Gold Tellurides

[FiresEye]

So I've been reading a lot about tellurides and how they can contain up to 70% gold by weight, and that there's a specific process to remove the gold from them. While breaking some quartz ores down by hand, I've found some silvery metallic stuff which I think is Calaverite.. in quartz.... has anyone ever found any tellurides in the southeast USA? I live in North Georgia. I'm pretty sure that I have located a few telluride pockets, and havebeen doing a lot of picture looking and reading of what these rare minerals look like.

Also, for those of us who pan or sluice I have a question... Do you think the tellurides in the creek end up in the concentrates? I'd imagine they would. Also, if you crush rock and then pan, you have to be careful I think because the tellurides are much lighter than just placer gold. So moving on, here's some info I found on the web about tellurides...



It's long so scroll down and see what else is going on...



"""

This is only a primitive method of removing Gold out of Tellurides...
Basics; What you will need to do the job
1, 2 roasting pans [high temp] not aluminum foil type.
2, Standard table salt [equal amount to concentrate volume.
3, charcoal brickets.
4, outdoor area "well ventilated".

Step by step procedures...
1, classify your concentrates with a 20 mesh classifier...
2, mix the classified concentrates with equal amounts of salt...
3, put mix into a high temp roasting pan...
4. place pan with concentrates into a hot, well established coal bed...
5, leave in coal bed untill coals are completely consumed [overnite]...

What exactly is taking place...
Your concentrates have tellurides in them that according to our assay, are as much as 70% and as minimal as 30% in volume. You are heating the concentrates to an appx temp of 1000*F. What happens is that the salt and the heat enable the tellurides to burn off into a tellurium gas, leaving the chemically attached gold behind...

What will I see when done roasting...
1, actually nothing with the naked eye...
2, use at least a 10 power loop to get a view...
3, you are dealing with "micro gold" in very high concentrates...
4, if using a loop, you will see the remaning gold has kind of melted together into small globules...

Okay, now HOW DO I RECOVER IT...
1, get out your keene gravity bowl...
2, get it started up with a "GOOD SURFACTANT" in the water... [calgon]
3, NO soap w/lanolin or hand lotions in it...
4, remember you're dealing with ultra fine micro gold...
5, run your bowl with care and use caution, "don't get in a rush or get nuts"...
6, you will see GOLD in the gravity bowl, all will be in a 20 mesh and smaller...

What about the rest of the concentrates that I did not roast...
1, process them with your micro sluice or poop tube or gold wheel...
2, processing the remaining concentrates will get the free gold that did not pass thru the 20 mesh classifier...

Okay, I did all of this for what...
1, the Free Gold is running "according to assay" 1 troy ounce to each ton of classified concentrates...
2, the Gold Tellurides are yielding as much as 4-5 troy ounces per ton of classified concentrates...
3, how much is a ton of classified concentrates... [a 30 gallon garbage can in size]
4, or an average of 6-7, 5 gallon buckets of classified concentrates...

That's a hell of a lot of concentrates...
1, yup sure is, but so is 5-7 ounces of GOLD that you normally threw out...


:"""






So guys and gals, this sounds like the sort of thing people talk about roasting black sand to fracture the gold out of them, maybe it serves a dual purpose to roast the tellurides as well... I'm going to do this on a camping trip, way out in the woods.. Because I imagine the fumes from this could get nasty... and I have a garden in my backyard so I don't want all those contams in the near area.


So here's what else I found out

"The chemistry of gold tellurides is relatively complex with a series of identifiable minerals. The more common gold-bearing tellurides are sylvanite ((Au, Ag)Te4), calaverite ((Au, Ag), Te2) and petzite ((Au, Ag3)Te2) with krennerite (Au4 Ag Te4) and montbroyite (Au2 Te3) less common. Gold tellurides occurrence is widespread and is often associated with some free gold and sulphide minerals. The density of gold tellurides (8.0 - 10.0) are lower than native gold and the colour are less distinctive shades of white, grey and black."

Yep.. based on That^^ description, I've for sure got tellurides showing in my ores... No gold visible, but micro gold in abundance not only through mica free gold but the tellurides..

