gold flakes in my well water?

stylin99

Newbie
Dec 7, 2005
4
0
Charlotte, NC
I need some help identifying real gold flakes vs fools gold or mica. I did a crash course on gold today and here's why.

I had to clean my water filter on my new house due to tons of sediment stopping it up. It's a new well on a newly cleared plot of land. This is the second time I've changed the filter under the house. It was full of sediment and within that, I found small gold flakes. Actually I first noticed it cleaning out my toilet tank as the sediment had collected there over months time. I've dried it out and keep staring at it. It doesn't float in water, it sinks.

Any help identifying what in the world I have? Am I a fool? Can gold flakes be pushed up from an aquifer underground? We do have a lot of rock and quartz out this way... ???
 

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stylin99

Newbie
Dec 7, 2005
4
0
Charlotte, NC
The pieces are so small I can't really test that. Although with a fingernail I pushed into one, the flakes seem to bend, not break.
 

Nitro 54

Full Member
Mar 12, 2005
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Myrtle Creek, Oregon
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Since the flakes are so small, just put some on a steel plate or something hard and try to crush. If it fools gold it will simply turn to powder and the real gold will just stay about the same.
Glen
 

ChuckNC

Jr. Member
May 8, 2005
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0
Hey Stylin.

What part of Charlotte are you in? You could be sitting on something nice. My cousins well is around 250ft deep, and at the 100ft level there is a vein of nice gold about as thick as pencil lead. Too bad they live right next door to 485.

I do have a friend, who deals with plumbing, who has found gold flakes and fines in some of his jobs. He's mainly around Forest City, but stranger things have happened around here before. I think he's found up to 5gr of gold in several homes. He was thinking of setting these homes up on a well filtration system, but I don't know if he did.

Chuck
 

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stylin99

Newbie
Dec 7, 2005
4
0
Charlotte, NC
I'm outside of Charlotte to the west in Gaston County near Mount Holly. I believe our wells out here were also in the 250-300 range from what I heard.
 

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stylin99

Newbie
Dec 7, 2005
4
0
Charlotte, NC
Yep, must be fools gold. I got a chance to play with tweezers, it separates and leave the gold trace across my finger when I try to spread it. Guess it was just wishful thinking.
 

ChuckNC

Jr. Member
May 8, 2005
35
0
Yeah, sounds like the mica we find around here.
So many places around Mt Holly have a history of gold and mining. I'm sure you've ridden by thelittle Catholic Church on 273. It was built for Irish Miners. There is also a house at the end of 273 that when it's well was being drilled, the bit dropped 8ft. It had gone into a mine shaft.
Anyway, most of the creeks and branches in the area have small amounts of gold and platinum in them. Just hard getting permission.
Chuck
 

bakergeol

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Feb 4, 2004
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Mica not pyrite(fool's gold) is the mineral must newbies confuse with gold.
I once was at a campground when a new panner showed me a vial of "gold"
which he had spent 3 days panning. Yep you guessed it- a bottle of mica.
Mica occurs as thin flakes(yes they will bend) and are very light and will move
around when you swish the pan. Besides having a bright yellow color at all angles
gold is heavy and very stable in your pan.
Once you have seen real fine gold it is not an issue anymore.

George
 

Harry_Morant

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Jan 11, 2006
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Yep it was only a matter of weeks ago when I had never seen fine gold in my pan and was puting some mica aside in my bottle just in case. When I saw real fine gold in the pan it was unmistakeable.
 

Aufinder01

Jr. Member
Jan 13, 2006
62
2
Easy stuff to check for gold in solution in water.

Get a glass of water and put in a drop of Stannous Chloride solution. If it turns the water even slightly red or purple you've got gold in the water. Or if your wanting to do a water assay, take 5 gallons and boil it down in a stainless steel bowl (I use a salad bowl), after your down to the last 1/2 cup of water pour it into a bowl of silver-free lead foil and over low heat boil off the remainder. Fire assay this. You'll get a bead of metal if its there.

Aufinder01
 

deserat

Tenderfoot
Sep 21, 2011
5
2
Lyon County Nevada
Detector(s) used
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My neighbor had his well re-drilled an additional 100 feet. After asking to check his tailings, it was discovered in the first pan, that there was definitely gold in his well. I made a deal with him to remove the tailings and compensate him with 10% of the total recovered. From 200 to 300 feet the new hole is 5 inches wide and has yielded more than 6 grams (so far). I'm not sure where the gold was actually struck but the tailings have been mixed and produce a consistent average of 9 grams per cubic foot. A great deal of the flakes look as though they were strafed by the drill bit. It makes you wonder what it was cutting through.
 

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Goodyguy

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Mar 10, 2007
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Deserat,

Not sure what that is in your photo, doesn't look like any gold I've ever seen. :dontknow:
 

deserat

Tenderfoot
Sep 21, 2011
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Lyon County Nevada
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I live in north west Nevada and it is indeed gold. I am perfecting my process to extract every flake out of the tailings for no other purpose than to discover how much gold was in the hole. Of course the gold will be nice also. I have taken it to an assayer and was told that the different color was due to the arsenic. I have about 1000 other projects but expect to have this load extracted within a month and will update with another photo. Fishing through the last few pans produced another 1/2 gram last night.

Here is a photo of my recirculating sluice tank and my help running the tailings.
(This is the desert and it conserves water)
 

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ivan salis

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Feb 5, 2007
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there is thermo vent (hot springs) gold and also gold pushed up form viens under the earth , by pressure of water finding its self to the surface --natural springs ---so why not "well water gold "--in gold bearing areas , fine gold could easily be pushed out to the surface by water -- it would be prefectly natural I would think.
 

Goodyguy

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Mar 10, 2007
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deserat

Tenderfoot
Sep 21, 2011
5
2
Lyon County Nevada
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Hey GoodGuy, thanks for the comp and the link.
The water is not safe to drink. It took years to design an affordable filtration system for my home.
I use Diatomaceous Earth as my filtration. It is found on the surface in my back yard. After crushing it, (with a sledge hammer on a D-8 belly pan), I have built a canister for inline filtration. It works great and I've sent my design to a filtration manufacture that has already implemented it to filter the water at NAS Fallon, (Top Gun Training School). After the Diatomaceous Earth, it is run through carbon and sediment filters to help with the calcium. It works great and my water is the envy of the neighborhood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth
 

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