This morning I found a speci while out checking out new ground. We wanted to see what was inside so I made a fire and heated it to nearly red and dropped it into a bucket of water. That fractured the quartz and made crushing easy.
We've been collecting a few so it was time to turn them into gold
View attachment Rock crusher.mp4
The rock crusher is a bit of an unfinished project so it was a good opportunity to give it a trial run. The result was better than I'd hoped for. I could have started with bigger particles and then gone for a second pass but I just ran it as I'd left it when I first put it together and the biggest particles turned out to be balls of gold about 3mm so that was good enough.
Then I ran the crushed rock over the Dream Mat in the sluice. (this photo was a previous run)
After panning I sorted the gold into two lots because it was a bit too much for me to melt easily in one go. See how the crusher rolled the gold into balls.
I cleaned the bigger gold out but all this fine stuff went straight into the crucible.
View attachment Crucible.MOV
I need to make or get a furnace because I like to do this in the open air but I have trouble keeping the gold hot enough to pour properly.
The new mould works nicely.
View attachment Gold mould.mp4
A little sprinkle of engineer's chalk releases the gold from the mould.
View attachment Gold mould 2.mp4
And that's the total of the gold from the species that Mrs M gave me this morning. I might collect a few of these gold buttons together later to tidy up but I've had fun today and that's what counts.