I made the mistake of heating the contents of my snuffer bottle

[Old_Festus]

As this is my 1st season hobby panning....I had watched a video showing how you could empty out the wet contents of your snuffer bottle into a frying pan, then gently heat the wet mixture till all the water evaporates off.

Well .....I gave this method a try with terrible results. Apparently the pan got way too hot....so all the little pieces of black sand became magnetized and stuck to anything metal that wasn't gold or silver in the pan. That want such a big deal ....but the heat discolored all the little silver flakes I had collected. It had lots of flour gold and tiny slivers of gold and silver in it. The area I'm panning is very rich with iron ore and the heat kinda scorched some of the lesser karat gold (gold that had stuff like iron, sticking to portions of it.

The heat turned everything about the same color as the brown sand and black sand that had been sucked up with the collected gold and silver pieces.

Hoping to fix this problem...I dumped the dry contents out on a paper plate and had to separate the mix as best as I could (I'm unable to yet collect any flour gold from the sand)... then after clearing all the material (of larger pieces of gold/silver)

I didn't want to have to use chemicals to clean the gold and silver, so I placed it all into a glass bottle consisting of a 50/50 mix of apple vinegar and kosher salt. That was 3 days ago. Every so often I shake the bottle when I walk by it. The silver pieces are just finally returning to their bright coloration. The gold brightened up much faster.

Is this normal? I didn't think silver would discolor other than tarnish? Also all the flour gold can't be found, sitting in the still burnt mix. Anyone else have this happen to them?

I should have just let it air day but wanted to try something different that I watched online.

 

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[JayeLK]

If you asked me, I would guess that the little "silver" pieces were most likely lead. Most streams will have lead in them, bullet splatter, shot, etc. I don't hear about people seeing native silver very often in placer deposits. Silver oxidizes and combines with other elements much too easily to remain native silver for very long. Lead oxidizes fairly easily, too, chemically and geologically speaking, but there aren't people shooting silver around to replenish like they do lead.

My guess is you made lead slag with your concentrates. Lead melts at a very low temperature and can easily trap your gold in the slag if you heat your concentrates before removing the lead. You MUST physically remove the lead before you heat your concentrates or you end up with a mess and almost no way to recover without using chemicals. (By the way, you're using chemicals when you put the mess in vinegar and salt, it's just the chemicals are fairly benign. Oh, and there is no real need to use such expensive vinegar and salt for this. Jeez.)

I'm also pretty suspicious that your "gold" isn't actually gold. It's my experience that gold won't discolor after heating. I heat my gold cherry red, often to remove the sulfide coating, and it comes away beautiful when it cools.

I suppose that something else could have vaporized and coated your gold, but that's hard to know. If the discoloration on the gold is some sort of vapor deposit, then it will come off fairly easily, as gold doesn't react easily chemically. If such a vapor settled on the lead, or even silver, it probably reacted to the lead, and that's why it takes so long removing it in the very gentle acid that is vinegar.

You also can't easily melt gold, as in not at all, on a stove, campfire, or with a butane torch. They just don't get hot enough to melt it, let alone vaporize it. You need a kiln or a different type of gas to get the heat needed. If you had gold before, you still have it, but it just may not be visible in the mess that was made.

Silver is silver (unless it is very finely ground, in which case it will be black, or you managed to get a colloidal suspension, which will be green-blue), but it will combine with other elements fairly easily. Silver makes many nice compounds; silver iodide, silver sulfide, silver chloride, etc. Some are clear, some are bluish grey, some are white, some are black. Tarnish is just silver oxide, rusted silver. It is black or dark brown.

JayeLK