Eureka Gold.

[Tassie Daz]

Hi all, I'm on top of the world.

I went to this place and had a swing and while the misses and I were having lunch a guy who used to live around the place came and dropped his line in the water hole that we were parked at and he told me that years ago they used to find yellow stuff on the other side of the water hole wall.
So I thought well I'd have a go.
Sure enough, with in a few minutes I had a red hot pulse and so I loaded the dirt into the pan and back to the water hole.
OUT CAME 3, yes 3 good sized nuggets.
After hearing the comments of you guys from Prospecting Australia in my ears about making sure you have it all, I went back and checked around the area I found the first lot and WOW, out came another 3 pieces, all good sized. So in total I took 6 nuggets from the spot. As it was late we loaded up and came home but we'll be back tomorrow to grid the area and make a slow and proper check of the whole spot.

My question is simple. How do I clean it up. I got some Hydrochorlic acid on the way home but thought I better check first. Don't want to eat it all away and have nothing to show for it. So fellas what the go. How do I clean it up.

Once I do that I post some nice photos.

 

[Jim.]

Hi all,

Tassie Daz, Hydro will do the job. Just be careful and take the nessesary precautions. Buy a bottle of Alibrite its less aggressive and cleans them nicely

Cant wait to see the photos

PS congratulations

Jim & Kerrie

 

[kemjak57]

Congrats Daz what a great way to enjoy a day out with your missus. You're sure to be allowed out to play in the future.

 

[ChrisM]

Whoohoo !!!!
Now thats a great day out.
Well done Daz. Now that you rounded up the children go and get mummy and daddy... :lol:

 

[TenOunce Tone]

Well done Daz, cant wait to see the pics of your lucky day out!

 

[Palmer Digger]

Congratulations Tassie! Well done mate .. Re the clean-up try and overnight soak in CLR Clear at full strength in a small glass jar .. Give a bit of a shake from time to time and enjoyed the tinkle sound of gold on glass! .. You don't need to much, and in morning tip out the CLR (which you can use again a few more times) pour in some hot water and give another coupla shakes take em out and give a rub clean and dry .. Easy .. If the gold is course, grab your toothbrush and a little tooth paste and go to works s be really careful to put the plug in the sink.

Evn just a soak in water and a couple drops of dish washing liquid and the toothbrush job will bring up real pretty.

Hydro sort of works OK, but CLR Clear is better and far safer. Great for cleaning up old coins and any non-ferrous relics you find along the way.

Look forward to the pics mate.

 

[AU Fever]

Awesome Daz, well done! Hope you find heaps more. There's nothing like a bit of local knowledge.

John

 

[Tassie Daz]

Just an update on the results from the spot. I said I had a total of 6 nuggets from the day of the post. Well I came home and dropped them into a diluted solution of HCl acid and walla, only 4 came out. Truly, 2 were eaten by the acid. So I suspect that while they felt like the real thing (heavy and odd shape) maybe they weren't gold. (Since then I have now washed them in hot soapy water)Anyway, today we saddled up and headed out to that same spot and (God was good) because I found 2 more nuggets in about the same area.
2 Things about that.
Firstly, Its pays to be sure you have it all. While I left for the day, the day before, I was always going back to go over the spot with a fine tooth comb, (Now I'm sure that with the detector I have, I cant find anymore. If there's more there then the guy with the Minelab will be able to pick it up)
and Secondly, because I found it incredibly hard to distinguish between soil, leaf matter and the real stuff, I found loading the suspect soil(Nuggets and all) into the pan (scanning the pan to make sure its in there) and then working on separating the nuggets. That may sound elementary, but I've not done it before and I'm sure I've left the good stuff at the scene before because I couldn't sort it out.
Anyway it worked for me and I'll continue to work that way.

Hope this isn't too laborious.

 

[Tassie Daz]

Don't know how much I've found to date as I haven't got a scale and I cant load photos till I get home as I left the lead home. Will be happy to show you all the stuff in a couple of weeks.

 

[TenOunce Tone]

Sounds great mate, there are hours of videos on youtube etc on how to dig out the gold once you get the noise in your machine.. you will see lots of people doing the "grab and sweep" ie.. grab a hand full of dirt from your target area, pass it over the coil.. if it is in you hand it will beep.. rinse repeat... make sure you keep watches rings etc out of range.. keep doing this till you think you have your target..process of elimination and might be quicker to find the metal and more time swinging the coil.. I have only been out detecting with Rambling Rude (brother) and we used this method which worked a treat, we found heaps of bb pellets and various metal objects in various states of decay.. and one lil nugget.. .