Check it out yourself and discuss how many tellurides you think you have in your cons, if tellurides are common or rare in Georgia, and what area you live and what kind of tellurides you suspect you have found...

 

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[Eu_citzen]

You should know that you can in 99.9% of all cases not ID a mineral by only looking at it..
You would need to do further testing of the minerals properties.

 

[FiresEye]

Yes I realize that it's hard to identify a mineral by its looks, but in this case, I have a pretty good idea of what it is. Also, I busted open 5 more softball sized quartz chunks today and one of them contained a chamber inside the rock of what appeared to be a telluride. Almost like a geode within the quartz, covered in this telluride lookin stuff.

I need to get some pics up, and will do so within the next few days, because I have other ores that I need looked at. This area I found the rocks at is within the gold belt of the southern Appalacian mountains, so there's a likely possibility.

Until then, here's something else I found out

 

[FiresEye]

Now that I think about it, I'm really excited about all the tellurides I could and probably do have, not only in the rocks, but in my cons. I have to research though about which tellurides tend to end up in certain concentrates of what areas.

One important thing i've learned about gold in concentrates and ores is that a ton of it can be really really micro gold, so it's important to have a system to be able to mechanically catch these fines without mercury or leeching.

I like the clean gold system that uses magnets to use black sand as riffles, and in a system with a float trap that drives the surface under the surface to push anything floating down, on a slow moving table, with magnet riffles would work wonder to catch that micro.

Then, once you get your micro concentrates, simple get enough to make smelting worthwhile... maybe an ounce worth or so.

 

[LittleHarold]

I do find Calaverite in the Southeast. Museum Quality Specimens to be honest.

 

[Astrobouncer]

I have a report from the USGS around here somewhere (sorry I looked and I couldn't find it at this moment) but I do remember them listing some tellurides along the slate belt.

 

[mineron]

Interesting post. I have tried this a few times, but maybe I didn't let it roast long enough. Think I'll try a few more times as just seeing a few specks of gold come out of the rock would be worth the experience. Then when a better prospect is found I will be ready.

 

[loby]

Hiiiiiiiiii....

The Gold Tellurides...

CALAVERITE (Gold Telluride)

 

[charlotte49er]

From the "Basement Chemistry for Prospectors" Basement Chemistry for the Prospector - Front Page site.

