Ive been studying this for about 5-6 months now, and probably one of the most helpful videos ive seen so far! Thank you so much for putting this nice video to share with all of us!! Really appreciate this. My son who is 8, and i have wondered if we have ANY gold at all, and we even collected a lot of material from CA gold country in addition to our area between OR and WA states!
You're most welcome. Some more recent videos also cover some very practical matters. Check out Panning Micro Fine Gold 2019 and Speed prospecting the Dreamer Prime
One thing I know for sure, i am going to end up having to watch a bunch of the old western tv shows now...for SOME reason! Lol. I very much enjoy this channel , hopefully i can make my learning of prospecting and mining will help to better my life .
At 6:50 or so you mention a high density material between the gold and the pyrites. I've came across this quite a bit in placer mining. A kind of silvery, grey material very hard to separate from between the black sand line and the gold line. Any information as to some samples of what that can be, or maybe, is ?
Someone suggested a mineral that is essentially an iron/lead sulfide. That would explain everything in the analysis quite well. I was unaware that such a mineral existed, but it does. Forget the name. If it's important I could try and find the post again. Keith
I was thinking electrum at one time. This was a big placer area years ago and they did use mercury quite a bit. But tests (using nitric acid) didn't seem to indicate mercury. I forgot all about it till this video reminded me of it. I was thinking a granular version of zircon material.
Electrum would be very similar to the gold in its behavior. My mineral is clearly cubic, brittle, and generates SO2 when heated to glowing. Electrum would be very rare to show a crystalline structure and would be malleable like mercury coated gold (probably more common than electrum). One needs to be very careful when heating unknown minerals though. The first time I definitely stayed up wind. Then I examined the residue when cold.\ Keith
Pro tip: if you wonder if it is any type of "ironish" mineral hit it with a strong magnet. N52 works good. If it is any iron mineral it will shoot up to the magnet, if it some what reacts very very weakly on an N52 magnet then it could be small platinum family sands.
You can also have an artificial metal like brass. I once had a bullet casing that got into the crusher and things looked VERY good in the pan until I added some nitric acid to be sure. :-)
Good video, but the Iron Pyrite picture definitely didn't show the colors I've experienced. Only a bit grey in clumps, not the crystals. More like a nice bronze gold color (not the flaky mica look) and certainly not the warm yellow of actual gold (in natural sunlight). I think it would be helpful to show all three (or four if pyrite in crystals and in some aggregate) . At 61, I only use full sunlight (not late day) for panning.,easiest on my eyes. Once you've seen the real thing, in that light, I'd think it's really hard to mistake it for any of the "Fool's Gold" items you mention. Love your "lessons" as I watch them in 2018.... good stuff!
Being entirely new to this, how do you tell gold from the pyrites when they are extremely small. I have crushed some quartz, and other rocks found associated with it on my property. I ended up with some extremely fine shiny yellow particles. The hang up near the edge of the pan while the other sand like particles move on away. But they are bright yellow rather than a gold yellow.
If you can isolate the yellow particle, place them in a spoon and heat the spoon with a propane torch. If it is chalcopyrite (iron pyrite is not bright yellow) they should break down into iron and copper oxides with the smell of burning sulfur. Gold will remain unchanged even at red heat. USE ADEQUATE VENTILATION Keith
I sure do thank you. They are very small, just specs. I'll have to try separating them from the other small pieces. These are from a fist sized rock I smashed up with pedestal. I have so many variations of quartz on my property, I seem to be running in circles trying to figure out which to look for. All the way from pure white quartz, to rock with quartz going all sorts of directions. Some with black deposits, some with pink-orange deposits. Done the mountain about 4 miles is a huge copper/gold mine. The entire side of the hill is green from copper deposits, with red rock and areas of yellow. All part of the mining property. I have not found much for green or red. However the whole top of my property (about 3 acres, is littered with the variations of the quartz).