Good luck, spewing that only 4 came out of the acid.. well thats the way it goes i guess.

Tone

 

[Ditherer and Son]

Great result! Great location obviously! What did you say the GPS location was again, precisely?


As for cleaning your gold nuggets the following information might be useful.

Cleaning off dirt and grime:
Just use household detergent, or Easy Off Bam and this will shift a lot of grime. CLR will also remove some rustiness.

Removing Ironstone:
Ironstone will dissolve in Hydrochloric Acid but it's a dangerous thing to play with and will burn and disfigure skin it comes into contact with. Use with EXTREME CAUTION. In many places you need a permit to even buy the stuff unless it is very weak.

Removing Quartz:
This is tougher, remember your specimen may fall apart without the quartz to keep it together, and clean specimens in quartz can be worth leaving as is. However, if you are really keen to remove the quartz from the gold, the Hydroflouric Acid is the best at dissolving quartz. (SiO2) Now if you thought my warning about HCl (Hydrochloric Acid) was serious..... well Hydroflouric Acid falls into the category of DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING THIS STUFF WITHOUT TRAINING, PERMITS, EMERGENCY SKILLS ETC. Even storing this stuff is hard because it eats glass! (Unsurprising when you consider the basic chemical formula of glass is SiO2 too!) In most places permits are required before you can purchase any concentration of HF greater than 1%.

None of these solutions will in any way dissolve any of the gold.

In most cases a toothbrush, detergent and a little elbow grease is the most practical approach.

If you really want to release the gold from the impurities - melt it.

 

[Copper]

Great find mate, looking forward to some pics.

Cheers,
Copper

 

[Tassie Daz]

Thank you to you all for the info. Today instead of going off to check a new spot, the misses, very learned lady this misses of mine said, "why worry about going somewhere you don't know about. If you want to go out, why don't you go back to the spot where you found the other stuff. So we did. And todays finds were a Wendt four penny weight (square) and a smaller coin (with knurled edge and small hole in the middle) (probably another weight) and another 8 pieces of what I hope was all Gold. Certainly 4 were yellow and the others were silver in color and the same nuggetty look as the yellow gold nuggets (irregular shape). If, and I stress if all these pieces are gold then to date, and I have now finished, I have taken a total of 15 nuggets and 2 weights out of an area no larger than half a car length. And it was all within 6 feet of the old timers workings. How cruel can this game be for those who came before!
Anyway its time to move on but next holiday I'll be back to check out the rest of the place. Ditherer and son, I don't have a GPS. (But finding the place will be dead easy next time I'm in Victoria.)

 

[Prospector steve]

well done Tassie,nice to see the pics cant wait

 

[Palmer Digger]

Eureka! .. Well TazDaz, .. proud of you old boy, for a New Chum you've done we'll! .. Not only did pick up your first gold, you hit a patch! .. Didn't think that the Eureka Gold would let you down once got the hang, or swing of it, so to speak .. Don't feel to bad about the old timers mate, they would have done pretty damn well there if you're still picking up pieces like that .. Just be greatful that they couldn't 'see into the ground' like you can.

Keep going like that and keep learning and refining your skills and the Boss Lady might let you return there next season with a 5000! ........ Look out!

 

[Tassie Daz]

Can any of you tell me about the silver stuff. The gold I know......its the shiny yellow stuff that comes in different shapes and sizes (hopefully bigger rather than smaller) but this silver stuff weighs like the gold and sets of the detector off like the gold, but its silver instead.
Can anyone tell me what it is please?

 

[Tassie Daz]

Oh and by the way it occurred to me that I hadn't once let you know what the implement of choice is. My detector is a Garrett Gold Stinger set to the instructed gold settings by Mr Garrett himself on the DVD. The coil is the one that came with the machine, and I bought the detector secondhand from a guy in NSW, I think.
Up until this last week I wasn't sure If I'd ever find the yellow stuff and whether the detector was good enough, but this patch was just 3 - 4 inches under the surface and just OFF the normal beaten track by all those who've come before me.
We are around the Goldfields for another couple of weeks so hopefully I'll be able to report more finds. Then I will go home very pleased that my detector is actually able to find the yellow stuff.

 

[Tassie Daz]

Here's the photo I was able to get today of the nuggets.

 

[Tassie Daz]

These are the nuggets from the other day. Sorry its taken so long but only found the description to upload today. The coin (I turned it up the wrong way sorry) is a twenty cent piece to give some idea of size. When I showed the guys at the Gold centre at Soveriegn Hill their eyes lit up.

 

[Tassie Daz]

One of the guys, a metallurgist, wonders whether the old miner whose these may have been, was actually doing his own smelting.