[SIZE=+1]Tellurides[/SIZE] There is a metal that no one knows much about, Tellurium. Go to "links", "periodic table of elements", and you will find all the chemical characteristics of this element. It is a metal with a lot of chemical properties similar to gold. No, it’s not a precious metal, but it does have a unique property. It forms natural salts (complexes) with gold. Some of the most valuable gold ores that exist are in the form of Tellurides. Yeah, I know, someone told you that gold was inert, it doesn’t combine with anything in nature. It only occurs as the elemental metal, GOLD. Well, as usual, they told you wrong. I’m sure they believed it, their best buddy told them, so it must be true. The buddy only had hearsay evidence, old wives tales. We Basement Chemists only believe the tales that can be substantiated. Sure we all know that there is gold dissolved in sea- water as the salt, gold chloride. True, but the amount is so small that, for our purposes, it can be ignored. We ain’t gonna get rich on that. I know someone is going to say, " gold comes, in nature, combined with mercury, silver, copper, etc, I find it all the time. These amalgams that we all find once in awhile, are not "combined". they are not another chemical. They are not salts of gold, mercury, silver, or copper. They are simply mixtures of gold, silver, copper, and mercury. They have not chemically reacted to form another compound. OK, so what the hell is a Telluride anyway? Well, as Basement Chemists you should have caught on by now that when a chemical name ends in "ide" it means that it is a salt. The things are chemically combined, not just mixed or dissolved in each other. Hydrogen sulfide is not hydrogen dissolved in sulfur. It is hydrogen reacted with sulfur to produce a completely different chemical. If not, you could simply warm the hydrogen sulfide and it would boil off hydrogen and leave sufur behind. It don’t work that way. They are reacted to form a chemical that is not hydrogen nor sulfur. It’s a completely different thing. Tellurium, gold, and silver (and other metals) can react to form Tellurides. Why are they not called "goldides"? Don’t know. I think it just don’t sound as good. Actually, it is because you can have tellurium/silver, tellurium/gold, or tellurium/silver/gold. You cannot have silver/gold. That is an amalgam, a mixture, not a compound. There are a few tellurides that are of interest to prospectors/miners. [SIZE=+1]Calaverite: AuTe2 [/SIZE] Calaverite is the name given to a telluride that occurs in certain areas as a brown/black, friable material that if you pan it out might very well show no gold at all. However, this stuff can be the "Elvis Pressley" of gold ores. All you guys have heard of a place called "Telluride" Colorado, right? The reason they called it that was that they had deposits of tellurides that were yielding so much gold you couldn’t believe it. Calaverite is the ore that you want to find. It can assay from 20- 70% gold and it is easy to recover. You and I have probably walked on it, dug it, looked at it, thrown it away, and moved on to better spots. The problem is that it doesn’t look like gold. You might not see even a color, or as we say here "ni un ojo de zancudo" (not even a mosquito eye). This ore is metallic and is amenable to amalgamation with mercury. It is very heavy and can be caught in sluices etc. It, however, does not look like gold, is not yellow, and is usually tossed out with the black sands. It appears more like gold/mercury amalgam than gold but it is not quite that either. It would probably be worth your time to visit a nearby university etc and ask them to show you some samples of Calaverite, just so you know what it looks like. Maybe they would give you some so that you would have it to compare with any suspect ore. This ore is not one that you would want to miss. A little deposit of this stuff could make your whole year. If you should get into a deposit of this material, be careful. Don’t throw anything away until you are sure it has no gold in it. If you should discard a small percentage of Calaverite, at 60% gold, it could be big bucks. Send it to me, I’ll be happy to deal with it. I’ll even pay shipping charges. [SIZE=+1]Altaite[/SIZE] This is another telluride of silver/gold. Not so significant as the above. [SIZE=+1]Sylvanite[/SIZE] A telluride of gold and silver. It can assay as high as 20% gold. [SIZE=+1]Petzite[/SIZE] Another telluride that is mostly silver. Silver content is usually twice that of gold. [SIZE=+1]Hessite[/SIZE] Resembles Petzite. Usually about 60% silver [SIZE=+1]Sulfides[/SIZE] A sulfide is a reduced salt of sulfur. Like copper sulfide, CuS2. An oxidized salt of copper and sulfur would be Copper sulfate. CuSO4. Remember about redox? Addition of an oxygen oxidizes the compound. Anytime you see the ending "ide" it means that the compound is in it’s "reduced" form. If you see the ending "ate" it means that it is in it’s oxidized form. You see, us scientific types have our own language so that we can talk without having to explain at every step what we mean. Hang with me and I’ll tell you a little about this language. Hell, it ain’t no harder than learning Spanish. Sulfides can ruin your whole day. They coat almost everything with surface of sulfide that will prevent you from amalgamating, reacting with cyanide, or dissolving in solutions of halides. If you have a little piece of silver, a little hydrogen sulfide from the local volcano, you will have a piece of silver with a coat of silver sulfide on it. This coat will prevent you from dissolving it in cyanide or any other. Fortunately for us sulfides are relatively unstable. Want to destroy a sulfide? It’s not too difficult but one that I am afraid most folks ignore. HEAT IT! Almost all sulfides will dissociate with heat. That is, if you heat a sulfide in the presence of oxygen you will boil off the sulfur as either sulfur dioxide or as hydrogen sulfide. If you heat some ore that you suspect of having sulfides present you will smell a rather unique odor. Have any of you ever been to a "beer and egg party"? A keg of beer and a great quantity of hard-boiled eggs? The next day you are a bit bloated, gaseous, or in scientific terms, "flatulent". When you, as the English say, "pass wind", this is the odor of sulfides being dispelled from the heated ore. When the odor of sulfur is no longer apparent, you can continue to your extraction method. The time-honored way to deal with sulfides is to boil them off with heat. Just get some roofing metal, get it up off the ground with a few rocks etc and build a good fire under it. Spread your material on the metal and let it cook. When you don’t smell anymore sulfur, process it. [SIZE=+2]HEAT IS CHEAP, USE IT![/SIZE]

[SIZE=-2]This document maintained by A.K. Williams. Material Copyright ©
1999 A.K. Williams
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-2]Optimized for use with Communicator 4© and
Internet Explorer© 4.0[/SIZE]​

 

[UncleMatt]

Photos are dead...

