Alluvial Gold with Mica

I'm going to take a shot in the dark here, but I'm betting this will pertain to you. I live in Colorado. People come here from all over and while they are near Manitou or somewhere else where a stream runs through town, they "see" gold at the top of the sand. They grab a paper cup or a jar or whatever and scoop up a jar full of "gold". Problem is though, there is all this mica floating around with the gold. So they ask how to get the gold separated from the mica.

Now for the truth. You don't have any gold anywhere in the jar. It is all mica and that's why it was at the surface of the sand at the creek bottom. Gold is one of the heaviest metals there is. It will NEVER sit at the top of the creek bed. Gold is so heavy that it will always continue to bury itself until it reaches bedrock, even if the bedrock is 20 feet below. It will never sit at the top of the sand. So that mica you scooped up doesn't need to be burnt away from the gold because there probably isn't a single speck of actual gold in there.

To tell if you have any gold you need to take one of the suspected pieces and set a small piece of it on a hammer head. Take another hammer and lightly pound the suspected piece of gold. If this piece crushes apart it is not gold. If it crumbles in the very least it is not gold. If it flattens out and then flattens out again and again and again, then yes it is gold. You can flatten a single piece of gold continuously untill it is thinner than any paper you've ever seen. 

You don't burn things away from gold. You can put the suspected material into any pan that is flat and round. Add some water and then swirl the material around in the pan. If there is any gold it will sit right where you put it and everything else will swirl around with the water. Gold is so heavy that it will stay put, while any other material will flow with the water.

With all of this in mind, now go test the "gold" that is mixed with your mica and see if it passes all of these tests. I'm sorry that you don't have any gold. If I am wrong, then congratulations. At least now you know how to separate it from the other materials by panning it out.. Sorry if I sound harsh. I don't mean to be at all, but it is such a common recurring thing. I don't mean to hurt your feeings and I don't mean to sound uncaring. In fact I really hope I'm wrong and you have a bunch of gold. 

I am sorry that I don't know the answer to your question as we have only burned off mercury on some of our gold fines.  You might want to contact Gold Prospectors of America and see what they suggest.

Word of warning. The most common cause of death of gold miners during the gold rush was being poisoned by the fumes that come off of burning mercury. That is terible dangerous, and who ever advised you to do this was playing with your life. In the future, obtain some hydrochloric acid to "burn" the mercury away from the fine gold and only do it outside. As you add the acid to the blob of mercury you will see a brown "smoke" build up in the glass (always use glass containers only when burning with acid). That brown gas is the poison that you won't see if you use fire. I have a video floating around out there somewhere that I made for the Gold Prospectors of Colorado that ended up in the GPAA library as well that shows the method, but because there is such a big fuss about mercury being so dangerous these days (so the greenies say) we are not even allowed to discuss it with people. Nobody can legally tell you or show you how to use mercury in gold prospecting any more.

I don't think GPAA will be able to provide an answer to this question because mica does not burn. It is the material that used to be used as a "window" in pot bellied stoves because unlike glass, the mica can stand extreme heat. I am a gold prospector with over 25 years of experience and I promise you the "gold" this person found is not likely to be gold at all.

To Iknowsit:  Thanks for your words of caution.  Many people are not aware of how dangerous mercury is.  We burned a very small amount, definately outside, under the guidance of someone who had been prospecting for years.  Luckily we only had a small amount of gold with mercury to burn off.  I think your information is extremely valuable for beginners and probably should be a lecture subject at all state meetings.

Keep in mind that every original question brings answers that then become part of the entire discussion. I realize you id not say this or that, but subsequent responses did. Alluvial gold is not in itself a title of a certain kind of gold. Alluvial simply means that whatever material was deposited as the result of moving water and in gold's case, glacier flow. The alluviation is the deposit of the materials as the flow ends or changes. In gold prospecting we often find an alluvial fan, which as the name implies is a fan shape which has spread out from the final flow of glacial material. Perhaps I am not them person who needs to further understand the term "alluvial". Sharp angled gold is no more indicative of "alluvial" than anything else and your description that the gold has deposited by water, whether driven by weather or otherwise, does not describe alluvial. Sharp gold simply indicates that the gold has not moved far from the source. Gold being worn down does not make it "placer" gold. Placer implies simply that the gold has moved and has been worn down by surrounding materials, usually indicating that it has moved a fairly long distance. The only two "types" of gold are placer (which means it has traveled) and "lode" (which means it is embedded in host ore). I get the impression that you have been told that "alluvial" gold is some other type of gold. It is not. The fact that your gold moved from it's source makes it placer gold. As stated, alluvial simply indicates that it is found at the end of a flow, be it water in a river or glacier melt water stopping in place. 

Alluvium (from the Latin , alluvius , from alluere , "to wash against") is soil or sediments deposited by a river or other running water. Alluvium is typically made up of a variety of materials, including fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel .

Had you stated you were talking about 100 troy ounces being sent by you to them, I would not have assumed you were the average tourist to Colorado who does in deed scoop up jars of mica because it glitters like gold. And, if someone told you they were going to process the material that may include gold, and that they were going to incinerate the material, it would have changed the answer completely. You could never get a flame hot enough at home to incinerate mica, where a proper processing plant certainly could. Had your original question pointed this out, your answers would be very different.