Not the biggest nugget in the world :)

[Boarteats]

Almost missed this little guy. Looks like it’s coated in manganese or something. Good thing that I rubbed it against the bottom of the pan thereby revealing the gold lying within. Nugget is the dark rock in the center of the attached picture. Gold can be seen where the dark coating was rubbed off.

 

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[RTR]

Dont look like it from here.

 

[Boarteats]

Dont look like it from here.

Not sure what the silvery metal is, but that one nugget is gold. No doubt. I’m getting mostly silver (in the form of silver chloride) from this stream but have gotten a few gold flakes along with a some flour gold recently. Just hit a spot where rocks are all covered in what appears to be manganese (dioxide), which is where this nugget came from.

The source stream is actually pretty interesting. Finding good spots takes a good amount of detective work (and a lot of digging). Fun for a hobbyist but not going to get rich.

 

[Bodfish Mike]

Dark rock in the center of the picture?? do you mean center of the rocks ? I see no gold just dark rocks.
But if you say it's gold that's good enough for me -- I like gold and dark rocks.
Cheers Mike

 

[OregonGold76]

Not sure what the silvery metal is, but that one nugget is gold. No doubt. I’m getting mostly silver (in the form of silver chloride) from this stream but have gotten a few gold flakes along with a some flour gold recently. Just hit a spot where rocks are all covered in what appears to be manganese (dioxide), which is where this nugget came from.

The source stream is actually pretty interesting. Finding good spots takes a good amount of detective work (and a lot of digging). Fun for a hobbyist but not going to get rich.

Nice, do you have a pic of the silver chloride? The gold on my claims comes in different hues from different sources ( greenish, reddish ) and sometimes it’s covered in black dioxide as well.

 

[Bodkin]

I've never panned or did any gold prospecting but I have a pan and have threatened a few streams in my area that I was coming. I never knew that gold could have anything "stuck" to it? I know it doesn't really tarnish and any gold I've found metal detecting was completely clean. Is it possible to have gold coated with other things? How would one be able to distinguish that from other things in the pan if that were true? Again, I know nothing gold hunting.

 

[Boarteats]

Dark rock in the center of the picture?? do you mean center of the rocks ? I see no gold just dark rocks.
But if you say it's gold that's good enough for me -- I like gold and dark rocks.
Cheers Mike

Lol. Its not the best picture, admittedly. It's the dark rock in the center of the picture. On the top of that rock/nugget, is a strip of yellow where the manganese (or whatever) was rubbed off. I haven't figure out yet how to take good pics of gold. Gold is too bright. Had to put pan in shade to get this picture. Pic doesn't do it justice. Much prettier in person.

 

[Boarteats]

@OregonGold76, See attached pic. The white bits in the pan are silver chloride. It is fun to collect. my kids like watching it convert back to silver and then melt under propane torch. .

Thank you for sharing diagram of gold color! Interesting. I've found small amounts of rose gold in another stream. I haven't considered the possibility of greenish gold. I'm curious to know how silver and copper affect gold properties other than color. I recently read an article about blue/purple gold. It's gold mixed with aluminium. Makes the alloy brittle.

Some of the non-gold nuggets that I find with my silver have properties consistent with palladium or ferro-platinum. However, I think that it's unlikely to be PGMs. Just too much of it.

 

[Boarteats]

I've never panned or did any gold prospecting but I have a pan and have threatened a few streams in my area that I was coming. I never knew that gold could have anything "stuck" to it? I know it doesn't really tarnish and any gold I've found metal detecting was completely clean. Is it possible to have gold coated with other things? How would one be able to distinguish that from other things in the pan if that were true? Again, I know nothing gold hunting.

In my area, gold can be found where there is manganese and iron oxides. Manganese dioxide is a dark mineral that coats everything around it, rocks, gold, pets, whatever. The gold itself isn't oxidized, just disguised.

I've read that manganese can dissolve gold. In fact, it's an important part of some common fluxes used for smelting gold from "black sands". According to what I've read, Iron oxides such as magnetite can precipitate dissolved gold from manganese. Info is on Internet, so it has to be accurate, right ? .

WRT identifying non-obvious gold. Not easy. When panning, I just examine anything heavy and metallic looking. Gold is much heavier than just about anything else found with it. So, when panning, it will not move much even when everything else is swirlling around.

caveat: I'm only a prospecting hobbyist, not an expert.

 

[KevinInColorado]

In my area, gold can be found where there is manganese and iron oxides. Manganese dioxide is a dark mineral that coats everything around it, rocks, gold, pets, whatever. The gold itself isn't oxidized, just disguised.

