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you said its mostly crushed iron stone? have you hit it with a magnet yet? just a thought..

I was watching clips on youtube recently of a bloke on a detecting trip to Germany, and digging a couple of guns, and medals and the like. its understandable why there would be laws in place to protect the national treasures and all that.. its just a pity Australia isn't really that old and...

hey there soulfly, I suggest having a look on the geovic website (http://www.energyandresources.vic.gov.au/earth-resources/maps-reports-and-data/geovic) and having a play with that to track down some areas you may be able to go. I like to use trove to look up old newspaper articles about areas...

I think panning would be a better experience for you and your son - depending on the location of course, but detecting you can often go days without finding anything, especially as a beginner. I clocked up around 50 hours of detecting time before I found my first nugget. whereas if you were to...

you're probably right Diggertom, I read something similar. That people (china I think) are researching how to catch asteroids and bring them into earths orbit to mine for rare earth minerals. I'm actually trying to go back to school to do geology, was thinking that I could try and specialize in...

My metal detector was left in Melbourne when I moved up... don't ask me why.. I'm kicking myself :P Thanks for the feedback backcreek! I can pick up what you're putting down, I'll have to go back up and have a better look, and take a shovel this time ;) Dr4g

yeah generally don't dig that far down when you're not getting paid :P.. My concern was I am looking for alluvial deposits down the hill from the shafts.. Now, that said, I went out the the other day and had a look. There is a watercourse that runs in between two shafts ( I didn't actually get...

Hey guys, So I have been twiddling my thumbs of late, and when I really have not much to do I have a look around my local area (mt coot tha state forest) for the old gold mines from the late 1800s. I'm particularly interested in a bit of land north of the Enoggera Reserve. I was wondering if...

ah great! I was just talking with the missus about where to get some cheapies that wasn't ebay :P

do you know what kind of sulfide material it is? arsenopyrite would obviously be quite dangerous. but I was thinking if there is any antimony present when you cupel the final smelt you may oxidise some of the gold along with the lead. I have had this happen to me quite a few times, though it...

not much in the way of acids will dissolve gold. a mix of 3 parts hydrochloric and 2 parts Nitric will dissolve pretty much anything though. what KarlS suggested sounds pretty good idea. I could ask some of my old refinery buddys to see what would dissolve the lead easily if you want, they...

Ah! that definitely clears that up for me - and explains why it would be so annoying, of course it wouldn't be as simple as running a magnet over it :P Thanks!

hey guys, still nooby to all this panning stuff, so sorry if this is a silly question haha: you said there was a lot of Black sand in the heavies yeah? (which I know is generally normal and a good sign) this is essentially just fine iron sand right? could you just dry the whole lot and run a...

I just mean the amount of non-precious material (dirt, quartz, iron stone, etc) that is mixed up with the finer gold. the dirtier the material you're trying to melt, the more flux you need to soak it up and allow the molten metal to sink (and then pour nicely if needed). or if it is clean...

easy there Karls, I wasn't trying to have a stab or anything - my experience with mercury has never been by choice, and if I hadn't been as cautious of suspect jobs I could have been up sh*ts creek, so I never take the element lightly - I guess it all comes down to personal opinion. that said...

please tell me you guys are not playing with mercury haha

I'll be happy to help Tathradj

thanks Chewy, hopefully I can be of service to the community here :P

From what I can tell from the original post is that he wants to melt all of his flour gold into one "dore" bar (button) using flux to clean it up and get rid of any dirt and any other non-precious material. then he wants to cupel said dore button... I'm not overly sure why he wants to do this...

Thanks DrDuck, I'm looking forward to talking about it again, It's definitely not a skill I don't want to lose track of so hopefully PA will be able to keep my senses sharp ;)