Here To Day, Gone Tomorrow

[chucktx8]

I dollied a little over an oz. from some rocks, picked the gold up with mercury,
Friend put it in a potato & told me to put it in the fire & boil off the mercury. we had a iron wood fire that night & in she went with a lot of hard work to boot. Next morning no potato, no gold & a lot of work shot to hell. I was told that if I put gold in, there would be gold in the ashes, for Gold will not burn ,I took a lot of BS over that
I just found out that gold will not burn but will boil away like water.
So there, I am not crazy after all. (I know that is debatable) Most of my old Buddy's are gone, like my gold, May they RIP. Chuck

 

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[enamel7]

I dollied a little over an oz. from some rocks, picked the gold up with mercury,
Friend put it in a potato & told me to put it in the fire & boil off the mercury. we had a iron wood fire that night & in she went with a lot of hard work to boot. Next morning no potato, no gold & a lot of work shot to hell. I was told that if I put gold in, there would be gold in the ashes, for Gold will not burn ,I took a lot of BS over that
I just found out that gold will not burn but will boil away like water.
So there, I am not crazy after all. (I know that is debatable) Most of my old Buddy's are gone, like my gold, May they RIP. Chuck

Somebody told you wrong. It isn't like water. It doesn't vaporize in a fire. Either you didn't look hard enough or it wasn't gold. Or one of your "friends" took it while you were asleep.

 

[Astrobouncer]

Unless your little wooden fire reached over 2800 degrees Celsius (5,000 degrees Fahrenheit), that ether was not gold or someone took it.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Thermodynamics-2200/2009/5/evaporation-point-gold.htm

 

[chucktx8]

It was a big Ironwood fire, it gets pretty hot. 12 people gathered around it. I left it in there all night, The next morning took my MD & found what I think was my gold, a small porous light pill. It did not look like gold. I still have it ,some where, will try & find it & give it a whack or two. see what it looks like in side.

 

[strickman]

when you boil off mercury,you are left with a [sponge] it is gold [if it was to start with] here is what it looks like after boiling off with heat in a retort.

 

[chucktx8]

Unless your little wooden fire reached over 2800 degrees Celsius (5,000 degrees Fahrenheit), that ether was not gold or someone took it.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Thermodynamics-2200/2009/5/evaporation-point-gold.htm

Darn, I thought I had the mystery of the vanishing gold solved, now I dont know. I got this on Google

This is sorta awkward. Gold doesn't really "burn" in the general sense. Take some solid gold and heat it. When it gets hot enough (1064.18 °C or 1947.52 °F), it melts. It was a solid, and now the gold has changed state to become a liquid. But here's the catch. Gold, which is called a noble metal, just sits there molten. That's because it doesn't like to react with anything, and that means it is extremely difficult to "burn" gold. It won't oxidize (combine with oxygen), which is the basis for most "burning" in the conventional sense. (There are other forms of burning, but we'll set them aside for now.) Our liquid gold? Continue heating it and it will change state to a gas and boil away. Just like water would.
The term "burning" doesn't really represent a change of state. A change of state is a transition from solid to liquid to gas to plasma or back the other way. (Yes, some things change from solid directly to a gas and such, but let's look at the basics.) If we take ice and heat it, it melts. Keep heating it and it changes to steam. But it is still water. That's the key to change of state. In a change of state you don't chemically change the "stuff" you are heating or cooling - like the water we spoke about. When we "burn" something, chemical reactions take place, and the original chemical elements and compounds involved are changed by rearrangement. Gasoline is composed of a bunch of different hydrocarbons. If we burn it completely in air (with oxygen), the end products are water and carbon dioxide. (Set aside the other combustion byproducts that occur at elevated temperatures and pressures and that appear with incomplete combustion.) Burning liquid gasoline does not change its state but changes its chemistry. So burning something really doesn't represent a change of state.

 

[Goldwasher]

dont stand around a fire your using to burn off mercury..............and even if you had a fire hot enough to turn gold into gas the ambient air temp would be so cold relatively it would turn right back into a solid very quickly. when you use a potatoe retort it is supposed to be in a metal pan and the fire is only supposed to be hot enough to vaporize the hg and it will absorb into the flesh of the tater......wrap it with foil.....dont stand over it....and that little tater of death is your responsibility...dont let anyone else handle it.. and dispose of it in such a way that later on someone or something else doesnt come along and say "hey, look at this potatoe i wonder who left this here?"

