🥇 BANNER Gold Nail found

[NeoTokyo]

Heya everyone!

So I found a gold nail today.
Yup!
It was bound to happen, thousands of regular iron nails and I finally find a gold nail. LOL
I never expected this!

My scale says it weighs .3 grams.

I posted the picture on a Facebook chat that I was in and was given some great information about its possible origins.

I was told that it could have come from an ornate Chinese Box used to keep important items in.
This nail was found a couple hundred yards upstream where I found my Chinese coin.


Tell me what you guys think.

 

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[Army of 1]

Congrats Neo on your rare and unusual Golden find ..cheers Mick

 

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[Isaac]

What an insane find, imagine if it could talk!!!

 

[eyemustdigtreasure]

SUPER Find!
that nice pan-full of gold nuggets doesn't compare to the rarity
of that nail! Surely must have been from that China man's box!
(just think WHAT was (in) that box, if the thing was made with golden nails...!)
Keep hunting that area, dig every target!
There's gotta be more treasure there!

 

[NeoTokyo]

I got back out yesterday to cover more area around where the nail was found and I didn't find anything more like it.
I found a little more gold in that area but the overburden starts to get too thick and the water too deep.

Also, how is Alexias2's thread almost beating this one in likes?! LOL

 

[Ant]

Okay what do ya think about this one:

 

[swamp yankee]

I'd give the area a real good going-over to find the rest of the goods,who knows there may be a pile of double eagles in the streambed.....

 

[fowledup]

Neo if you get a chance post the nail in the "what is it" forum, there are some amazing folks in there that may have some background on these.

 

[Lanny in AB]

I've found square nails with gold on the head of them before as the gold was plated on them by many long years (well over a hundred for sure) in the close presence of other gold (micron gold most-likely).

Your nail looked corroded in your first picture, so the gold plating was the best route for a guess as a solid gold nail would not corrode.

Incredible find regardless.

Congratulations on your banner find!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[beekbuster]

you cant use likes as a rule of measure in a forum, because you may just like the response someone has to the subject. banner is quite an accomplishment i would say!

 

[fowledup]

I've found square nails with gold on the head of them before as the gold was plated on them by many long years (well over a hundred for sure) in the close presence of other gold (micron gold most-likely).

Your nail looked corroded in your first picture, so the gold plating was the best route for a guess as a solid gold nail would not corrode.

Incredible find regardless.

Congratulations on your banner find!

All the best,

Lanny

I agree it is a plated nail, but I think it had to be done by man. Lanny I'm not disagreeing with you, cuz I just don't know and can't find any info on naturally occuring plating. I just don't understand how the plating could occur in the absence of electricity (current flow). Again not saying anyone is wrong it is indeed a unique mystery and a find of a lifetime. Man if that sucker could talk!

 

[Lanny in AB]

I agree it is a plated nail, but I think it had to be done by man. Lanny I'm not disagreeing with you, cuz I just don't know and can't find any info on naturally occuring plating. I just don't understand how the plating could occur in the absence of electricity (current flow). Again not saying anyone is wrong it is indeed a unique mystery and a find of a lifetime. Man if that sucker could talk!

I've only ever seen two examples, one I found while dredging and one found by some other placer miners running a big operation. However it occurs, it happens, another one of nature's mysteries . . .

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Clay Diggins]

Being that Neo's find exhibits:

An obvious iron oxidation form. (rusted nail)
Showed the existence of copper underplating. (acid test produced green bubbling)
Gold plating on exterior. (also acid test)

The possibility of an unexplained natural environmental gold plating is zero.

The most plausible explanation is that either:

The find was man made from a rusted nail that was copper plated so it would accept a gold plating. This type of copper substrate with gold overplating is standard practice when plating iron or steel objects.
or
The find was cast in either copper or brass from an original rusted nail and then gold plated.

Both of those possibilities could be done as a one off memento by any competent manufacturing jeweler or they could have been done as a mass produced piece of jewelery. The last possibility points to a jewelery piece that contained more elements than the small nail alone.

I know of at least one jeweler in Foresthill that could have made such a nail by either process. Gold plating directly on iron is possible but it would never hold up to ordinary exposure to oxygen or the mechanical action of freezing and wind abrasion. The gold would quickly subsume into the iron oxidation layer. Simple physics. The electromotive potential difference between the two metals is extreme.

There may be several real world explanations how a found iron metal piece could appear to be coated with gold but electroplating by any method is not one of them. In the case of Neo's found object the copper content disproves any natural cause. Neo's nail was electroplated by human actions.

Heavy Pans

 

[Lanny in AB]

Clay,

I can only comment on what I have seen and on what I have found.

As you know, I do not have the same extensive understanding of mining that you do, so your explanation for his find is far more likely to be the correct interpretation.

I did find a reference to experiments with a gold chloride solution (Chapter 5) trying to reproduce gold deposited in aruiferous drifts that replicated the deposition of a film of gold on objects (like gold plating). It's part of a much larger article in e-book format about gold in Australia, and perhaps it explains the gold I found adhered to the head of the square nail I recovered and on the nail I examined found by the miners I cited.

I really don't know, but his reflections seem the most plausible explanation I've ever found. His notations are a very interesting read on the subject. (The referenced chapter goes into a lot more detail than the small excerpt I've posted below, but it could explain how an iron nail could have gold deposited on it without the use of generated electricity or the benefit of a laboratory or jewelers shop.)

All the best,

Lanny

In the great laboratory of Nature similar chemical depositions have taken place in the past, and may still be in progress; indeed, there is sound scientific reason to suppose that in certain localities this is even now the case, and that in this way much of our so-called alluvial gold has been formed, that is, by the deposition on metallic bases of the gold held in solution.

This lead Mr. Charles Wilkinson, who has contributed much to our scientific knowledge of metallurgy, to experiment further in the same direction. He says: "Using the most convenient salt of gold, the terchloride, and employing wood as the decomposing agent, in order to imitate as closely as possible the organic matter supposed to decompose the solution circulating through the drifts, I first immersed a piece of cubic iron pyrites taken from the coal formation of Cape Otway, far distant from any of our gold rocks, and therefore less likely to contain gold than other pyrites. The specimen (No. 1) was kept in dilute solution for about three weeks, and is completely covered with a bright film of gold. I afterwards filed off the gold from one side of a cube crystal to show the pyrites itself and the thickness of the surrounding coating, which is thicker than ordinary notepaper. If the conditions had continued favourable for a very lengthened period, this specimen would doubtless have formed the nucleus of a large nugget. Iron, copper, and arsenical pyrites, antimony, galena, molybdenite, zinc blende, and wolfram were treated in the above manner with similar results.

Getting Gold, by J. C. F. Johnson

 

[fowledup]

Cool, interesting article, I would like to try some experimentation with it but the stuff he used is nasty mean.