mineralised ground

up untill now I have never been to a realy mineralised area,( I must be lucky) so any gold I have found has always been nicely yellow and just sceams at me yes I am gold put me in your pocket.
Well this week I found a patch of ground that just sent my mono coil into a melt down of bleeps whilses and pops but since I have a tendency to walk away from my vehicle and work my way back,It was very frustrating, but I persavered, well to cut a long story shortly just before I was about to give up and get a DD from the car I get a realy nice signal, What I dug up looked like a flat piece of iron stone and I was just going to dismiss it but somthing said not to so into the tin it went on rechecking the hole I found several more of the same things only some actualy looked like nuggets just the wrong colour. (very strange). at the end of the day I had just over 9grams of these stange rocks. I tried a magnett no they are not magnetic so I thought I would put them into an acid bath and see what happens, well friday morning all my little rocks are red look like copper saturday the flat rock is showing nice feint colour (yellow) and some of the others are changing to, well today flat rock is officially flat nuggett while several of the others are still a redish colour. so my question is in mineralised areas can gold be redish or will acid eventualy where it away to yellow.
cheers mikez

nuggets can be any colour, I've found grey nuggets and nearly tossed them for lead, hydrochloric should work, take them out and give a light scrub with a tooth brush then back in the acid, oxalic acid in crystal form, just add water is very good at removing iron stains, if staining is bad I use HCL first then neutralise with bicarbonate of soda then I use the oxalic.
some photos of them would help, are you sure they are gold and not native copper, nitric acid will dissolve copper, HCL can clean copper and give it a yellow tint.
hope it is gold
cheers Tezz

thanks tezz
the flat rock is deffinatly gold as for the others the jury is still out, I am keeping my fingers crossed since they came from the same hole.
I am not sure about natural copper as I have never seen any but if they are they look good anyway.
I was going to add some pics of them but when I got the camera set up the bateries died but I will try to put some on when they charge in the meantime they are all soaking in acid.
cheers mikez

these are before and after pics all were the colour of iron stone. the two small red ones is the colour they turned after two days in acid

Those pictures are out of focus, take a few more and use macro if you have it
Tezz

about the best I can do they came from an area where a ripper blade had gone through.

Yeah thats a lot better, have you tried scratching them to see what colour is underneath, the top flat one looks good, seems a bit off colour, could have a high percentage of copper, don't know about the 2 red ones and the bottom and right pieces look very coppery. are you in a copper area? Try some Nitric acid on them if you can get it.
cheers Tezz

I tried to get some nitric, but our little hardware store doesnt know where to get some, each of the pieces started off that red colour after a couple of days in HCL. but after scrubbing a fair bit they have turned yellow and match the colour off my wedding ring but remembering my army days I could pollish my brass to the same colour, the way I figure it is if its not gold it should tarnish over the next week or so if its gold it should remain the way it is. iether way its all good the fun is in the search. but I can hope.
by the way I enjoyed your post and pics I can tell you know your stuff
cheers mikez

Hey No offence intended,
But they look fake to me, it is just what I see in the pics, too many questions posed by the characteristics of the nuggets.
Once again no offence, I have been known to be wrong.

Spent projectiles ?

no offence taken not faked and no they are not spent projectiles or ricochettes, As I said they looked like iron stone when I found them turned red in acid and cleaned up to look like they do, the flat one is definatly gold but I do not know about the others as they still have a red tinge to them

Its Handy to have Nitric Acid on the shelf for those mystery specimens where HCL doesn't do much.
I got 4L of Nitric when I was in Coffs at North Coast Chemicals, try chemical supplies, don't get it from Lab supplies at it will be analytical grade and be very expensive.
cheers Tezz