 

[Goodyguy]

FiresEye & Charlotte49er .....Good info

And here is some more good info...... Sulfides, Selenides and Tellurides: rebellious and refractory gold ores

 

[Portadrillmini]

Roasting magnetic black sands to recover gold = my experience and research has yielded 3+ ounces of alloyed platinum / gold/ silver pickers nuggets and fines from a coffee can full of black sand magnetics ... First put the black sands through a rock crusher or even better a Cobra Crusher and roast in a kiln at 1800 degrees with equal amounts of charcoal dust and equal amounts of lime to absorb any sulfuric acids and fumes . Crush again after cooled , classify , and slowly run through a triple tier micro sluice and then through a blue bowl... Don't see it yet Try looking at all the micro gold under the microscope,... Melt your micro cons with flux ,... Then a cupel for final purification. [email protected]. The GoldDriller

 

[Clay Diggins]

Looks like Arsenopyrite to me. Roast Arsenopyrite (Arsenic) and you, your family, pets and neighbors could die.

As stated before you can not identify minerals by sight. The photos only show you have some metallic looking mineral.

Being that Arsenopyrite is thousands of times more common than Calaverite I'd be inclined to investigate much further. Arsenic is extremely poisonous as are many other minerals - particularly when roasted.

Educate yourself and prosper!

Heavy Pans

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Simple test for Te:

"Diagnostic tests:

Tellurium and tellurides are detected by heating the powdered mineral in a test tube with 5 cc of concentrated sulfuric acid. The presence of a reddish-violet color suggests Te. After cooling, addition of water will cause the color to disappear and a grayish black precipitate of tellurium will appear."

I do know that heated telluride ore from Cripple Creek often has purple spots on it from the Te.

 

[LHankins]

From the "Basement Chemistry for Prospectors" Basement Chemistry for the Prospector - Front Page site.

