Do you have Gold? Identify Nuggets and Analyze your Gold: Test and Know What You Have Found
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- Опубликовано: 24 июн 2022
- I get frequently get questions about how to tell the difference between gold and pyrite (and other stuff like Mica or Limonite). Doing identification on a mineral just by its color is a bad idea - this is because the colors of gold include white, Reddish, yellow even greenish. I'll have pictures of both gold and stuff that is not gold. I'll look at metallic luster, and compare that to various sulfides. Gold rarely glitters, but does sometimes with crystalline gold. Tests include a volt meter that will measure conductivity. I'll also look at what happens when hitting a piece of gold vs pyrite or mica, or limonite. Mica has transparency which gold does not.
For those who want to learn more about Prospecting and finding gold check out my book, Fists full of Gold. It’s an encyclopedia of everything on the topic of prospecting. It’s available on from High Plans Prospectors. (Affiliate) You can find it at:
highplainsprospectors.com/pro...
For even more information on prospecting, minerals, gems and other related information you can also check out my website at:
nevada-outback-gems.com/prospe...
The Prospecting and Mining Journal magazine can be found at:
www.icmj.com 
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So glad I saw these. I'm greatful you are strait forward and honest. Thanks.
Glad you like them!
Very interesting to watch, loved the comparisons and can’t wait for your platinum/silver coloured metal video 🐝
Its coming soon!
Very much looking forward to to the videos on pt and the gold in quarts!
Thanks for the video
Both of these new videos are coming soon!
Good information for the newer prospectors !!! And old ones too !!!!! 👍
Thanks 👍 - I do get loads of questions from new prospectors.
Wow, Christopher,
Now your touching up on many of the begining stages which Fill in the areas of our curiosity & provide the envisionment we are wanting.
From Baby steps; towards Developed understanding!
Glad you enjoyed it.
Watching at this moment.
Another important Topic is to know/distinguish the differences between Silver, White Gold, Platnum, etc. As each while in a Rock can be flat flakes & look alike; which can be confusing to determine, which is what type.
Awesome videos buddy!!
Glad you like them!
Love your book! Great video too!
Thanks for the kind words.
Great and educational videos. I really enjoyed watching this video.
I think I have finally realised why some people have a hobby of collecting stones.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video! Thanks for your help!
Glad it helped!
I really enjoy watching your channel, your character is very genuine. I appreciate your knowledge and would like to thank you for sharing it with the people who are interested in learning all that goes into being a miner. It's a lot and this kind of hobby is not as easy to jump into as people think. I've been interested and learning about finding gold for about 4 yrs now, on and off. Im not good at panning, could be that I don't find it fun and that could be because I haven't been very successful. As I'm sitting on the rivers edge, looking into the water I saw beautiful rocks...everywhere. Now I hunt and mine rocks, minerals and gems. This too is not an easy hobby if you want to take it beyond just collecting. These hobbies as well as coin and stamp collecting are not for everyone. Sure anyone can collect but if their main purpose is to make a profit then they have to be willing to make the time to LEARN by reading 📚, and watching individuals like you who are SEASONED and know what they are talking about. It really does take BRAINS lol..intelligent to be successful in these particular hobbies. It takes time and experience. There's so many wannabes on RUclips giving the wrong info, click bank to the fullest out of desperation and really don't care if you're out at the river for hours with all this stuff and ppl aren't getting results. Literally ppl paint rocks gold, place them on top of the gravel and make a video like they found this big gold nugget just sitting there...lmafo
What I'm trying to say is thank you for sharing legitimate information and your tips bc I found your channel I'm bk in the race...panning still is not my thing. It would take me too long to get through one pan bc I'd be looking at the minerals..lol I'm interested in high banking and crevicing. Anyways...I appreciate you!
Thank you for the kind words.
Just found your channel recently, love the content! After watching the videos on gold ore, I realized I've held quite a bit in my hand, embedded in quarts rocks! If I only knew then what I know now!!🤦♂️🤷♂️🙆♂️
Maybe you can go back and find them.
@@ChrisRalph It was years ago. I just thought they were cool looking quarts rocks, with what looked like good chunks of gold in them. Back then I didn't even realize gold was found in quarts rocks. I thought gold was only found in gold mines. But I was just a kid and a lot of them I actually threw in the water.🤦♂️🤷♂️🙆♂️😂😂 Both places I found them were at quarts and granite quarries with big lakes. If I ever get the chance to revisit those places I would definitely be on the lookout. I appreciate your positive outlook on that situation. I have very much been enjoying your videos since I found your channel. Keep up the good work my friend!!
Good to see you again. Keep it up
Trying to keep to a video per week.
