2016 Gold - A Nice Start

[tvanwho]

Yes, but as I approach the big 60 this year, my brain seems to be in a fog a lot of the time, and poor memory too. One of these days, I will remember to search 1st.

[Steve Herschbach]

Well Tom, I am happy to do a search and link for you any time! You might have to be patient with me though - it takes me a bit longer these days to catch up on reading all the posts.

Chris is kicking my posterior for gold, as is anyone else digging any gold at all. One tiny nugget for me to start the new year off with.

[Jim Hemmingway]

On 4/12/2016 at 10:09 PM, Reno Chris said:

Do a little research on Google and you'll be able to answer your own questions.

Chris… has it occurred to you that we could apply your above statement to many of the questions asked on these forums. Have you considered that some forum members admire or even trust you as an unequivocal knowledge source whose advice is their first preference? Sure, we can simply Google such questions and dismiss any effort at forum discussion. But without questions, these forums would pretty much cease to function or even exist.

Tom didn’t ask 1000 questions but rather a simple few questions that require no study or work from you. The answers are equally simple, and I’ve answered them below. You might anticipate that initiating a “show and tell” thread where you present information is likely to generate questions. If you are not prepared to responsibly deal with that possibility, then perhaps you should reserve your presentations for the magazine fraternity, where no questions need be answered.

Tom… Muriatic acid is a generic term for various strengths of Hydrochloric (HCl) acid. In Ontario over the years, HCl acid strength has varied from 19% up to 37%, is priced accordingly, and is available at pool supply shops, Canadian Tire, Home Depot and other hardware related outlets. At times I use it extensively for treating naturally occurring silver ores, as exemplified in the photo below.

Muriatic acid will help loosen and certainly doesn’t hurt with cleaning dirt from our silver specimens. Gold shouldn’t be any different. The soil here is primarily a brown clay loam pretty much dominated by brown goethite iron mineralization, and is very reactive to even light concentrations of muriatic acid. Whether that holds true for the more oxidized red soils you refer to is beyond my experience. I’d also suggest looking into an ultrasonic cleaner, and variety of suitable dental type picks as an option.

Muriatic acid can be used as it comes straight from the bottle, but I prefer to dilute initially to one part acid added to two or three parts water to clean dirt and calcite residues from natural silver. More fragile specimens call for much weaker acid concentrations, on rare occasions I’ve even used vinegar… a weak acetic acid. More water dilution slows down the reaction, and permits more control over the procedure. Ensure your personal safety and wear protective gloves, and face splash-guard (or at least approved safety glasses) as a minimum when handling acid solutions.

Jim.

[auminesweeper]

Thanks for the Info Jim, as always you are a Trusted wealth of information and a good friend.

Take care,, john

[LukeOzDigger]

Cheers jim' here I was thinking cleaning dirty gold was a lost art and top secret....

[tvanwho]

I almost paid the price for not wearing my safety goggles over my eyeglasses while using my hand grinder on my highbanker. .A chip flew off and hit me in my upper cheek. Took me an hour to find a pair of goggles but better than a trip to the ER... Pays to be safe vs assuming nothing bad will happen ,when doing potentially dangerous things like grinding, sawing, welding, using acids...sure wish there was a solution for getting older and more feeble...but my father always told me this was better than the alternative...

Thanks guys for your support, no offense to Chris, but forums are meant for question and answer sessions as well as show and tell,  even repeats sometimes...guess we will all be Old Timers in a few more years much as I hate to admit to it..

[auminesweeper]

7 minutes ago, tvanwho said:

guess we will all be Old Timers in a few more years much as I hate to admit to it..

Too late for me I am already feeling the pinch, miss spent youth I guess

john

[IDdesertman]

Very nice write-up Jim, and always nice to see pics of those amazing silver specimens!