Gold and mineral assay and ID

[YumaMarc]

Way back in 1958 or so I bought a set of little paperback books from a place called Dukes' Research Laboratory. Some of you may be familiar with it. It consisted of three parts, the first was called "Overlooked Fortunes in the Newer and Rarer Minerals", I believe. It was more or less a promotion for the second and third parts. The second part was called "Duke's Short Course in Prospecting and Mineral Identification". It was very interesting and went into the nut and bolts of finding mineral deposits in the wild. The third section, "Duke's Quick Qualitative Analysis" was the meat of the whole thing. It contained many quick and easy tests for most mineral elements you are likely to find out in the hills.

Over many years of working in a gold assay lab and refinery, I had the opportunity to try out Duke's tests, and THEY DO work! They are not precise because they are QUALITATIVE tests, thus are merely to show the presence of certain elements and sometimes an approximation of quantity, but are not a quantitative assay.

They are available online on many sites for a fee, but (may miracles never cease) I found a site where they can be downloaded as a pdf for FREE! The address is: http://silverprospector.com/dukes/dukes-vol1.pdf. If you want volume two, just change the "vol1" in the address to "vol2". They have been nearly impossible to find in the past, so I don't know how long they may be available. Anyone interested in the metallurgical aspect of prospecting will find them fascinating.

If you can't get them from that site, I have both the paper copies and digital files.

[golden ray]

Yes, the Duke manuals are a real asset to anyone looking for nobel metals.
Like you said, their not a true assay; but still very useful.
Charles Butler use to sell them. I believe his nephew Ronny in Las Vegas
handles that for him now that he is retired.

[Got_4by4]

Thank you for posting this valuable asset!

[stanjtown]

Thanks for posting the information about (Overlooked Fortunes) I looked through it and it looks like some good reading for noods like myself. I also put it in a search engine and it came up that way also but it was a copied of the same material and had some ink bolts in spots.

Stan