Pyrite , the other gold.

[ohiochris]

For those of you who are interested , Ive been finding a LOT of some type of pyrite , some of it coated in a rusty brown or dark brown , even black iron coating of some sort , a lot of it dont have the coating and is shiny silver , dull gray or even slightly gold color. Its pretty heavy and ends up at the bottom of my pan or literally clogging up my sluice box. After doing some internet research I found out that a lot of pyrite actually contains real gold. I did an experiment where I took 7 little BB and pencil eraser sized bits of it and melted it down into slag in a carved out charcoal briquette and when I cooled and busted up the slag I found visible gold inside it , about as much as most of the flakes Ive been finding. Check your concentrates well , you may have been throwing a lot of this away and not realized it can have gold in it. Heres a pic of the pyrite I am finding and a pic of the piece of slag with gold in it.....if I can get the pics to load right.

 

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[jmoller99]

Pyrite in Colorado often is found with gold content. Cripple Creek Colorado's gold is tied up in Arsenopyrite - iron arsenic sulfide (Also called Caverite: Calaverite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) - The early miners dumped it, not knowing what it was. Those tailings dumps are being processed now.

Calcopyrite (Chalcopyrite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) in Colorado, is a copper pyrite that is associated with gold ore. Its a very heavy ore.

Very pure (and not worth much) Iron Pyrite has a very distinct cubic shape to it (like that of 6 sided dice) - where the Pyrite that contains gold forms with different shapes (not cubic).

Sulfide ores have been detected using trained dogs (free gold has no scent, so don't expect your dog to sniff out a good place to pan). See: http://www.mining-technology.com/features/featureore-sniffing-dogs-for-mine-location/