[SIZE=+1]Tellurides[/SIZE] There is a metal that no one knows much about, Tellurium. Go to "links", "periodic table of elements", and you will find all the chemical characteristics of this element. It is a metal with a lot of chemical properties similar to gold. No, it’s not a precious metal, but it does have a unique property. It forms natural salts (complexes) with gold. Some of the most valuable gold ores that exist are in the form of Tellurides. Yeah, I know, someone told you that gold was inert, it doesn’t combine with anything in nature. It only occurs as the elemental metal, GOLD. Well, as usual, they told you wrong. I’m sure they believed it, their best buddy told them, so it must be true. The buddy only had hearsay evidence, old wives tales. We Basement Chemists only believe the tales that can be substantiated. Sure we all know that there is gold dissolved in sea- water as the salt, gold chloride. True, but the amount is so small that, for our purposes, it can be ignored. We ain’t gonna get rich on that. I know someone is going to say, " gold comes, in nature, combined with mercury, silver, copper, etc, I find it all the time. These amalgams that we all find once in awhile, are not "combined". they are not another chemical. They are not salts of gold, mercury, silver, or copper. They are simply mixtures of gold, silver, copper, and mercury. They have not chemically reacted to form another compound. OK, so what the hell is a Telluride anyway? Well, as Basement Chemists you should have caught on by now that when a chemical name ends in "ide" it means that it is a salt. The things are chemically combined, not just mixed or dissolved in each other. Hydrogen sulfide is not hydrogen dissolved in sulfur. It is hydrogen reacted with sulfur to produce a completely different chemical. If not, you could simply warm the hydrogen sulfide and it would boil off hydrogen and leave sufur behind. It don’t work that way. They are reacted to form a chemical that is not hydrogen nor sulfur. It’s a completely different thing. Tellurium, gold, and silver (and other metals) can react to form Tellurides. Why are they not called "goldides"? Don’t know. I think it just don’t sound as good. Actually, it is because you can have tellurium/silver, tellurium/gold, or tellurium/silver/gold. You cannot have silver/gold. That is an amalgam, a mixture, not a compound. There are a few tellurides that are of interest to prospectors/miners. [SIZE=+1]Calaverite: AuTe2 [/SIZE] Calaverite is the name given to a telluride that occurs in certain areas as a brown/black, friable material that if you pan it out might very well show no gold at all. However, this stuff can be the "Elvis Pressley" of gold ores. All you guys have heard of a place called "Telluride" Colorado, right? The reason they called it that was that they had deposits of tellurides that were yielding so much gold you couldn’t believe it. Calaverite is the ore that you want to find. It can assay from 20- 70% gold and it is easy to recover. You and I have probably walked on it, dug it, looked at it, thrown it away, and moved on to better spots. The problem is that it doesn’t look like gold. You might not see even a color, or as we say here "ni un ojo de zancudo" (not even a mosquito eye). This ore is metallic and is amenable to amalgamation with mercury. It is very heavy and can be caught in sluices etc. It, however, does not look like gold, is not yellow, and is usually tossed out with the black sands. It appears more like gold/mercury amalgam than gold but it is not quite that either. It would probably be worth your time to visit a nearby university etc and ask them to show you some samples of Calaverite, just so you know what it looks like. Maybe they would give you some so that you would have it to compare with any suspect ore. This ore is not one that you would want to miss. A little deposit of this stuff could make your whole year. If you should get into a deposit of this material, be careful. Don’t throw anything away until you are sure it has no gold in it. If you should discard a small percentage of Calaverite, at 60% gold, it could be big bucks. Send it to me, I’ll be happy to deal with it. I’ll even pay shipping charges. [SIZE=+1]Altaite[/SIZE] This is another telluride of silver/gold. Not so significant as the above. [SIZE=+1]Sylvanite[/SIZE] A telluride of gold and silver. It can assay as high as 20% gold. [SIZE=+1]Petzite[/SIZE] Another telluride that is mostly silver. Silver content is usually twice that of gold. [SIZE=+1]Hessite[/SIZE] Resembles Petzite. Usually about 60% silver [SIZE=+1]Sulfides[/SIZE] A sulfide is a reduced salt of sulfur. Like copper sulfide, CuS2. An oxidized salt of copper and sulfur would be Copper sulfate. CuSO4. Remember about redox? Addition of an oxygen oxidizes the compound. Anytime you see the ending "ide" it means that the compound is in it’s "reduced" form. If you see the ending "ate" it means that it is in it’s oxidized form. You see, us scientific types have our own language so that we can talk without having to explain at every step what we mean. Hang with me and I’ll tell you a little about this language. Hell, it ain’t no harder than learning Spanish. Sulfides can ruin your whole day. They coat almost everything with surface of sulfide that will prevent you from amalgamating, reacting with cyanide, or dissolving in solutions of halides. If you have a little piece of silver, a little hydrogen sulfide from the local volcano, you will have a piece of silver with a coat of silver sulfide on it. This coat will prevent you from dissolving it in cyanide or any other. Fortunately for us sulfides are relatively unstable. Want to destroy a sulfide? It’s not too difficult but one that I am afraid most folks ignore. HEAT IT! Almost all sulfides will dissociate with heat. That is, if you heat a sulfide in the presence of oxygen you will boil off the sulfur as either sulfur dioxide or as hydrogen sulfide. If you heat some ore that you suspect of having sulfides present you will smell a rather unique odor. Have any of you ever been to a "beer and egg party"? A keg of beer and a great quantity of hard-boiled eggs? The next day you are a bit bloated, gaseous, or in scientific terms, "flatulent". When you, as the English say, "pass wind", this is the odor of sulfides being dispelled from the heated ore. When the odor of sulfur is no longer apparent, you can continue to your extraction method. The time-honored way to deal with sulfides is to boil them off with heat. Just get some roofing metal, get it up off the ground with a few rocks etc and build a good fire under it. Spread your material on the metal and let it cook. When you don’t smell anymore sulfur, process it. [SIZE=+2]HEAT IS CHEAP, USE IT![/SIZE]