Havnt seen you in a while. Glad your feeling better and stuff. Sorta lost touch with all the covid stuff. Inwasnt watching gold stuff. Mostly coins and learning that. Take it easy
Between your book, videos, mining journal and website, I have concluded that gold fever cannot kill a man. 😆 As usual great info 👍
Glad to hear that you enjoyed the video.
I have learned a long time ago how to id gold and that little old man looked at me and said " gold will always look like gold" he was right
If it changes colors with different angles good chance it not gold.
Looking forward to your platinum video and one thing I would love to see more of is videos like the one you just did with smithgold I really enjoyed that video
Again great video !!!
glad you enjoyed the video.
I enjoyed this episode of How to identify gold.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Quesrion? Hello Chris, thanks for your hard work in producing all the great video's and a job well done.
Here's the the question. I had heard of the drift pits in eastern Oregon. I ran across a book in the book store but had to run home for more money when I came back the next the book was gone.
The book was from the forties showing these drift mines. Mostly dangerous without the eqipment. Do you know what I speak of and point me in the right direction. I've done google searches and there seems to be a lot of gold in the area but not the gold pits as they were described in the book.
Sorry, I do not know the book you have in your mind.
Wow 👌 the knowledge i have receive from u.Niceeeee
Glad to hear that
Hi Chris, I found a 15 lb. chunk of quartz float with stringers of pyrite running through it. I found it with a Goldbug 2. Sent it screaming. Am I detecting some Au in it, or does a fair dose of smaller size pyrite, in quantity, set of a detector? I don't want to crush and pan it as it is a very good specimen of the veins that occur around here.
Sometimes pyrite will sound off on a GB2, but other times not. So hard to say.
Hi Chris. A year ago when I bought your book I bought small nuggets off e-bay so I would have an idea what real gold looks like. I got three in the little packet. On close examination with a magnifying glass two appeared to be pyrite and one looked like real gold. When I weighed them the suspect two were about one-fifth the weight of the one that appeared real, even though the same size. The real one appeared the same metallic gold color in any light. The fake two only in sunlight. I tapped the real one with a hammer and it flattened. The only odd thing is that my gold bug pro doesn't go off when waved over it. The real piece is about 4x2x2mm in size. Is it too small to be seen by the coil? Thx for any input.
Without being there to see and observe what you are talking about, I cannot say the problem. I might be too small for your GB Pro to see - but I dont know.
amazing information
Glad you think so!
Great vid ty
Thank you!
Hi Chris. I believe that all windows on jet airplanes have a thin coating of gold to prevent solar radiation from causing cancers and sterilization in passengers and crew. It is only a few molecules thick but is enough to reflect or absorb the radiation. At ground level, the radiation passes through enough atmosphere to neutralize most of the radiation. So, gold is transparent when used in this way and you can see a slight gold tint to these windows if you look carefully. The visors astronauts use have enough gold coating to be easily seen in pictures or videos of them. Thanks for all the good videos. They are very helpful to us beginners.
Yes, mankind can create real thin gold. However in this video I am talking about identifying stuff picked up in the field that people think could be gold. There is no natural gold which you might find in the field that will be transparent. So yes, what you say is true, but it has nothing to do with the subject of this video.
What about testing dust? Can’t do a conductivity test or a smash test or streak.no furnace to melt it and no nitric acid any ideas on how to test? So far all I’ve got is it floats but also heavier than everything else in the pan need jet dry to keep it down but once it’s down it shakes to the bottom anyway just need testing ideas for super fine dust.
Have an assay lab test it for you.
G'day Chris, just wondering what happens to crystalline gold if you hit it with a hammer? Great videos and is your book also helpful in Australia? Cheers Dan
It is exactly the same as a well smoothed nugget. The inside of rounded nuggets are made from crystalline gold.
I have thrown about 35 pounds of ugly rocks onto my bbq grill. Will bust the rocks ups later today to see if any Au . Is recoverable. Your videos pout me in the right direction sir!
Glad to know that you found it helpful.
How long do You soak the gold in the nitric acid/water mix? Does it take all the impurities out?
24 hours is plenty long enough. It only affects the surface of the gold (if it is really gold), so no, it does not take all the impurities out.
Is limonite known to carry gold or gold sulfides ? Always enjoy you informative videos.. well done, and fun !
First, there are no naturally occurring gold sulfide minerals. Second, limonite forms by oxidation of pyrite. Pyrite is a common mineral. Not all pyrite contains significant gold. Most does not. When pyrite does contain gold it is as gold metal. So yes, a small percentage of limonite does contain gold but the vast majority does not.
Hi Chris how would one identify fine or flour gold ? I have seen shiny gold specs but brown on the backside, probably pyrite. Also brittle and it breaks up. Then I have seen thin shiny sheet / flakes which are probably mica. How would one identify gold ( the size of sand particles) from these ?