I'd focus on the pink/orange first and then the black. Clean looking quartz rarely has good grade. Lesson 2 and lesson three might be helpful at this stage. Also lesson 24 for the newest panning technique
Well, you will probably shake your head, and give me a D- in smelting. I couldn't get my wife to turn loose of one of her spoons, so in my eagerness to try melting some of my yellow specs, I pulled out an ingot mold for lead casting. I heated the inside to make sure there weren't any impurities, and carefully put 3 small flakes in the corner. These were about the size of fly and gnat droppings. Using a hand propane torch, Not knowing if I could melt them from the bottom, I sort of snuck up on the tiny things, hoping not to blow them out. I had the torch on them in the corner of the mold for about a minute when there was a "pop" and what appeared to be a shooting star exited the mold. Crawling around, I was able to find the 3 pieces, which looked like they did when I put them in the mold. I thought I had the flame directly on them, and didn't see them move, but would think since they are this small, they would melt into a miniature ball. Any thoughts on this act of spec torture?
+Ghitza Vlasin Absolutely. Just type 'Hard Rock University' into the TH-cam search bar. We are currently working on a separate web site that will have other information besides videos. I am also planning another couple of videos coming soon.
What if a person soaked a sample in gun oil, then use distilled water to use during panning the oily pulp. Would the fine gold float to the top so you could just suck it up? This oil process happens once the person get down to the black sand?
For floatation, there are better reagents than gun oil. But it is complex if you want to SEPARATE the gold. For example, dirt soaked in gun oil just forms a dirt clod and will be relatively unaffected by water. If you then add a surfactant, you get right back where you started. Floatation is very useful, but there is a huge variety of attractants and supressants depending on the minerals yu are trying to separate. It is a science unto itself. Keith
Loads of mica you can see on beach first time I thought it was gold but it was too light flakes and easy to break have a look on by the back sand on the beaches you will find something interesting
Pyrite, or more precisely iron pyrite, is iron sulfide -FeS. Chalcopyrite is iron/copper sulfide CuFeS2. Chalcopyrite is a major ore mineral of copper. Chalcopyrite is a brassy yellow in color and looks more like real gold than iron pyrite which is generally more gray or green than a pure yellow. Both can contain or be associated with gold. It is a little know fact outside the industry that most copper mines just break even or thereabouts with the copper. The profits are usually from gold and silver by product made during the normal process of concentrating and refining the copper from sulfide minerals. Keith
Hard Rock University Wow I didn't know that!! I got the dirt package and I'm so so pumped up!! My fiance told me to tell you thank you so much!! She wanted to find a place to get material like this because she felt bad seeing me sift through tons of material to only find 1 penny!! I'm soo excited!! Maybe one day I can come down for a vacation and you can put me to work! I'm strong like Bull! :-) Free labor from me because you have taught me so much and I'm in debt to you!! I'm going down in the basement now to get ready for a night of panning!! YEEE HAAA!!! :-) :-) :-) 🌞 🌞 Thank you so much!!
+Robbin Turpin Thank you. We are trying to provide PRACTICAL information for the micro scale miner. We have a number of other videos up now with more planned. Just thype "Hard Rock University' into the You Tube search bar.
One thing for sure, you have given me TONS of studying to do! Thank you! The first vid on where gold comes from really opened my eyes!
Ive been studying this for about 5-6 months now, and probably one of the most helpful videos ive seen so far! Thank you so much for putting this nice video to share with all of us!! Really appreciate this. My son who is 8, and i have wondered if we have ANY gold at all, and we even collected a lot of material from CA gold country in addition to our area between OR and WA states!
Glad to help, Ask questions if you have them.
Thanks for this series. I have always been interested in this sort of thing and your videos covered so much so well. Thanks.
You're most welcome. Some more recent videos also cover some very practical matters. Check out Panning Micro Fine Gold 2019 and Speed prospecting the Dreamer Prime
I follow your lessons with interest. You explain it very successfully and make us understand it.
Thank you.
You are most welcome.
