foresee only one problem - iridium is not friendly with the classical fire assay. For the rest, just need to try somebody and if the price is not heavy you can always try another
 
I always get worried when someone with "iridium ore" just drops out of the forum without a word. Ashtonshep haven't been back since Tue May 07, 2019. Only four days after he first posted this thread. I hope nothing serious occurred.

That piece looks like a low temperature sulfide mineralization. Among other things common in a setting like that is arsenopyrite, an arsenic iron sulfide.
This summer we discovered that arsenic would show up as iridium on a hand held XRF scanner in precious metal mode. If the XRF isn't calibrated for all elements it gets confused and makes a best guess based on which elements is included in the software.

Read more about it in this thread :
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=28009

Göran
 
I always get worried about that, too.

For the last 2 years I’ve tried numerous different ways of trying to process the material out with no luck... and I have divulged hundreds of dollars into the project in hopes that I would be able to process it out but still have had no luck, other than one method and that was taking a crucible and And Oxy acetylene torch and putting some of my best material in the crucible and basically just frying it until I come up with a button of the precious metals that’s in the material.
Click to expand...

It's a shame I did not see this and to warn him about the volatility of arsenic. And the common association it has with precious metals. Tellurium and selenium are also nasty.
 
She’s aware of the dangerous materials. A quick search of her name pulled up an article she wrote. I’d love to hear if anything further has come from her samples.

IMG_4919.jpg


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Lino1406 said:
For a start, grind the material to 100 mesh and enrich by panning/centrifugation, take the heavy part to chemist/assayer
Click to expand...


If she had ground the material to 100+ mesh and it did in fact contain arsenic, at what point would this become a safety issue? Handling on first contact, the grinding or the attempt of chemical processing?


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butcher said:
Breathing dust would not be healthy.
Acids or fire releases the nasties.
Click to expand...

Thank you Butcher. I find myself picking up and handling rocks everywhere I go. I hadn’t considered researching the effects of handling ores such as arsenic, until reading this thread. Something I’ll look into now.

Earlier this year while cleaning out the attic of my great grandparents home I found a coffee can full of ores and specimens. I now know back in the late 1800- early 1900’s my relatives worked in the mining areas the OP is studying. Some of the samples in that coffee can are unusually heavy and I’ve wondered what they are or if they’re dangerous materials.


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There is a long list of dangerous gases involved in working with ores. Arsinic is only one of many.
Not all rocks are the same.
Electronic scrap also has its dangers.

When we add fire or acids we set loose the devils details, if we do not have a good understanding of these details, we are putting ourselves and others around us in danger.

Adding fire or acids to most anything we deal with has its deadly dangers where the devil is in the details.
It takes time to learn the details, and gain an understanding of how to safely deal with them.

It is not arsenic I would worry about.
It is the devil in the details that kill you.

Not the dangers you understand and are aware of, and understand how safely deal with...

With ore, proper assay's can reveal much more than the values involved, it can also reveal the composition and the possible dangers, clues to some of the devil's details, as well as clues to possible recovery methods...
 
butcher said:
When we add fire or acids we set loose the devils details, if we do not have a good understanding of these details, we are putting ourselves and others around us in danger.

Adding fire or acids to most anything we deal with has its deadly dangers where the devil is in the details.
It takes time to learn the details, and gain an understanding of how to safely deal with them.
Click to expand...

Very sage advice. Thank you.



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Just because it's 'Natural', doesn't mean it's healthy.
If folks just knew what they were playing with, they would find other ways to entertain themselves.
 

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