If its brittle, its not gold, period. Sorry, but that is how it is.
You could pan it out with some beach sand. Real gold particles will stay in the bottom of the pan, pyrite will wash out with the sand. Just an idea from an amateur. Chris is the old pro here
@@ChrisRalphit countain some gold😂🎉
SioFeSCuAsAuAghhh
Professor sir I have a question in regards to identifying gold. when one takes a picture from a device and uses inverted color, is it possible to identify the gold by how it appears in inverted color? What I think could be gold appears opaque in the inverted color mode. Thanks again for taking your time and answering these questions and sharing your years of hard work and knowledge with us all.
I doubt it. Lots of things sort of look like gold and a photo alone is a poor judge.
Hey Chris. Hope you can make it to the Nugget Hunt this year. It's the last Saturday in July - July 30th. Hope you can join us. Aloha Tim
I should be able to make it.
@@ChrisRalph Great. See you there. Aloha
And just were is nugget hunt ?
Hey Chris if I send you a picture of some stuff I think it's meteors or whatever it looks cold and stuff can you tell me what it is
Sorry, identifying minerals from Pics is far more difficult than you think, so I dont offer a photo ID service.
Brilliant guy sure he has quite the education. That said can someone tell me is Hydrogen peroxide 35% good to devolve gold if this is the Case.
How do I then extract the gold out of devolved gold in the 35% proxcide, DO I just fire the liquid in my blast furnus ????
Just need little help with this thanks all
35% H2O2 by itself will not dissolve the gold, you need the right acid, like Hydrochloric in addition to the peroxide. Also note that 35% is potentially explosive, especially on exposure to heat. I would urge you to read the MSDS sheet for peroxide. Also note that I am NOT recommending this to you, in fact I advise against it.
Got a cartridge case in a dump ample once and after it went through the impact mill, it looked VERY nice. Nitric showed the truth real quick although the AMOUNT made me very suspicious from the start.
Nitric will say for sure but not everyone has access to nitric.
@@ChrisRalph Good thing too. :-)
Hey Chris I read that limonite can carry gold and actually be a gold vein how would that look
Gold can be associated with pyrite. Pyrite when it is near the surface and exposed to the air will oxidize and turn to limonite.
I have found some Chalcopyrite that appears to look like gold however if you do the testing it can be ruled out also. Thanks for some quick tips on testing for gold. Want to see the video on platinum…..
Yes, chalcopyrite can also look like gold. The platinum one will be a couple weeks. I'm doing a diamond ID video first
@@ChrisRalph good deal. I will wait…..
Good job, good video hope to be as good as you
You can do it!
I found a gold flake that stands upright to a magnet and when I turn the magnet around it flips over standing upright. However it’s not magnetic didn’t stick to metal. Strange.
sounds interesting.
hello iam use some your ideas tanks
Best of luck to you.
I found placer gold from a local waterfall what should I do now.Please reply🙏
Get the gold.
My dad was a teacher until he was 82 and you are doing a fantastic job. He would have been Brown thank you for teaching Mike from Arizona Buckeye by the rainbow Valley man and women only. Sorry l o l
Thanks. glad you liked it.
Iv found that if I use a torch lighter on the mica and other yellow gold look in minerals . if it's gold it gets shiny and if not it burns and turns brown ,, I'm new to all this so don't know how acurate this is yet . but so far so good I think
I'm not sure about that as a test.
@@ChrisRalph , I'm still learning , I've only tried it on a few that I knew for sure , that's why I said somthing here , to get your thoughts on the matter? I got the idea from a combination of 2 videos I watched , 1 was a guy roasting a Crystal and the shocking it with cold water to make it easier to break and the other was a guy roasting his non magnetic black sand to show the gold in it
Nice sir👍
Thanks.
chris can i test sulfur ore with auga---or does it have to be roasted--? thank you---
Auga - not sure what you mean. Augua is Spanish for water.
He means aqua regea 😂 gold water in Arabic 😂🎉
Must rœsting first to take out sulfur lead zinc mercur arsenic out all metals under 700 C evaporator
Thanks a lot professor
Rifling lines are not manufactured on the lead, they are impressed upon the lead when the round goes through the barrel
OK, lubrication lines.
Awesome
Glad you enjoyed it.
Actually you can see through thin gold. Its a great IR reflector, but it allows light in the green wavelengths through. In fact all of the nasa spacesuits have a gold lens that allows them to see out but keeps them from frying there faces in the direct sunlight.
I have a video that talks about those things.
Extremely helpful and knowledgeable video. Thank you so much!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hey, good video, my friend. Thank you .
Oh , by the way, it might interest you to know that gold can be made thin enough to be transparent, translucent. In fact, NASA used gold, on the glass of the face shields for the space suit helmet, to reflect the intense sunlight from shining into the astronauts eyes on the APOLLO moon missions .
