Smellting help!

Davent, I think you might be a new age Alchemist.
Instead of turning lead into gold, you've turned gold into lead :lol: :trophy:

Hahahahahha!
It's really weird, I had a 38 gram bar, it was a nice shiny, gold bar.
I then melted 28 grams of sub gram nuggets, some had a tiny bit of quartz or rock on them, but pretty clean, and about 6 grams of fines out of the pan. This is where I think the problem came, it was mixed and looked dirty. But I thought borax would take care of that.
The other factor is some of the nuggets looked pretty silver, I I mean really light compared to some of the others which just looked gold . There is a trace of a mineral in the area that is used to make tungsten as well I think. Guess I'll find out when it gets zapped at P W Becks.

Glenn01 said:

Is becks better than the Perth mint to sell gold?

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I have heard that Becks are really easy to deal with and usually give a better price than Perth Mint.
But I am only going on advice of others. Mick, that is.

Cheers for that! Let me know how you go and what the % is if you find out :Y:

Glenn01, I have heard that Perth Mint sometimes pays above spot on larger, clean nuggets.....

Perth Mint said:

Natural gold nuggets

We buy clean (rock-free) natural gold nuggets of all sizes. Exceptional pieces may attract a premium over the Spot Buy Price. Please call in advance for advice.

https://www.perthmint.com/sell-your-gold.aspx

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Pretty sure it was the Perth Mint that were paying overs on clean nuggets a few years ago for some specific sizes i.e. something like 2oz, 5oz, & 10oz nuggets. They must've had a buyer/collector after them?

Well, sold the ugly bar, it was better than I expected at 75% gold.

so the triangle wasnt far off ! Pity.

All good. You can see the difference in colour of the nuggets. I melted all the sub grammars. Not all in this pic, but you can clearly see the difference in colour of some of them .

davent said:

Well, sold the ugly bar, it was better than I expected at 75% gold.

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Did they let you know what else was in it Dave?
Those light nuggets look similar to some I found (& seen others) in Victoria outside of the GT.
Locals there said that people also found natural silver nuggets in the area so we just assumed it was gold with high silver content - Electrum?
Some areas south of Darwin are known for electrum.

pure silver nuggets on surface are very very rare as slowy corrodes due to sulphides and chlorides in soil. lost silver items might last 1000y but not 100000y.

electrum much more likely

can get native silver in reef where hasnt been exposed long

they said only small quantity of silver, but not enough to recover, or worth recovering.
No other elements mentioned, but the test I ticked was only for gold/silver. The test I think was charged at @$90.