Thanks Keith, I always learn something on your channel.
Glad to help.
One thing I know for sure, i am going to end up having to watch a bunch of the old western tv shows now...for SOME reason! Lol. I very much enjoy this channel , hopefully i can make my learning of prospecting and mining will help to better my life .
I'm glad to help. If you have any questions, just ask.
At 6:50 or so you mention a high density material between the gold and the pyrites. I've came across this quite a bit in placer mining. A kind of silvery, grey material very hard to separate from between the black sand line and the gold line. Any information as to some samples of what that can be, or maybe, is ?
Someone suggested a mineral that is essentially an iron/lead sulfide. That would explain everything in the analysis quite well. I was unaware that such a mineral existed, but it does. Forget the name. If it's important I could try and find the post again.
Keith
I was thinking electrum at one time. This was a big placer area years ago and they did use mercury quite a bit. But tests (using nitric acid) didn't seem to indicate mercury. I forgot all about it till this video reminded me of it. I was thinking a granular version of zircon material.
Electrum would be very similar to the gold in its behavior. My mineral is clearly cubic, brittle, and generates SO2 when heated to glowing. Electrum would be very rare to show a crystalline structure and would be malleable like mercury coated gold (probably more common than electrum). One needs to be very careful when heating unknown minerals though. The first time I definitely stayed up wind. Then I examined the residue when cold.\
Keith
Pro tip: if you wonder if it is any type of "ironish" mineral hit it with a strong magnet. N52 works good. If it is any iron mineral it will shoot up to the magnet, if it some what reacts very very weakly on an N52 magnet then it could be small platinum family sands.
Nice! The nail in the coffin is if it breaks/crushes its fake, if it's real it mushes/bends.
You can also have an artificial metal like brass. I once had a bullet casing that got into the crusher and things looked VERY good in the pan until I added some nitric acid to be sure. :-)
Good video, but the Iron Pyrite picture definitely didn't show the colors I've experienced. Only a bit grey in clumps,
not the crystals. More like a nice bronze gold color (not the flaky mica look) and certainly not the warm yellow of
actual gold (in natural sunlight). I think it would be helpful to show all three (or four if pyrite in crystals and in some
aggregate) . At 61, I only use full sunlight (not late day) for panning.,easiest on my eyes. Once you've seen the real
thing, in that light, I'd think it's really hard to mistake it for any of the "Fool's Gold" items you mention. Love your
"lessons" as I watch them in 2018.... good stuff!
Being entirely new to this, how do you tell gold from the pyrites when they are extremely small. I have crushed some quartz, and other rocks found associated with it on my property. I ended up with some extremely fine shiny yellow particles. The hang up near the edge of the pan while the other sand like particles move on away. But they are bright yellow rather than a gold yellow.
If you can isolate the yellow particle, place them in a spoon and heat the spoon with a propane torch. If it is chalcopyrite (iron pyrite is not bright yellow) they should break down into iron and copper oxides with the smell of burning sulfur. Gold will remain unchanged even at red heat.
USE ADEQUATE VENTILATION
Keith
I sure do thank you. They are very small, just specs. I'll have to try separating them from the other small pieces. These are from a fist sized rock I smashed up with pedestal. I have so many variations of quartz on my property, I seem to be running in circles trying to figure out which to look for. All the way from pure white quartz, to rock with quartz going all sorts of directions. Some with black deposits, some with pink-orange deposits. Done the mountain about 4 miles is a huge copper/gold mine. The entire side of the hill is green from copper deposits, with red rock and areas of yellow. All part of the mining property. I have not found much for green or red. However the whole top of my property (about 3 acres, is littered with the variations of the quartz).
