7.8 Troy Ounce Gold Nugget 18k-20k, a small Clunker too

[Ant]

Hi you all i normally don't my finds but to me this is significant so I wanted to share.

My conclusion is that I found a crystalline gold nugget that has a coating of iron oxide, and a natural copper nugget.

I posted the story in the "What Is It" room.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/forum.php

At first when this came out of the ground I thought it was a gold ring that was melted in a extremely hot house or building fire.
It came out of the ground like you see in the first set of pictures. Then when I got home scrubbed it with a toothbrush, ammonia, and dish washing liquid. I am very familiar with gold characteristics and knew right off that it was gold. It was heavy like gold and I saw the glint of gold in spots and assumed that it became contaminated in the fire.

I never find much brass in this area but every now and then I do, mostly iron, aluminum, cooper and lead. It was down inside a bed of charcoal. I also this copper nugget that was within 6' of the gold nugget. came from the site burn.

This site has a rich gold history and tons of gold ore was loaded and shipped through here. Is it possible that it fell from a wagon or pack animal because I wouldn't expect to find both so close to each other.

The first set of pictures is how i came out of the ground. The second set of pictures is how it looked after cleaning it with baking soda, ammonia, dish washing liquid, and a 40 second scrubbing with a medium toothbrush (yep I counted that out).

Then in the second set of pictures I t scrubbed it with the toothbrush and Brasso Brass cleaner and that had no effect, no tarnish transfer to the white cotton cloth that I used either (it isn't brass but I knew that).

The third set of pictures show the gold nugget after I soaked it in ketchup for about 30 minutes. Then I vigorously scrubbed it for about a minute with a hog bristle brush.

After all these years this is be my first detected gold nugget and it came in its crystalline form with a coating of iron oxide. The gold is actually soft enough bend with the fingernail on my pinkie finger where I have the pointer.

The last set of pictures is of the copper nugget:

 

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[Ant]

You can see the "What Is It thread" with more pictures at this link:

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/what/484955-copper-nugget-part-gold.html

Well guess what, I set up the experiment taking particular care by being precise as possible. I placed the glass inside the measuring pitcher. Then being careful by filling the glass to the rim without breaking the surface tension. Then I lowered the specimen down into the water below the surface. Then I used a paper towel to remove s enough water to remove the sample and then the glass. Then I used a 1cc syringe to measure the overflow. I got 15.5 cc of water.

So 15 cc of displaced h2o is the same as 15.5 ml.

Then my new quantitative analysis for the sp is 15.80.

Here's how I got that:

245g/ x 15.50 = 15.806451613

 

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[Ant]

The gold nugget weighs 245 grams and displaced 15.5 ml of water.

 

[Ant]

Hi, when I first found this I thought it was a copper fire nugget., but in the back of my mind I thought that it could be gold and that I never find copper this big. There is yellow gold underneath a iridescent crystal coatinig that may be calcite, places are shot with gold crystals and areas on both sides have melted gold frosting. I used a density test and the results were 15.80.

Here's the quick story. While hunting for gold coins and meteoritesI stumbled upon 2 gold nuggets not far from each other. They were below a layer of charcoal, 5" to 7" deep and seemed to be mixed into a golf ball rock matrex in shallow ground. The signal on my machine made me think silver dollar or aluminum can.

When I dug the smaller gold nugget I knew right off that it was gold but I thought that it was a gold fire nugget ring. It turned out thayt I had found a 245 gram gold nugget with a karat value between 18k and 20k.

You can see my story and the help that I had at the "What Is It" link below:

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/484550-gold-nugget-copper-nugget.html

 

[Ant]

5 more pictures:

 

[ARC]

Woah... now that's a trip.

Did you acid test yet ?

I would be all over that spot again... Prolly a "smelters spot"...
At sometime someone was smelting metals there. ?
?

 

[ARC]

I would assume that the "greening" etc was from the copper cut.

 

[Ant]

And the little Clunker that I named the Shark Head Nugget:

 

[PaDirtDigger]

Now this is an interesting thread... That is so cool! Good for you, you deserve this with your time and research...AWESOME

 

[DFW_THer]

So sweet.

 

[Ant]

I used a formula to find the density because I'm told and by my fails acid test result that the acid test doesn't work on many gold nuggets. They say that's because of impurities in the metal like platinum, silver, and other impurities.

So the gold nugget weighs 245 grams and it displaced 15.5 cc 's of h2o, cc's is the same number when converted to ml which is needed to calculate the formula.

Here's my calculations:
245g / x15.5 = 15.80
So the destiny of the specimen is 15.80. Okay when we look at the density chart we find copper around 8, lead around 11, and gold way up at 19. So the 15.80 specific gravity is higher than lead and they know that 15.80 is around 18k (75% gold) and 20k. That's how they test gold nuggets, cool.

 

[against the wind]

Shame it ain't pretty
I probably would have left it there, , lol
Congrats on a nice find.

 

[Ant]

Thanks you all, here some shots of my testing setup:

 

[Ant]

Okay this is my hypothesis on how this gold came to the surface and formed this nugget. It looks like it came from a ledge (a gold ledge). In the screen capture the side of the nugget we are looking at would have been against the rock. The blue line shows where the gold exited the ledge (a small irregulars fisher a few inches long). It looks like there were at least 2 separate eruption event's that cause gold to come out of the fisher that was located on a vertical spot on the ledge.

The evidence of this are in the dripping fingers, the red and white lines point out the fingers (see how they were pulled down by gravity). I also notice the different color on the fingers, and how after the first set of fingers cooled the second set came and were pushed to the side by the cold gold blocking its way. That what shows me at least 2 events separate events occurred. The gold must have looked shiny and bright. But after eons and eons being exposed it became the center of a stalagtite (not s stalagmite) coated by manganese and cooper verdigris.

Hey forensic folks do you see it?

 

[Ant]

The pics:

 

[jeff of pa]

Nice Find But I'm confused ?

was this found Back on the 9th ? when you posted This ?

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/484550-gold-nugget-copper-nugget.html

If so the two Threads in Todays finds should be One.

However if this is a new find from today or Yesterday then it is a Todays Find ?

 

[Ant]

Hi and I'm very sorry for that I hope that you and the members will forgive for that. Here's what happened:

In that original topic I thought that I found a small gold nugget and a large copper nugget. But before that I posted it in the "What Is It Forum' as "Is This A Gold Fire Nugget Ring or something like that.

Then after I found out that the small nugget was in fact a natural gold nugget I posted in "Today's Finds" as Gold Nugget and Copper Nugget.

After several days (almost a week) I started fooling with what I thought was a natural copper nugget and posted a separate topic for it in the "What Is It" under something like "Is This A Copper Nugget or Gold".

Then to my surprise it turned out to be a gold nugget. So I went to the thread thread that I started in" Today's Finds" to update the Topic but it wouldn't let edit the title so I posted some pics but the Topic was the same.

Then I decided to make a separate topic for the large gold nugget. That's why it looks all jacked up, sorry. You can delete or merge them together. I really didn't discover what I had until I figure it out, then I posted them in "Today'sFinds". I just couldn't change the Title.

 

[jeff of pa]

They will be Merged

 

[H-2 CHARLIE]

Very nice indeed .
Im guessing you are in the mother lode area ?
CONGRATULATIONS DUDE

 

[jeff of pa]

if there is another part in todays Finds Or if you need the title changed, Let me know

 

[Ant]

I'm in the SolCal deserts but I have mined up in the Downyville area. I started looking down here in March 2004 and 11 1/2 years latter God Blessed me. I think there's still more under the iron trash. I'll have to strip mine the next time... Thanks.