Crispin
Silver Member
- Jun 26, 2012
- 3,584
- 2,856
- Detector(s) used
- Coinmaster Pro, Sand Shark
- Primary Interest:
- Other
Please be careful what you throw away. With my most recent finds I got a lot of feedback that it was melted Aluminum. I started to doubt myself so I ran some further testing. It was also brought to my attention that it could be solder, a silver alloy. That was a very good point I had not thought about before. Here are some further tests I ran.
Muriatic Acid in two shot glasses:
unknown metal in left shot glass and aluminum foil in right shot glass just after I dropped them in:
15 seconds later:
Brand new soldering iron that will melt ALL silver solder alloys, heats up to 900 degrees F:
Melted lead fishing weight that I will attempt to solder to my metal:
Completely failed attempt to solder:
I've run some other tests that I posted in a couple of other threads. This is definitely silver!
I'm not posting this out of some desire to be right. I'm posting it to warn other hunters to hesitate before throwing away that big blob of metal. Yes, the vast majority of the time they are Aluminum nuggets. I have found and thrown away 100s of these. But every once in a while...it is something else. So if anybody needs help figuring out that silver blob then please mail it to GIB. He will get it to me and the two of us will determine if it is silver or just Aluminum. If it is aluminum we will throw it out and if it is silver we will mail it back to you.
Keep in mind that this blob I have found holds very little value. It only weighs 5.7grams. However, it does tell me A LOT about the area I am hunting and the potential to make other great finds there.
In conclusion, thanks to everybody who has looked at these threads. I have done a lot of research and it has really got me excited. I learned a lot about metals.
Muriatic Acid in two shot glasses:
unknown metal in left shot glass and aluminum foil in right shot glass just after I dropped them in:
15 seconds later:
Brand new soldering iron that will melt ALL silver solder alloys, heats up to 900 degrees F:
Melted lead fishing weight that I will attempt to solder to my metal:
Completely failed attempt to solder:
I've run some other tests that I posted in a couple of other threads. This is definitely silver!
I'm not posting this out of some desire to be right. I'm posting it to warn other hunters to hesitate before throwing away that big blob of metal. Yes, the vast majority of the time they are Aluminum nuggets. I have found and thrown away 100s of these. But every once in a while...it is something else. So if anybody needs help figuring out that silver blob then please mail it to GIB. He will get it to me and the two of us will determine if it is silver or just Aluminum. If it is aluminum we will throw it out and if it is silver we will mail it back to you.
Keep in mind that this blob I have found holds very little value. It only weighs 5.7grams. However, it does tell me A LOT about the area I am hunting and the potential to make other great finds there.
In conclusion, thanks to everybody who has looked at these threads. I have done a lot of research and it has really got me excited. I learned a lot about metals.
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