Cant tell if this is gold....

[Seeker Of Truth]

I discovered this creek that has just endured water from thawing and some heavy rains recently and the banks have been cut deep by this and is still fresh. the dirt is soft and alot of gray clay near the bottom. I happened to look down and i see a rock that has very very small gold glints in it, its not a vein, its just "flakes" in the rock, i pop the rock in my knapsack and walk maybe 7ft down the river and come to a rather large quartz formation that has been exposed from the river bank. this formation is very fragile and is loaded with this "flake"... I'm not getting my hopes up, it could be pyrite, or mica, but the thing is is mica isn't native to my state... but I'm in a glacial state so it could have been brought down from Canada maybe? I can isolate some of the flakes, maybe enough to test them just i need to know the proper way to do this as i have no real experience with this...

 

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[jimmygoat]

Hello Seeker, Try scratching a flake. It shouldn't fall apart. It should scratch like a piece of lead. I hope its gold. Good luck. Jimmygoat

 

[Seeker Of Truth]

And if it does fall apart, what could it be?

Im actually gonna head back out there with a few buckets and a hammer and such and get as much of that rock as possible cause i guess rain is in the forecast, and its already starting to spit. I can just bring what i want home and sift and test it here.

 

[Seeker Of Truth]

I am back home now with two full buckets of quartz and dirt, all of it has the flakes in it. i actually was able to detach some of the formation and wrap them in cloths. the ones i wrapped up have nothing but the "gold" looking substance on the underside of them, though its very thin, it seems to be mostly one piece, ill try and upload photos so everyone can better understand what I'm getting at, but i tend to have a hard time uploading on here for some reason

 

[jimmygoat]

Seeker, It is hard to say without a picture, but if it falls apart it's probably a pyrite or mica. Jimmygoat

 

[Seeker Of Truth]

This is some of the debris i collected, now that i figured out the whole pic thing ill post more as time permits

 

[Astrobouncer]

Looks a lot like mica schist metamorphic rock to me. Hard to tell from the pictures though. Get some black sand concentrates from the river by panning some of the river gravel, crush up some of that gold looking material and put it in the pan with the black sand concentrate, then pan them together. If the gold sits below the black sand then its pretty heavy and could be gold. If it floats on top then for sure its mica schist.

 

[Seeker Of Truth]

Hey thanks for the tip, ill have to try that out.

 

[Hoser John]

Just use a knife to it--ifn' it cracks, crumbles or goes crunch--it's not gold. Nitric acid is another. BUT the most important piece of info is missing from the post--where are you?? Geology is amazingly different east to west and it makes a huge difference-tons a au 2 u 2 -John

 

[Seeker Of Truth]

My state is ohio, and my whole county is pretty much in the glacial path.

 

[Seeker Of Truth]

Sorry everyone, i took the biggest flake i could get and "crunched" it under a razor blade guess ill just look somewhere else i suppose, and hope i find somethin would probably help if i had a metal detector in these parts....