 

[EagleDown]

Darn, I thought I had the mystery of the vanishing gold solved, now I dont know. I got this on Google

This is sorta awkward. Gold doesn't really "burn" in the general sense. Take some solid gold and heat it. When it gets hot enough (1064.18 °C or 1947.52 °F), it melts. It was a solid, and now the gold has changed state to become a liquid. But here's the catch. Gold, which is called a noble metal, just sits there molten. That's because it doesn't like to react with anything, and that means it is extremely difficult to "burn" gold. It won't oxidize (combine with oxygen), which is the basis for most "burning" in the conventional sense. (There are other forms of burning, but we'll set them aside for now.) Our liquid gold? Continue heating it and it will change state to a gas and boil away. Just like water would.......................
________________________________________________________________________

True, but only in a general sense. I've had the horrible experience of smelting gold in a small stainless steel dish. (Well, you have to learn some how.)

I ended up with a thick gold plating on the stainless steel. (About 4 grams in an area of about 3/8ths of an inch in diameter.) Note to myself, self, next time use a clay crucible or iron. I just wanted to melt some fines down into a button.

But, the point of this is; I had the stainless steel white hot, and I don't believe any of the gold "vaporized". And, though I guess it would be possible to "vaporize" gold, it would take more than an open firepit. Incidently, in 50+ years, I've never heard of any of the many miners I've known "vaporizing" gold.

Now, as to the mercury, it's so easy (and safe) to separate the gold from the mercury, I never understood why anybody would take a chance with theirs and others lives by using the old potato trick. Must have read about it somewhere.

If you want to separate gold from mercury easily, have a container of NITRIC ACID in a safe storage container. Take a small glass or beaker, (I said GLASS,) and carefully pour about an inch of the nitric acid into it. Now, make sure you stand up-wind of it and drop the amalgm (gold and mercury) in. You will immediately see a dark, brownish, thick vapor coming out of the glass. Be careful not to breath any of it. It is pretty much a vaporized acid.

Once the nitric acid stops reacting to the mercury, you will have a "sponge" of gold. Now, you're probably thinking that the mercury went out with the vapor, right??
Not true.

Carefully pour the acid into another clean glass container. You can now take the "sponge" outof the original glass with a stainless steel spoon or tweezers and put it in a small, shallow bowl. You can wash it now or later.

Now for the moment of truth!!

Cut a penny, or copper wire into small pieces. Now, drop one of the small pieces into the acid. Again, don't breath the vapor!! What you are doing now is precipitating the mercury that is in suspension in the acid. Keep dropping the little pieces into the acid, one at a time, until the acid quits reacting. By this time, you will see your mercury laying on the bottom, and the copper or zinc will now be in suspension. (Personally, I prefer to use zinc for the precipitation.) And the acid with the zinc/copper in suspension? I'd put mine in a heavy plastic container for proper disposal. Of course, it might take a while to accumulate enough to bother with.

You can now flush your mercury off with a little fresh water and put it back in its'
container.

Eagle

 

[minerjoe]

Hi guys, on one of the creeks i work, i get nuggets that are totally covered with mercury. Not one of them is even gold in colour. So i put them all in my great grandpa's steel pan and burn them off on a single burner, while standing inside! So, why does the nuggets still have a silver tint to them, and they never look right. I've had to put them in vibrastator with black sand in it to clean it off. Isn't there an easier way? I did start to melt a coulple of them when i put the map gas torch to it but it makes them look too shiny.

 

[kuger]

Hi guys, on one of the creeks i work, i get nuggets that are totally covered with mercury. Not one of them is even gold in colour. So i put them all in my great grandpa's steel pan and burn them off on a single burner, while standing inside! So, why does the nuggets still have a silver tint to them, and they never look right. I've had to put them in vibrastator with black sand in it to clean it off. Isn't there an easier way? I did start to melt a coulple of them when i put the map gas torch to it but it makes them look too shiny.

First off if you want to die there is easier ways....second yea,merc/gold is stained after the removal.There are several ways to clean it,but I usually put it in a plastic vial and add vinegar and salt and shake it vigorously for some time....it takes a lot of shaking....lots of shaking but it works