What to do with a season's worth of gold dust and pickers

[smokeythecat]

It's not enough to bother selling. Pickers are small, not big enough to get any interest from a buyer. I guess I have 4 grams total. I was thinking of getting a Mapp gas torch and making one blob out of it. That way I wouldn't lose it quite as fast as I lose most stuff around here. Fortunately, everything normally shows up...eventually. What would you do? I don't have skills to actually "make" anything out of it, like jewelry. Thanks.

 

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[sawmill man]

Thats is exactly what i would do melt down a blob , hammer flat and make yourself a coin.

 

[smokeythecat]

Hadn't thought of flattening it, but it would still just be a flattened blob.

 

[against the wind]

Yeah but it will be a flattened blob of GOLD.

 

[Arachnofreak]

I can only tell you what I do. I take a bucket from the best area I can find and use fines and small pickers to salt bags of paydirt for sale and gifts and I do this for two reasons.....

1. It makes me a little extra cash, more than what the gold would be worth in the first place, not much but more. I give some away to kids too, show them how to pan it. No amount of money can match the look on a kids face when he sees gold in the pan! Its pretty freakin awesome.

2. Besides the extra cash if you do it right and generously salt the bags and DONT GO THROUGH THE DIRT YOU SALT there is a good chance you are doing another miner a big favor. A lot of the dudes that buy paydirt online do so because they physically cant get out and do the mining anymore. Old timers and disabled folks. If you do it right, not only do they have the chance of finding a nice picker in the dirt you sent they are guaranteed a decent amount of gold in the bag. Folks really appreciate that. A little coin in your pocket and a good deed to fellow miners. Win win if you ask me.

 

[smokeythecat]

Good idea, Arachnofreak. Finding time, that's the hard part.

 

[Arachnofreak]

I hear ya, I work in group homes and its not uncommon to work 70-90 hours a week, hard to keep employees in a place where the clients are trying to kill ya lol

 

[ecmjamsit]

I use my hammered blob as a test for metal detectors. I taped it to a post card. If I had everything I gave away or sold, I would be a millionaire!

 

[Duckshot]

How do you plan to prove to anybody else that your blob of metal has gold in it?

Just in case you ever want to do that I mean.

 

[smokeythecat]

Duckshot, for me it's irrelevant as I don't sell my stuff. "Proving" to anybody else it's gold isn't something that would even cross my mind because what I know, I know. Now a jeweler could test it out as 22 k or so real fast, for the doubting Thomases out there. Also, it would give up easily to a common type gold test kit.

Nuff said - 6:17 am and off to a dig site! Yippee!

 

[homefires]

Here ya go. Enough for a few goes! https://www.banggood.com/Torch-Melt...ng-Ingot-Mold-Set-p-1109392.html?rmmds=search

 

[smokeythecat]

I bought a crucible melter thingie, some gloves, tongs, etc. Now to get time to consolidate all the dust.

 

[homefires]

Use Borax brand Borax. the other Borax hardly has any Borax in the stuff.

 

[smokeythecat]

Kit came with some Borax. I saw the real deal at the store and will get some next time I'm there. May not be till January till I get it done.

JOYOUS NEWS!

IT FINALLY FROSTED LIGHTLY LAST NIGHT. BEES WILL BE GOING BYE BYE.

 

[Duckshot]

Can you post a picture when it is done?

 

[pepperj]

The one thing that impressed me the most when seeing the little sample glass vile filled with water and seeing the gold inside. I still remember turning it back and forth watching the gold sort of move in the liquid and dreaming of getting more. It's a very cool way of displaying and showing it off to interested folks. There's something magical about seeing gold in the raw, sticks in the memory bank. Now that could be just my own thoughts about that as it's been floating around for a half a century in the mind.