Share with me............

[malikjob07]

Dear friends :
Like always 8) ....i have a mess and i need your help :| .
Actually i have gold mixed with dust ; some gold appear through it as a small nugget , so i melt the stuff with borax and what i got as result is black metal in the upper side and yellow color " which is gold " in the down side, but unfortunately after a couple minute the yellow gold turn into brown and the gold was disappear (like there is malignant metal ) .
Some told me to smelt the gold dust with the borax and boric acid( i can't found boric acid) .
What i supposed to do with this mystery ? :idea:
Thanks

 

[butcher]

You really are not providing much information for anyone to be able to give an answer to the question.
"Dust" can be most anything or could contain many different things organic, or metals or salts of metals...
It sounds like you may be working with ore, or some gold mixed with black sands from panning a river, knowing more about what material you have or are working with can be helpful in trying to give a possible solution to your problem.

Different types of ore's can take different ingredients in the flux, because of the different reactions in the melt from different compounds, the flux is used for several reasons, to make the melt more liquid, to oxidize some metals, and to reduce some metal oxide to elemental metal or keep certain metals in a reduced state, to separate oxidized metals and form them into the slag glass, and help the reduced metals join to form a combined metal under this molten slag glass, to help keep the melt fluid where separation can occur and reduced metal can combine.

Even knowing if you are actually dealing with gold, and not just fools gold, and even knowing what your dust actually was does not mean we would be able to tell you what the different ingredients you may need in a flux, unless we knew more about the chemical composition of the "Dust", then maybe we could suggest a starting point of flux ingredients to experiment with for you to find a combination that may work.

 

[malikjob07]

The dust is ore but unfortunately i don't know the main ingredient :|

 

[upcyclist]

The dust is ore but unfortunately i don't know the main ingredient :|

One word for you, my friend: Assay.

Otherwise, how do you know what's going to happen when you add acid? Release a cloud of poisonous (or explosive) gas? Create a highly toxic salt?

 

[nickvc]

You seem to have some knowledge of gold refining and recovery but please stop what your doing and start learning the science of what your attempting.
The last debacle was your attempt to recover gold from SIM card stamping waste where I gave up after numerous suggestions not just from me but many experienced refiners to test your solutions for gold with stannous so you knew what you had, but no I can't get tin was your response,so if I do this will that work, how do we know?
Your now attempting to melt ore, or claimed gold ore, it's not that simple if it was do you not think that those huge mining companies would have saved the millions of dollars on plant and equipment to recover the gold from those same ores and instead just put in a large furnace?
Please take this in the right way but you need to understand the chemistry of what your attempting and be prepared by having the right chemicals and equipment and knowing what the difficulties will be before you start, none of us are there with you so hands on help is not possible, you are learning the hard way that recovery of values is the hard part and no two streams of scrap are the same processes to that nice bar of gold.
As upcyclist has pointed out melting Unknown ores or putting them in chemicals is a sure way to hurt yourself, get the learning done and put down the chemicals and torches, you can do this but you need to read and study.

 

[malikjob07]

Thanks guys for your respond ......so the gold ore i bought it from friend...i didn't do any assay but i was wondering why the gold turn out after couple minute into brownish ???? also, what can borax and boric acid do for that ????

 

[butcher]

There is still very little information to go on.

When you melt metal, many different metals can alloy together (mix), if you actually had gold you may have mixed the gold with other metals in the ore...
Or
It is possible the ore did not contain gold.

"Some told me to smelt the gold dust with the borax and boric acid( i can't found boric acid)"
"Some" told you wrong, your getting miss-information from listening to "Some".
It is not that easy.

 

[malikjob07]

So what do i have to do ? use AR or panning ?

 

[malikjob07]

this is the ore that i am talking about.....

 

[resabed01]

So what do i have to do ? use AR or panning ?

Since you don't know what you have and the experts on this forum don't know what you have, the safest route for you right now is panning.

 

[ettran]

So what do i have to do ? use AR or panning ?

Since you don't know what you have and the experts on this forum don't know what you have, the safest route for you right now is panning.

hi,listen to these members , they know what they talking about before you hurt yourself.i have been reading for a year + and still reading , ed.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

So what do i have to do ? use AR or panning ?