I'd focus on the pink/orange first and then the black. Clean looking quartz rarely has good grade. Lesson 2 and lesson three might be helpful at this stage. Also lesson 24 for the newest panning technique
Well, you will probably shake your head, and give me a D- in smelting. I couldn't get my wife to turn loose of one of her spoons, so in my eagerness to try melting some of my yellow specs, I pulled out an ingot mold for lead casting. I heated the inside to make sure there weren't any impurities, and carefully put 3 small flakes in the corner. These were about the size of fly and gnat droppings. Using a hand propane torch, Not knowing if I could melt them from the bottom, I sort of snuck up on the tiny things, hoping not to blow them out. I had the torch on them in the corner of the mold for about a minute when there was a "pop" and what appeared to be a shooting star exited the mold. Crawling around, I was able to find the 3 pieces, which looked like they did when I put them in the mold. I thought I had the flame directly on them, and didn't see them move, but would think since they are this small, they would melt into a miniature ball. Any thoughts on this act of spec torture?
Thank you for all your help.
Waaww... very nice info here...Do you have more videos of this kind?
+Ghitza Vlasin Absolutely. Just type 'Hard Rock University' into the TH-cam search bar. We are currently working on a separate web site that will have other information besides videos. I am also planning another couple of videos coming soon.
Interesting video
pretty awesome...at least I can tell the difference between gold and fools gold
+Madison Durow It isn't too hard once someone tells you how. But it took me quite a while to figure it out on my own.
Thank You
What if a person soaked a sample in gun oil, then use distilled water to use during panning the oily pulp.
Would the fine gold float to the top so you could just suck it up? This oil process happens once the person get down to the black sand?
For floatation, there are better reagents than gun oil. But it is complex if you want to SEPARATE the gold. For example, dirt soaked in gun oil just forms a dirt clod and will be relatively unaffected by water. If you then add a surfactant, you get right back where you started. Floatation is very useful, but there is a huge variety of attractants and supressants depending on the minerals yu are trying to separate. It is a science unto itself.
Keith
thanks teacher keith, for your experince.& time.
You are most welcome. If you have any questions, just ask.
Keith
Thanks you are good teacher
Thank you.
Thank you for your videos
You are most welcome. I hope they are useful.
Keith
whats the high density stuff????
Primarily pyrite and lead/iron sulfide
Loads of mica you can see on beach first time I thought it was gold but it was too light flakes and easy to break have a look on by the back sand on the beaches you will find something interesting
You can email me at hardrocku@outlook.com if you want to talk more completely
what's the difference between pyrite and chalcopyrite?
Gold only exists in chalcopyrite?
Pyrite, or more precisely iron pyrite, is iron sulfide -FeS. Chalcopyrite is iron/copper sulfide CuFeS2. Chalcopyrite is a major ore mineral of copper. Chalcopyrite is a brassy yellow in color and looks more like real gold than iron pyrite which is generally more gray or green than a pure yellow. Both can contain or be associated with gold. It is a little know fact outside the industry that most copper mines just break even or thereabouts with the copper. The profits are usually from gold and silver by product made during the normal process of concentrating and refining the copper from sulfide minerals.
Keith
Hard Rock University Wow I didn't know that!!
I got the dirt package and I'm so so pumped up!!
My fiance told me to tell you thank you so much!! She wanted to find a place to get material like this because she felt bad seeing me sift through tons of material to only find 1 penny!!
I'm soo excited!!
Maybe one day I can come down for a vacation and you can put me to work! I'm strong like Bull! :-)
Free labor from me because you have taught me so much and I'm in debt to you!!
I'm going down in the basement now to get ready for a night of panning!!
YEEE HAAA!!! :-) :-) :-) 🌞 🌞
Thank you so much!!
Very glad you're happy. Make sure to use jet-dry and save all the talings to pan again and again for practice.
Keith
Hard Rock University Absolutely! :-) :-) :-)
Very useful info.
+Robbin Turpin Thank you. We are trying to provide PRACTICAL information for the micro scale miner. We have a number of other videos up now with more planned. Just thype "Hard Rock University' into the You Tube search bar.
Make a video about white gold
Sounds like a good idea. When I find some, I will do so.
Keith
Yes
good
Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. JFKWWG1WGAJFK.
nice