Yes, the mirror finish on the visors is made by gold .
It must be awfully fragile.
“NASA scientists coated the visors with a gold layer so thin - 0.000002 inches - that astronauts could see through it”
I don’t think this would be possible in nature. That is thin on an atomic level.
To all practically, gold in nature is never translucent.
This is really helpful, as I've wanted to prospect for gold for several years and I'm just starting to try it. :)
I'm glad to hear you liked it.
Not sure if true or not, I read somewhere that gold will look the same in sun and shade, pyrite will look like gold in the sun but will be dull in shade.
That is true, but its kind of subjective. People see what they want to see.
Awesome for beginner ! The lure of gold has ruined many. I have smashed a few rocks and believe there is some very fine gold. I think. It sticks to the bottom of pastic pan. I removed the metallic particles but still have particles in the mix. The suspect gold particles are about a few thousands of a inch. Not worth smashing a bunch of rocks to get gold out. I found these rocks in 1.5 inch gravel. My reasoning is that gravel comes the same area as gold
Best of luck to you in your efforts.
@@ChrisRalph thanks. Its all part of learning. Next step is getting some nitric acid. And a microscope to really see what im thinking im seeing. Dont know if its worth it really but id like to know. News at eleven.... thankyou for being one who tells it like it is. The gold is still out there to be found for sure but it takes knowedge and research or dumb luck. Im pretty lucky but im not stupid. Knowlege is power.
Ok I think iv watched just bout evry video you post iv been a rock hound for years so I think I no a good bit I have located a pocket of what I think is gold I'm 98 percent sure evry test is positive 22k or better but I can't seam to get anyone to help me who or how would you handle this situation I have aloft of material
I'd do it myself and make bars from my gold and sell them off to a refiner.
@Chris Ralph, Professional Prospector thanks Chris but I can't get it to temprature to get a proper smelt in the end there is my Flux left and gold flakes all through it I bought a dull side smelter iv invested alot trying to do the same thing but I'm missing something or do i even have gold it passed acid test for 22k gold it smashes like gold should I think I live in GA demographic have anything to change results do to region
no change from region - gold is gold everywhere on earth. I'd get a lab to test to see if it really is gold.
Good i got it write.Thks
Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@ChrisRalph Thanks for your Teachings and I look forward to welcoming you to kenya for taking you safari tour for wildlife and our hidden treasures. My career is Truck Driver I have covered 10 countries of Africa driving. Welcome you after election. Thks
For our eyes pictures suck but for computers it’s not I use google lens to give me a idea what I may have. 😂of course not the best way to get my information but it works. Because ads have another A.I that does a search in comparison to your picture. And I swear. I really put. A effort this year I’m going to post photos on here one days soon
Best of luck to you.
hi chris did i find gold
😮
Test it for yourself and see.
Please show us platinum!!
It's kinda grayish and even more heavy than gold at least the nuggets are. And I think that you can find platinum in silver ore but not always.
Platinum and silver almost never occur together in significant amounts. It will be a few weeks but I will get it done.
@@ChrisRalph I guess I better clean my ears. 🙉
Thank you, now where's my hammer 😆
Glad to help
You don’t think you have found gold if you find it. You know it’s gold. If there is any doubt, “it’s not gold”. My experience anyway.
Actually I have found a 3 gram gold nugget that was a pseudo morph of pyrite crystals, I can only assume it was in contact with iron pyrite at some point in history.
I've encountered some folks who are 100 percent, totally certain that they have found gold, but have not.
It would have been helpful if you would have actually showed us HOW to use the voltmeter instead of just telling us that we can use one.
The voltmeter is really really simple - you clearly have never owned one. Most folks don't need that very basic info, so do a little research for 5 minutes and teach yourself.
Thanks for the movie Crist sent in almost all mica to be assay came back Platinum PGM group I guss that is how they seed platinum
Not sure.
first view, like and comment
Thanks!
i have a gold nugget
Congrats.
All that glitters is not gold and all those who wander are not lost. .Lord of the rigs
A quote of J.R.R. Tolkien.
I'm in Massachusetts and we got shit for gold w t f
But there are some states with gold not that far away.
If gold never got heated or melted, it looks different from when it has been heated. That's why it looks metallic cuz it melted.
Quartz gets melted to make glass, howz come glass is not metallic? Gold looks metallic melted or not.
@@ChrisRalph I thought sand was to make glass to. But on some of Jeff Williams videos, his fine gold looks like sand, but I can tell it's gold just looking at it. My dad can douse for veins. He also has a book out on it. I like watching your videos too, you do have great information you talk about.
Sand used in making glass is made of quartz particles. So it is a quartz sand.
@@ChrisRalph your right and great videos I like them.