OK, so you have an ore you bought from a friend. You have tried to melt some of this ore and gotten a lump of something. You haven't had an assay, so you don't know what is in the ore.

The reason nobody can give you a good answer is that you don't know what kind of ore it is. I know little about ores, but I'll try to share a bit.

First, there may or may not be gold in your ore, but let's assume there is. It could be what is called free milling gold. In this case, you could crush the ore and pan the finely crushed material to recover any flakes of gold.

But a lot of gold ores do not contain free milling gold. Instead, the gold is tied up chemically with other elements. These ores can require a variety of pretreatments and treatments, and these processes can release deadly toxins if they're present. This is the type of information an assay will provide. It is dangerous and irresponsible to undertake these processes until you know what you have and have some idea of what you're doing.

Dave

 

[galenrog]

Is the image that of ore, without any treatment, other than a bit of crushing?

 

[butcher]

Take a hammer to a chunk does it shatter to powder, or can you smash it flat?
Gold is malleable and can be smashed flatter.
If it shatters to pieces it is not gold, it may or may not contain a tiny bit of gold, but unless you have tons and tons of this material, it is worthless, and not worth the money or time to assay.

Put it in a pan, an pie pan, bowl, or hub cap can be used if you do not have a gold pan, add some sand, cut a few pieces of lead as small as your suspected gold, (say 6 pieces of lead), now pan the material.

Shake the pan from side to side, this lets the heavier material work it way to the bottom, tilt the pan slightly forward as you shake it, working the material to the outer side of the pan, heavier material in the bottom at the corner of the pan, dump off the lighter sand and water, about half the pan full of material.
Dump it into a tub so you do not loose anything and can re-pan it if needed later, add water and continue to pan, until you remove the bulk of the sand, when very little material remains in your pan the heaviest materials, shake this material to the bottom corner of your pan, roll the water in the pan over the materials, the lighter material (sands) will wash off from the heavier lead, separate the sand from the small pieces of lead, if you remain with 6 pieces of lead with no sand you panning was effective, if you have gold it will be with the lead and separated from the sand.

You could have added rocks and gravel with the above sand,and pan the gold from that, but that is not necessary here.

Forget about buying suspected gold from anyone even friends, until you study.
Forget about melting or trying to smelt gold before you study.
Forget about using chemicals to recover or refine gold before you study.
Forget what you think you know about gold before you study.
Forget what your friends tell you about gold before you study.
Forget about what you seen in a video, or read about gold before you study.
Forget about getting gold before you study.
Forget about...
Forget about it. Study it, and learn about it.

Study that is where you will truly learn and know about gold, know what it is where it can be found, how to recover and refine it...

Without spending that time studying, your losing more gold than you can find, you will not recognize it if you tripped over it, you would not know what to do with it...

The true wealth is in the education of gold, which leads you to that gold, and knowing what to do with it...

Study the forum and its resources, that is your treasure map to the gold you seek.

You ask for us to share with you, I have shared very good advice here, the advice if followed will help you prosper in getting that gold you seek.

Its hard to tell from the picture, but that does not look like gold to me from what I can tell from the picture, the square edges, crystal look, the light reflection, looks more like pyrite. I can be wrong.

 

[malikjob07]

thank you guys for sharing ,you're really helped me alot...big thank.... (galenrog) this gold ore is only on crushing...(butcher) i'll take your advice .....

 

[g_axelsson]

I agree with Butcher, that looks very much like pyrite.

Crushing and panning might get you a few gold grains if there is any gold in it. But with that little ore even a rich gold ore is a hit and miss and could contain nothing.

Gold is intensely yellow compared to pyrite and stands out when you see them together.
Look at the first picture at this post I made a couple of years ago.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=23244#p244174
The gold grains stands out like yellow dots against the paler pyrite.

Göran

 

[galenrog]

Based on your answer to my question, and the image provided, my opinion is that you have pyrite. This is an iron sulfide, probably iron disulfide. While many examples of pyrite are gold in color, any gold contained is unlikely to be free milling.