shiny rocks

[treasureman]

 

[treasureman]

found these rocks a while ago. chucked them to the side. i thought id try polishing one tonight and see what happened. and its started coming more shiny. took a bit of elbow grease with my thumb and some bicarb soda. never seen anything like them in my life. not too sure if its gold. they are quite heavy rocks. all found relatively within the same area over a few months time checking a huge area. the odd rock, then another etc. they pinged in the 30-40 range if i remember correctly.

 

[silver]

Could be onto something TM,.. got that look about it in the picky.

 

[treasureman]

It does silver. I was surprised to see it come up so shiny. What can I bath these rocks in to do a better job? I bathed them in bicard yesterday then polished one in the photo. Any ideas what would be a good soak to remove the old top layer and reveal the goods ? Though it may not even be gold. Who knows

 

[blisters]

It looks like they have a curved lip on them making me wonder if they are man made like the remains of some alloy ornament or part. They also look like they have weathered fractured pitting. Soak it in an acid like vinegar overnight and see if it cleans up.
Jon

 

[treasureman]

thanks john
would lime juice be good enough or vinegar better?

 

[blisters]

Don't know which is best but vinegar, citric or coke will probably all do the job. If I were to lean one way I'd say the coke with phosphoric acid. Diet coke also contains citric acid if my memory serves me. If the oxidisation is thick it may take days to start cleaning up. If it is oxidisation I wouldn't think it'd be gold and I'd get the dremel out and polish it. But for peace of mind do an SG and other tests like streak to remove gold as a possibility.
Jon

 

[treasureman]

thanks blisters
ive got them in al foil with lime juice and can see them bubblin away. will check em out after work tonight

 

[treasureman]

And here we have it . Soak in lime juice for a few hours. it burnt through the alfoil which was unexpected. And then i soaked in bicarbonate again. And then a rub polish with dry bicarbonate. They came up good. Colour is rose gold copper colour. Maybe it's just copper.
These stones were goin near the beach. In 100% sand soil. So no other stones in the area. Whether your are right blister about man made. But they were not in close proximity to one another but within half a km . All up weighs approx 20 grams . Would be cool if it was gold . But I'm not a gold expert

 

[treasureman]

 

[stoyve]

I wish you all the best Tman, you can only hope.

 

[silver]

Sometimes glaciation does strange squeezy stuff with gold and then dumps it all far away from the mountainous area that it came from,... Australia was down where antarctica is now at one stage recently geologicaly speaking,... and would have been all glaciated out from the mountains in all directions for a vast distance TM.

 

[treasureman]

i can see how different ground mineralisation would affect gold over a long long period of time im talking hundreds or thousands of years.
ive read that change in mineralised ground can cause some prone minerals to gradually stick to gold, changing its colour.
but hey maybe its just copper ore? same can happen to that. maybe it was washed up off a shipwreck that had mined gold which sunk. and over hundreds years storms/tsunamis could push the loot in. scattering it around like its confetti.
would be cool to think so

 

[silver]

Maybe an old Gypo ship that was going using that as ballast for the voyage back to the Nile and those you beaut pyramids they got,.. but sunk off the aussie coastline instead,... lost to the elements, unknown to all,... F O R E V E R .

 

[blisters]

Cleaned up nicely and I reckon you have brass or bronze due to the pinky hue. The next step I would do is a streak test by scratching it on porcelain like the unglazed part of a plate, mug or back of a tile. Gold will leave a yellow colour, I'm not sure about brass or bronze but I would guess brown with a red or yellow tinge, need to google. Hopefully it's yellow

If you don't like the idea of possibly leaving a small smear of gold on your coffee mug then an SG test might be the go.

Jon

 

[treasureman]

Thank you for your advice. Yes it does leave a trail of the colour the stone is. Pinky

 

[treasureman]

 

[treasureman]

ok so got the detector upstairs to do some tests.
brass statue reads at 89
these rocks read at 29. so i dont think its brass. not too sure what bronze would give?
i notice in the grooves of one of the rocks is another time of foreign rock stuck in there. obviously from where it was originally mined from.

 

[treasureman]

 

[Wally69]

those groves look very screw thread like.

You havnt been detecting on an old bombing range treasureman?