[SIZE=-2]This document maintained by A.K. Williams. Material Copyright ©
1999 A.K. Williams

Optimized for use with Communicator 4© and
Internet Explorer© 4.0[/SIZE]​

Hello, we recently moved to Cripple Creek, CO and believe we have some Calaverite. Do you process that? If so, could you please send me some information?

 

[GRIZE]

Hello, we recently moved to Cripple Creek, CO and believe we have some Calaverite. Do you process that? If so, could you please send me some information?

No do not process or heat have it assayed..you will wreck the spiecaman value.

 

[Heathen Mojo]

So I've been reading a lot about tellurides and how they can contain up to 70% gold by weight, and that there's a specific process to remove the gold from them. While breaking some quartz ores down by hand, I've found some silvery metallic stuff which I think is Calaverite.. in quartz.... has anyone ever found any tellurides in the southeast USA? I live in North Georgia. I'm pretty sure that I have located a few telluride pockets, and havebeen doing a lot of picture looking and reading of what these rare minerals look like.

Also, for those of us who pan or sluice I have a question... Do you think the tellurides in the creek end up in the concentrates? I'd imagine they would. Also, if you crush rock and then pan, you have to be careful I think because the tellurides are much lighter than just placer gold. So moving on, here's some info I found on the web about tellurides...



It's long so scroll down and see what else is going on...



"""

This is only a primitive method of removing Gold out of Tellurides...
Basics; What you will need to do the job
1, 2 roasting pans [high temp] not aluminum foil type.
2, Standard table salt [equal amount to concentrate volume.
3, charcoal brickets.
4, outdoor area "well ventilated".

Step by step procedures...
1, classify your concentrates with a 20 mesh classifier...
2, mix the classified concentrates with equal amounts of salt...
3, put mix into a high temp roasting pan...
4. place pan with concentrates into a hot, well established coal bed...
5, leave in coal bed untill coals are completely consumed [overnite]...

What exactly is taking place...
Your concentrates have tellurides in them that according to our assay, are as much as 70% and as minimal as 30% in volume. You are heating the concentrates to an appx temp of 1000*F. What happens is that the salt and the heat enable the tellurides to burn off into a tellurium gas, leaving the chemically attached gold behind...

What will I see when done roasting...
1, actually nothing with the naked eye...
2, use at least a 10 power loop to get a view...
3, you are dealing with "micro gold" in very high concentrates...
4, if using a loop, you will see the remaning gold has kind of melted together into small globules...

Okay, now HOW DO I RECOVER IT...
1, get out your keene gravity bowl...
2, get it started up with a "GOOD SURFACTANT" in the water... [calgon]
3, NO soap w/lanolin or hand lotions in it...
4, remember you're dealing with ultra fine micro gold...
5, run your bowl with care and use caution, "don't get in a rush or get nuts"...
6, you will see GOLD in the gravity bowl, all will be in a 20 mesh and smaller...

What about the rest of the concentrates that I did not roast...
1, process them with your micro sluice or poop tube or gold wheel...
2, processing the remaining concentrates will get the free gold that did not pass thru the 20 mesh classifier...

Okay, I did all of this for what...
1, the Free Gold is running "according to assay" 1 troy ounce to each ton of classified concentrates...
2, the Gold Tellurides are yielding as much as 4-5 troy ounces per ton of classified concentrates...
3, how much is a ton of classified concentrates... [a 30 gallon garbage can in size]
4, or an average of 6-7, 5 gallon buckets of classified concentrates...

That's a hell of a lot of concentrates...
1, yup sure is, but so is 5-7 ounces of GOLD that you normally threw out...


:"""






So guys and gals, this sounds like the sort of thing people talk about roasting black sand to fracture the gold out of them, maybe it serves a dual purpose to roast the tellurides as well... I'm going to do this on a camping trip, way out in the woods.. Because I imagine the fumes from this could get nasty... and I have a garden in my backyard so I don't want all those contams in the near area.


