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Crush and Melt
How
to Remove Gold from Rich Ores
HARDCORE MINER
Recovering Gold from Hard Rock
After following all of the clues and searching in all of those
places gold might be found, you have managed to recover what appears to be
gold.
A person who has managed to find and discover what they believe
to be gold is naturally very eager to see it as a solid piece of metal.
Such impatience is easily justified by the need to know just
what you have found before moving on. A gold bar will be the proof that those
tiny flakes or very thin lines inside of rocks really are the precious
substance you dreamed about.
So, what to do next?
First, before you even think about trying to melt raw gold into
ingots, a little chemistry lesson.
The melting point of gold is a balmy 1,943 degrees Fahrenheit
(1,064 degrees Celsius).
Obviously, some changes have to be made before you can melt your
gold.
Thankfully, generations of prospectors have figured out how to
solve this little problem.
You cannot just heat rocks and expect the gold to drip out.
First, the gold must be removed from its surrounding material.
Today, the big corporations which mine most of the gold have
complicated processes and equipment which are far beyond what a small
prospector is capable of.
Fortunately, methods developed all the way back in the 1840s
still work just fine for a casual gold hunter.
Removing the Gold from the Rock
Before beginning the process of removing gold from rock, gather
all the essential supplies.
In order to break large rocks, a heavy hammer and perhaps a
chisel will be needed.
A large towel to wrap around rocks when you crush them will also
be necessary to avoid losing ore, as well as a bucket for storing broken rock.
A mortar and pestle, which may be made of stone or cast iron,
will be used to crush the small rocks into powder.
Finally, use a flour sifter to further separate the dust from
larger particles.
Begin your gold recovery by wrapping the rocks in a towel, and
place them on a very hard surface.
Then smash them with the hammer until they break into small
pieces.
Open the towel and remove the largest pieces. Place the smallest
pieces into the bucket.
Put the larger rocks back into the towel and continue this
process until only very small rocks remain.
Take some of the small pieces of rock from the bucket and
transfer to the mortar. Use the pestle to crush small rocks into dust.
Separate the dust from the larger particles with a sifter and
repeat this process until only dust remains.
You have now reached the point in your gold recovery where
prospectors who were panning for gold in a stream began their process.
If you have experience panning for gold, then you will be able
to evaluate the way gold acts in your pan, and you will know whether or not
that shiny substance is actually real gold or some other mineral.
Actual Melting of Gold
There are always a few common-sense reminders when heating
anything, such as not trying to melt gold near anything flammable.
That may sound like something stupid, but many prospectors have
gotten so excited by the thought of seeing their gold, seemingly obvious
precautions were forgotten.
Now that your rocks have been crushed to powder, how can you
heat it up to 1,963 degrees? That is much hotter than a normal fire, so special
equipment is needed.
Flux is a substance used when ores are smelted which acts as a
cleaning agent and promotes fluidity.
This has the welcome effect of dramatically reducing the temperature
of an ore’s melting point.
Borax is one substance used as flux, particularly when melting
gold and separating it from the surrounding material.
Now, take the fine powder you were left with and mix it with
borax.
Then place it into a bowl or crucible and heat either with a
kiln or an acetylene torch. A simple wood fire should be hot enough to do the
job on your new creation.
Once the borax melts, this lowers the melting temperatures
dramatically of everything else in the ore.
As all of the minerals melt, they oxidize and separate from one
another.
Gold, however, is not affected by this reaction to the borax
and, because of its great weight, will sink to the bottom of the mixture.
The oxidized materials and flux combine to form slag which
floats to the surface. This can be scraped away once it cools to reveal pure
gold hiding at the bottom of the container.
Those rocks with little hints of gold have now, thanks to a lot
of elbow grease and some very old school chemistry, been transformed into that
precious substance you were hunting.
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