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Post by cookie3rocks on Sept 22, 2004 22:59:18 GMT -5
Hi all, My husband recently went to visit his parents and his father, upon being told of our new hobby, showed him something interesting. My husband was born in Calafornia and was the last of 4 children. While the family lived there, his father often visited closed gold mines (in the 50's and 60's) and collected ore from the sites. He showed my husband some samples he had. There are large bands of gold running through the ore. Michael only saw about 5 lbs., but his father said there is about 30-50 lbs of the same rock in the attic. He said we were welcome to it. Does anyone know how to extract the gold from the rock? This could be interesting, if it is woorth the cost to extract it. Thanks for the help!
cookie
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Post by puppie96 on Sept 23, 2004 2:37:05 GMT -5
Hmmmm....find a way to crush the rock and pan it? Crush it up finely, agitate it so that the heavier stuff falls to the bottom, and then pan the bottom layer?
I know they use mercury a lot to extract gold, but you wouldn't want to do that!
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Post by creativeminded on Sept 23, 2004 8:52:45 GMT -5
If you had a kiln that got got enough, after breaking up the pieces you could melt the rock and extract the gold that way, but you might want to do a thorough search on the internet. I bought some raw gold off the internet to make a pendant for my mother and there was some quartz attached, I first asked my metalsmithing instructor if I needed to chip that off and he said no because the quartz would burn off. Tami
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Post by hermatite on Sept 23, 2004 9:26:41 GMT -5
I'm probably wrong but I always thought extracting gold from ore was extremely dangerous in that the chemicals that are used are cyanide and mercury. I know I've heard of gold panners that poisoned himself with mercury.
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shorty
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2003
Posts: 392
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Post by shorty on Sept 23, 2004 9:53:08 GMT -5
hi all gold melts at a lower temp like lead you mite be able to break it up and put some pieces in a old pan and put it on the stove and melt it thats what i do when i make bullets for my muzzel loader but thats lead . mite work keepus posted
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Post by BearCreekLapidary on Sept 23, 2004 11:02:56 GMT -5
Hello Cookie, I used to use Mercury to recover gold from black sand, and it's pretty dangerous stuff. It can be absorbed into the skin and inhaled into your lungs when boiling the impurities out of the ore. It's pretty nasty stuff and the health considerations are well worth a very serious second thought. It doesn't take much either! I believe that there is an acid method that is used now, but, I am not that well versed on the subject. You might see if you can find a legitimate assayer. They know of the current processes of recovering gold and who to contact, in case you would like to have some ore processed. The only problem with that is ... you are not 100% sure that what you get back, is exactly what was recovered to begin with. My personal recommendation: LEAVE THE MERCURY ALONE. Look up Mercury at www.niosh.com (National Instatute of Occupational Safety and Health - if I remember right) and see if they have a MSDS (Material Data Safety Sheet) available. It will give all kinds of health, handling, safety, emergency aspects of this material. Some abbreviations: PEL - permissable exposure level STEL - short term exposure level TLV - threshold limit value UEL - upper explosive limits LEL - lower explosive limits IDLH - immediately dangerous to life or health TWA - time weighted average PPM - parts per million RLHRF - (this is mine) run like hell really fast! I know that NIOSH and OSHA and possibly MSHA should have this information available in an MSDS. Good luck with your search and let us know what you decide to use. Have a great day, John
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Post by docone31 on Sept 23, 2004 12:29:32 GMT -5
For small batches of gold, from ore. Heat. An electric kiln would do real well as it doesn't use a flame. The other method is crushing the stone, seperating the flakes, culling the surrounding media and putting the rest in nitric acid. This will result in seperated layers in the solution. I do not remember if Karo syrup is used to fine silver, or gold. I do know the red spongy matter left from the gold and nitric acid solution can be plated fine. The tailings your father has were left there as a result of the cost to process. As a jeweler, I have a lot of scrap. Filings, small pieces, old rings people have given me. I melt these in a crucible. The remelting of gold scrap makes lousey casting medium. It gets too hard and does not hold detail. Ishor. That is a company who has a small plating, and silver and gold recovery system. It is about the size of a gallon jug, and works well. It uses a cyanide solution and is a plating refractory. They have a great tutorial on gold recovery. I use a lot of gold filled for my designs. I end up with a lot of scrap. Gold filled is about 12$ an ounce. My thought was to process scrap at an affordable level so I could alloy 14K from my scrap and cast rings. If you go to the Ishor site, you will find their small level machines, their tutorials, and you will definately learn more. It is less expensive to purchase casting grain than reprocessing it, however I feel I learned a lot and I like the freedom to do that. Perhaps that can help. Making cabachons with gold grain, significantly increases the value of the jewelery. You might consider that also.