I've read that manganese can dissolve gold. In fact, it's an important part of some common fluxes used for smelting gold from "black sands". According to what I've read, Iron oxides such as magnetite can precipitate dissolved gold from manganese. Info is on Internet, so it has to be accurate, right ? .

WRT identifying non-obvious gold. Not easy. When panning, I just examine anything heavy and metallic looking. Gold is much heavier than just about anything else found with it. So, when panning, it will not move much even when everything else is swirlling around.

caveat: I'm only a prospecting hobbyist, not an expert.

I love and agree with everything you said here except the bit about manganese in flux. That is a MISTAKE. Do not use fluxes with manganese unless you want your gold contaminated with manganese!

 

[Boarteats]

I love and agree with everything you said here except the bit about manganese in flux. That is a MISTAKE. Do not use fluxes with manganese unless you want your gold contaminated with manganese!

I’m not a pro when it comes to prospecting and/or gold smelting, so I’m very much inclined to accept advice from more experienced folks. Take any/all of my comments with many grains of salt.

When looking for a flux for smelting black sands, I came across Chapman flux. It contains Borax, Soda Ash, Manganese Dioxide, and Silica. Seemed like a pretty common flux for this purpose. To make it work, I found that it was necessary to use a collector metal as well because my black sand wasn’t terribly good quality. I used silver. Gold preferentially alloys with silver over the other stuff in my source material. Of course, this creates another problem. Gotta part gold and silver after smelting.

I don’t believe that chapman would be a good choice as a general purpose gold smelting flux, however.

As an aside, using a blast furnace that I built myself for smelting was really fun.

 

[Gold4Mike]

I've never panned or did any gold prospecting but I have a pan and have threatened a few streams in my area that I was coming. I never knew that gold could have anything "stuck" to it? I know it doesn't really tarnish and any gold I've found metal detecting was completely clean. Is it possible to have gold coated with other things? How would one be able to distinguish that from other things in the pan if that were true? Again, I know nothing gold hunting.

I don't know about manganese, but I once in a while find gold with a reddish coating (rust?). Not in large amounts but often enough that I recognize it now. If it's acting like gold in the pan, I take a closer look at it.

 

[KevinInColorado]

I’m not a pro when it comes to prospecting and/or gold smelting, so I’m very much inclined to accept advice from more experienced folks. Take any/all of my comments with many grains of salt.

When looking for a flux for smelting black sands, I came across Chapman flux. It contains Borax, Soda Ash, Manganese Dioxide, and Silica. Seemed like a pretty common flux for this purpose. To make it work, I found that it was necessary to use a collector metal as well because my black sand wasn’t terribly good quality. I used silver. Gold preferentially alloys with silver over the other stuff in my source material. Of course, this creates another problem. Gotta part gold and silver after smelting.

I don’t believe that chapman would be a good choice as a general purpose gold smelting flux, however.

As an aside, using a blast furnace that I built myself for smelting was really fun.

Manganese is a poor choice of a collector metal since you probably won’t get it all out of the gold afterward. Lead is better by far since you can cupel it out easily in your blast furnace.

I’m told Mr Chapman used manganese because he had a source of it for free. SMH 🤦*♂️

 

[mikep691]

We learned to inspect all the black rocks that just won't leave the gold in the pan. We get what we call black nuggets occasionally. Gold with a reddish hue usually indicates copper. The northeastern areas in California had a lot of copper mines with a co-product of gold.

 

[Boarteats]

Manganese is a poor choice of a collector metal since you probably won’t get it all out of the gold afterward. Lead is better by far since you can cupel it out easily in your blast furnace.

I’m told Mr Chapman used manganese because he had a source of it for free. SMH ��*♂️

Hrmmm...I don't believe that I'd deeply considered the role manganese dioxide plays in chapman flux. I assumed it had something to do with dissolving the gold out of the black sands. Your comments seem reasonable. Personally, I've found it necessary to use silver as a collector metal even when using chapman flux. Not a fan of using lead. Worked pretty well the couple/few times I smelted black sands.

Not perfect. I've never managed to get all the gold to alloy with the silver. Some ends up alloying with the copper that is in my source material. Also, it's really easy to accidentally spill molten silver when pouring out of crucible.

 

[Boarteats]

We learned to inspect all the black rocks that just won't leave the gold in the pan. We get what we call black nuggets occasionally. Gold with a reddish hue usually indicates copper. The northeastern areas in California had a lot of copper mines with a co-product of gold.

I've read that HCL dissolves manganese dioxide, so I'm planning to dump cup of my concentrate into HCL to test this.