Treasure or trash.Gold or brass

[jopher]

In looking through my cigar box treasures I stop to ponder over a couple of items there.One is a wedding band found in the middle of the Shiawassee river(along with two mercury dimes).The other is a small blob of metal from the ashes of a burned out 19th century home.Both cleaned up to a nice gold color,or is it a nice brass color??The ring is stamped "18"but it could have been plated at one time.
Can anyone tell me a shurfire method of determining which metal these would be?Id really appreciate it.
By the way,if there are any treasure shooters in the Flint Michigan area drop me a line.

 

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[Fred]

Go to a hock shop or jewelers. Either place will have a small test device for determining weather or not an item is made of gold and what the karet rating is. In return for this info maybe you know a foolproof way to tell the diff between silver and platinum. Fred

 

[lab rat]

Silver will tarnish easier than platinum. Silver will turn black if you set it next to a piece of pyrite for a few days (from the sulfur), and silver will turn white if you dip it in HCl (muriatic acid, like you get for jacuzzis or swimming pools). A drop of HNO3 (nitric acid) will etch silver and make a noxious brown cloud. Platinum doesn't react or dissolve, and you shouldn't notice any color change with these tests.

Testing gold is pretty simple, too-- HCl won't affect it like brass. If a ring is plated, try looking under a magnifying glass at the wear along the edges-- if there is corrosion or a different color metal showing there, you've got a dupe.

You can try cleaning your ring by dipping it in vinegar (5% white vinegar like you get at a grocery store will work best) with a piece of aluminum foil for 5 minutes. Afterwards, take it straight out of the vinegar and put it in baking soda powder. As it fizzes, rub it with your fingers or an old toothbrush to shine it up. The down side of doing this is that if the ring is plated, the plating will start to come off. If the ring shines up nicely, chances are good you have a prize. If it stays dull or turns an ugly color, you've got junk.

Additionally, you can check the density of the metal in question-- here's a brief table:

iron 7.5
brass 8.5-9.5
silver 10.5
10k gold 14.0+
18k gold 16.0+
24k gold 18.0
platinum 16.0+

weigh the object dry, and weigh it while it is suspended in water. Take the difference in the two weights and divide it into the dry weight-- this is your density.

Hope this helps!

 

[Fred]

Thank you labrat. This is good enough to print. The reason I asked is that I have salvaged some white material from some electrical equiptment and wasn't sure if it was Silver or Pt. I DO know that it is one or the other. I will try to test it tomorrow. Fred

 

[jopher]

Labrat...Thanks for the info.Im sure it will prove invaluable on current and future questionable pieces.Much appreciated.....Jo

 

[lab rat]

You're quite welcome-- glad to help out. Here's a follow-up: If you dip silver in a concentrated ammonia-based window cleaner it will turn gray over time; platinum shouldn't do this. I don't really recommend this test because ammonia will actually dissolve silver.

And since you've been such good readers: Here's a quick-n-easy way to tell whether your diamonds are real... I use a 10x microscope, but any good magnifier will work as well: look carefully at where the edges of the facets meet. If they are sharp and straight, this is what you want-- a good sign. If they are ground, chipped, or scratched from wear, you've got something else... possibly a softer natural gem, but definitely NOT a diamond. If they are curved and not flat, you've got evidence of an underpaid forced-labor gemcutter working under stress to get these cheap fakes to market fast!

Additionally, true diamonds are pure carbon, and -love- to bask in oil and grease. Soap scum will build up on the back of a real diamond and stay there forever. In the ground natural oils from organics can also build up and coat a true diamond. If you have a cruddy-looking diamond wannabe, maybe it really is: scrub the tar off it with concentrated liquid dish soap and a good used toothbrush. (I hear toothpaste also helps.) Turpentine or acetone may be used sparingly, if needed. If it sparkles nicely afterwards, send a donation to the charity of your choice and accept my congratulations on finding a prize!

FYI: Diamonds are very hard but not indestructible. They can fracture and split under shock. Hitting one with a hammer to prove it is a diamond is NOT a good idea. Though they can scratch glass, there are a lot of other things that can (including some fakes) as well, so this is not a reliable test. An electronic tester is a good idea; you can probably find one on Ebay for around $100. These work by heating a probe; when you touch the probe to the sample, heat dissipates according to the thermal conductivity of the specimen. Diamonds have a high thermal conductivity (similar to metal) and the tester will measure this. I've heard it said that if you could fill your bathtub with diamonds and lay in it, you'd freeze to death as they suck the heat out of your body. (A possible reason they are sometimes referred to as 'ice'.) I still don't have enough diamonds to test this theory, but am working on it... :lol:

 

[beetle662]

LabRat, you are a "wealth" of information. Pun intended.

 

[lab rat]

That was a pretty 'rich' pun-- (whew! its getting PUNgeant around here!)

Addendum to the ring tests: One thing I should mention is to be careful of soldering on assembled rings or rings that have been sized, and chains-- these solders have been designed to melt at lower temperatures than the rest of the piece, and may also be more sensitive to chemical tests. Once I found a nice gold ring that had been buried for some time, and corrosion got to the soldered sizing points which had turned dark green. You just want to pay attention to this so that when you test or clean your piece it doesn't fall apart on you!

 

[lab rat]

Another 'quick trick' field test for rings: set the ring in question on your thumb and flip it into the air. Snap it with your thumbnail as you flip it so it 'rings' like a bell. If it goes 'ring' it is silver, gold, or brass or copper. If it goes 'thump' its just pot metal. Aluminum goes 'tink', but you can tell aluminum pretty quick by its weight anyway. For the trained ear this is a pretty reliable test, but I'm not sure how platinum or titanium rings will sound.

 

[MDnoob]

Titanium rings make a "ring" sound when flipped.