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deepsouth
fully equipped rock polisher
He who rocks last rocks best
Member since January 2004
Posts: 1,256
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Post by deepsouth on Sept 23, 2004 16:23:01 GMT -5
Last december my wife and I were in Thames ...north island of New Zealand where we stayed 3 days in a motel at the coast. Fantastic spot. on the edge of the town was a museum where we wandered in and watched a 3 stamp stamper in working , crushing the ore to a fine powder. Then it was washed over a sloping vibrating suface which separated the gold from most of the rock. Purifying was done with either Mercury or Cyanide . It takes a ton of rock for a few ounces of gold if the going is good. The rock was mined out of the hills through a tunneling system.
They used to have a big operation there with 100 stampers. The noise must have been horriffic. 24 hours a day except on sundays. People were complaining they could not get to sleep on sundays as it was too quiet.
You can heat your rock to melt the gold , but still will need to purify it.
Good luck
Jack
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Post by cookie3rocks on Sept 23, 2004 17:28:28 GMT -5
Thanks everyone. Sounds like my best option is to cab the ore that has the most particles in it. My husband will be crushed, but, as usual, I tried to tell him... cookie
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Post by docone31 on Sept 23, 2004 19:12:01 GMT -5
Cookie, do not lose hope. It is just not that simple. I tore up the internet for tutorials, read gold mining books, read on extraction. Etc. The solution Ishor uses, fines out the gold recovered from rings, gold plated, gold filled. An anode is used for karat density. Essentially it is reverse plating. Plating, electroforming, reverse plating all use a mild electric current, electrolyte, and collection medium. It takes an investment, and time. Gold laced cabachons are really great looking "gems". The dust from making the cabachons can be refined. Most free gold is 22 Karat. Way back when, when the rush was on, except for a few individuals, the only people who made real money were the were the outfitters, food suppliers, and claim providers. My wife's great grandparents walked west from Ohio. Her family can trace their roots long past the Revolutionary war. Both sides. Her great grandfather had several silver mines in Nevada, or what is now Nevada, and several gold mines in the Sacremento/Grass Valley area of California. He made his money in real estate. Have faith, and keep the sweepings from the cabs. Who knows, down the road you might reverse plate it into Karat gold.
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SirRoxalot
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since October 2003
Posts: 790
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Post by SirRoxalot on Sept 24, 2004 10:30:45 GMT -5
First of all, make sure it's actually gold. Miners generally don't leave nice rich gold specimens lying around on mine dumps. I kind of doubt that it's actually gold. Gold will be malleable, pyrite or other similar-looking minerals will be brittle. Something with a sharp point will make the difference obvious. There's ususally a fairly obvious color difference too - examine them side-by-side with a known pyrite specimen and you'll see the difference is obvous.
If they are gold, why would you want to destroy them? If they look reasonably nice, and even if they're on the sparse side, they have a great deal of value just as they are. If you don't want a gold specimen on your shelf, find out what they're worth and trade or sell them to a dealer. Gold specimens are highly valuable; you could bring them to a show or a dealer you trust and make a great deal of money very quickly. Or trade them for hundreds of pounds of tumbling rough for that matter.
Playing around with the kind of acid powerful enough to eat quartz is a Very Bad Idea. Tiny little droplets of this acid will quickly eat thru your skin and into your bones - and you can't wash it away. Probably not something you want to experience. Leave the acids and the mercury to trained professionals in labs.
If they turn out to be real gold, you might want to hang on to them for a while before you start cabbing or crushing them up. You may in a few years find yourself addicted to mineral collecting and kick yourself for destroying some rare and valuable specimens.
Hope this helps.
SirRoxalot
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