Question about melting

[JM2000]

Hi, I'm new to this. I own some mountain land and was digging out an area for a new water reservoir, and hit a large area of granite and quartz. There is plenty of formica, but I believe there may also be gold there. I've Googled but can't find out how to use a torch to determine if there is gold. I panned out a portion and now have about a half cup of what I want to test. It's a mixture of black substance (lead?) along with some yellow. Can I just heat it with a torch and if there's gold, it will melt into balls like mercury? Or do I need to add borax? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks in advance. -JM

 

[butcher]

You can concentrate the ore and test it with an assay which quite a bit more complicated than just trying to melt rocks with a torch. Every different type of ore normally needs differents pretreatment and a different flux recipe.

Melting rocks is a deadly business, arsinic, and other many other poisonous gases are set free.



Grind it fine, and pan it, add three or four small pieces of lead about the size of small seeds, when everything but the lead is panned off, you will be left with the concentrate magnetite hematite and gold if any, final panning will separate the black iron minerals from the gold.

If it breaks apart when crushed it is not gold, gold will flatten under the hammer.

With this method of gold recovery, there is not much of a reason for chemical testing, but it can easily be done on the concentrates...