So here's what else I found out

"The chemistry of gold tellurides is relatively complex with a series of identifiable minerals. The more common gold-bearing tellurides are sylvanite ((Au, Ag)Te4), calaverite ((Au, Ag), Te2) and petzite ((Au, Ag3)Te2) with krennerite (Au4 Ag Te4) and montbroyite (Au2 Te3) less common. Gold tellurides occurrence is widespread and is often associated with some free gold and sulphide minerals. The density of gold tellurides (8.0 - 10.0) are lower than native gold and the colour are less distinctive shades of white, grey and black."

Yep.. based on That^^ description, I've for sure got tellurides showing in my ores... No gold visible, but micro gold in abundance not only through mica free gold but the tellurides..

Check it out yourself and discuss how many tellurides you think you have in your cons, if tellurides are common or rare in Georgia, and what area you live and what kind of tellurides you suspect you have found...

So I'm new to all this, and have been crawling past hurdle after hurdle, but as of yet, denied success. I made my own kiln that can go excess of 2000 degree F, I've roasted my ore cons, I see gold, or what I think is gold, then as I go through cupellation, the lead cooks off, the gold seems to disappear and I'm left with a blob of metal like this, see photo. If I touch the metal barehanded I end up with micro metal splinters in my fingers that when looked at with eye loop seem to morph between a mercury looking liquid as I squeeze it out then becomes a solid metal splinter when near or on the surface of my skin. Any thoughts, help, ideas? I've also included a photo of some of my ore.

 

[Heathen Mojo]

From the "Basement Chemistry for Prospectors" Basement Chemistry for the Prospector - Front Page site.

