Hi all. I put a few posts in this thread from Jan 14 about some finds on a GT trip. They all came from a small linear patch of a few meters and were rough brown looking flattish nuggets making me think I may have stumbled upon a small reef outcrop.
I also took a half bucket of soil sample home to check for fine gold but sad to report nothing much found in that sample except a couple of pin point specks difficult to see even with a loupe.
I also said I would try to clean up the nuggets with hydrochloric acid and a cheap Aldi untrasonic cleaner.
I gave the nuggets a couple of 5 minute bursts in the ultrasonic to do an initial clean and then I soaked them in hydrochloric acid for about 5 days to the point when it became apparent that the acid was softening and dissolving off much of the ironstone. I then rinsed them off and gave them another 5 minutes in the ultrasonic.
Just thought I would show all how they came up. They now look quite a bit more appealing and show off the nature one may expect to see in fresh reef gold.look.
In the process I lost about half a gram by weight in clay, ironstone and fine quartz sand and some of the pieces may have separated into smaller bits but no gold would have been lost so nothing really to worry about on that count. Possibly even the larger bits may even now have some appeal as small jewelry pieces but not interested in going down that path.
Sorry about the scale difference as the treated pieces were just placed atop a print of one of my earlier photographs of the nuggets for visual comparison of the cleaning effect.
Just a follow up as to what I said I was intending to.do. Still have a few bits of Quartz samples to crush but not holding my breath on those.