[SIZE=+1]Tellurides[/SIZE] There is a metal that no one knows much about, Tellurium. Go to "links", "periodic table of elements", and you will find all the chemical characteristics of this element. It is a metal with a lot of chemical properties similar to gold. No, it’s not a precious metal, but it does have a unique property. It forms natural salts (complexes) with gold. Some of the most valuable gold ores that exist are in the form of Tellurides. Yeah, I know, someone told you that gold was inert, it doesn’t combine with anything in nature. It only occurs as the elemental metal, GOLD. Well, as usual, they told you wrong. I’m sure they believed it, their best buddy told them, so it must be true. The buddy only had hearsay evidence, old wives tales. We Basement Chemists only believe the tales that can be substantiated. Sure we all know that there is gold dissolved in sea- water as the salt, gold chloride. True, but the amount is so small that, for our purposes, it can be ignored. We ain’t gonna get rich on that. I know someone is going to say, " gold comes, in nature, combined with mercury, silver, copper, etc, I find it all the time. These amalgams that we all find once in awhile, are not "combined". they are not another chemical. They are not salts of gold, mercury, silver, or copper. They are simply mixtures of gold, silver, copper, and mercury. They have not chemically reacted to form another compound. OK, so what the hell is a Telluride anyway? Well, as Basement Chemists you should have caught on by now that when a chemical name ends in "ide" it means that it is a salt. The things are chemically combined, not just mixed or dissolved in each other. Hydrogen sulfide is not hydrogen dissolved in sulfur. It is hydrogen reacted with sulfur to produce a completely different chemical. If not, you could simply warm the hydrogen sulfide and it would boil off hydrogen and leave sufur behind. It don’t work that way. They are reacted to form a chemical that is not hydrogen nor sulfur. It’s a completely different thing. Tellurium, gold, and silver (and other metals) can react to form Tellurides. Why are they not called "goldides"? Don’t know. I think it just don’t sound as good. Actually, it is because you can have tellurium/silver, tellurium/gold, or tellurium/silver/gold. You cannot have silver/gold. That is an amalgam, a mixture, not a compound. There are a few tellurides that are of interest to prospectors/miners. [SIZE=+1]Calaverite: AuTe2 [/SIZE] Calaverite is the name given to a telluride that occurs in certain areas as a brown/black, friable material that if you pan it out might very well show no gold at all. However, this stuff can be the "Elvis Pressley" of gold ores. All you guys have heard of a place called "Telluride" Colorado, right? The reason they called it that was that they had deposits of tellurides that were yielding so much gold you couldn’t believe it. Calaverite is the ore that you want to find. It can assay from 20- 70% gold and it is easy to recover. You and I have probably walked on it, dug it, looked at it, thrown it away, and moved on to better spots. The problem is that it doesn’t look like gold. You might not see even a color, or as we say here "ni un ojo de zancudo" (not even a mosquito eye). This ore is metallic and is amenable to amalgamation with mercury. It is very heavy and can be caught in sluices etc. It, however, does not look like gold, is not yellow, and is usually tossed out with the black sands. It appears more like gold/mercury amalgam than gold but it is not quite that either. It would probably be worth your time to visit a nearby university etc and ask them to show you some samples of Calaverite, just so you know what it looks like. Maybe they would give you some so that you would have it to compare with any suspect ore. This ore is not one that you would want to miss. A little deposit of this stuff could make your whole year. If you should get into a deposit of this material, be careful. Don’t throw anything away until you are sure it has no gold in it. If you should discard a small percentage of Calaverite, at 60% gold, it could be big bucks. Send it to me, I’ll be happy to deal with it. I’ll even pay shipping charges. [SIZE=+1]Altaite[/SIZE] This is another telluride of silver/gold. Not so significant as the above. [SIZE=+1]Sylvanite[/SIZE] A telluride of gold and silver. It can assay as high as 20% gold. [SIZE=+1]Petzite[/SIZE] Another telluride that is mostly silver. Silver content is usually twice that of gold. [SIZE=+1]Hessite[/SIZE] Resembles Petzite. Usually about 60% silver [SIZE=+1]Sulfides[/SIZE] A sulfide is a reduced salt of sulfur. Like copper sulfide, CuS2. An oxidized salt of copper and sulfur would be Copper sulfate. CuSO4. Remember about redox? Addition of an oxygen oxidizes the compound. Anytime you see the ending "ide" it means that the compound is in it’s "reduced" form. If you see the ending "ate" it means that it is in it’s oxidized form. You see, us scientific types have our own language so that we can talk without having to explain at every step what we mean. Hang with me and I’ll tell you a little about this language. Hell, it ain’t no harder than learning Spanish. Sulfides can ruin your whole day. They coat almost everything with surface of sulfide that will prevent you from amalgamating, reacting with cyanide, or dissolving in solutions of halides. If you have a little piece of silver, a little hydrogen sulfide from the local volcano, you will have a piece of silver with a coat of silver sulfide on it. This coat will prevent you from dissolving it in cyanide or any other. Fortunately for us sulfides are relatively unstable. Want to destroy a sulfide? It’s not too difficult but one that I am afraid most folks ignore. HEAT IT! Almost all sulfides will dissociate with heat. That is, if you heat a sulfide in the presence of oxygen you will boil off the sulfur as either sulfur dioxide or as hydrogen sulfide. If you heat some ore that you suspect of having sulfides present you will smell a rather unique odor. Have any of you ever been to a "beer and egg party"? A keg of beer and a great quantity of hard-boiled eggs? The next day you are a bit bloated, gaseous, or in scientific terms, "flatulent". When you, as the English say, "pass wind", this is the odor of sulfides being dispelled from the heated ore. When the odor of sulfur is no longer apparent, you can continue to your extraction method. The time-honored way to deal with sulfides is to boil them off with heat. Just get some roofing metal, get it up off the ground with a few rocks etc and build a good fire under it. Spread your material on the metal and let it cook. When you don’t smell anymore sulfur, process it. [SIZE=+2]HEAT IS CHEAP, USE IT![/SIZE]

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You state
"When the odor of sulfur is no
longer apparent, you can continue to your extraction method." Correct me if I'm wrong, but when baking off sulfides, if you breathe the sulfur in, as in smelling it, the sulfur when contacting the moisture of your nose, throat and lungs instantly creates SULFURIC ACID is what I've been told??