I Can't Believe This Worked So Well! | Vinegar Gold 

Hey Chris, nice work. Ive been using a similar method, just not with vinegar. And it has a rough element of 'assaying' the ore, to see if it's worth working I've been collecting a bucket of sample quartz from reefs I find. Then I cook the rocks for several hours in a kiln I made - get's to 500c or so, so I want to make one bigger & hotter (of course) I then shock the rocks with cold water from the hose (I'll give vinegar a go next time, to see if there's a difference) Next I take them out to a lonely place in the middle of no-where, (so I don't shit my neighbors to tears with the noise,) and crush the hell out of them in my dolly pot, by using a concrete facing bit on my hammer drill. I seive the contents of the dolly pot through a kitchen seive anything that doesn't go through the seive, goes back into the 'to be crushed' bucket and I repeat till I run out of material to be crushed, and end up with a bucket of pretty fine sand ( I gotta make a hammer mill to speed this bit up) At this point I can weigh the bucket of crush to give me a 'Before Processing weight' Then I run the crush through the blue bowl to get to the gold, which gives me a very rough 'ore to gold' ratio to see if the reef's worth working further It's a work in progress, but I have found gold with this technique Just not enough to shout 'Yippeeeee!' yet

Wear a mask bro please. Silicosis is no joke.

Well good morning sunshine..... Thanks for the smile on a gloomy morning.. truly appreciated that.much love always

Oooh interesting. I just picked up a few samples today i have to crush that are promising. I might try this method on half of it and see the difference. 👍🏼👍🏼

Wood coals get hot enough to melt steel if you have a forced air supply. Just a heads up from someone who does blacksmithing as a hobby

The same rock breaking method was used by Hannibal's military engineers to break rock in building a path across the alps in some locations, much quicker then with sledge hammers and pick axes..

Thought you would've known this already,the old timers would light massive fires over quartz reefs and douse with water to crack into smaller pieces to send off to be crushed

When you ran the water on the pan you should have added some dishwashing soap in the pan to stop any gold flakes floating away.. Good video tho, iv never thought of doing that

I dig it! First time seeing some process it at the convince of their home lol.

So cool! Tbe slow-mo shots of panning may be the most effective way ever to show how the process works. Thanks, and ; carry on, bro

This system of softening quartz did not know. Next time I'll try it and let you know how it went. Greetings from Catalonia

What beautiful pieces very beautiful 👍 Congratulations and have fun in the future 🍻

Yeah, those Cold Burns can be killer.

Fascinating, gonna see if my old timer prospecting uncle knows about this.

This is cool will be interesting to see how this works on conglomerate

Great show !

That was very interesting and i want to try this now too. :) I have to make a better dolly pot first.😀

absolutely brilliant and since i was going through the specimens i collected from being homeless and travelling round living in my car i tried it the Neighbours got pissed ; I found almost 2.47 ounces just in the quartz rocks , the Neighbours get a decent bottle of wine and a sorry , I get to laugh at those that sneered at me picking them up .

I've said it before : the old timers generally speaking, were crafty buggers who knew what they were doing. They may not have given a crap about nature or their own health (Cyanide and Mercury, anyone?). But we can do similar things, building on the old knowledge, adding modern equipment and techniques to finesse the gold they left behind. Cheers Chris!

Way cool! Thank you for sharing.

thats like more ancent then just getting gold! You can melts quarts based stones like granit the same way!

Also great to see the safety squint coming into play🔥💥☄️

It might be worth trying a sample where you use plain water after heating, instead of vinegar. You would likely get some thermal fracturing either way, but it would be interesting to see whether the acetic acid actually does anything. You could reheat your tailings after panning, treat them with vinegar, and pan to see if there is more fine gold released.

dude i have been collecting quartz cause i like it.. some of it looks to have gold in it. never tested it. but i am totally gonna try this.

I work at a gold mine in California . they used cyanide and other chemicals .be careful bro remember the beware of the vapor's . And thanks for the video . wear ear pugs when crushing the rock's in your home made crusher . Good luck bro . have fun.✌️😎

That works well on a small scale. You also have some very rich pieces. I was wondering if it was the vinegar or just the thermal shock. Have you tried it with plain water?

Nice video man.. 5hank you 👏👏👏😊

For everyone saying why use vinegar- it's true it did nothing to the gold except cleans and brightens it and that is the point because if it were a substance that can be mistaken for gold like pyrite, old brass, chalcopyrite or mica they would react with the vinegar changing the color atleast and can alter the color of impure gold.

Pretty sure you don't need the vinegar mate but heating up the rock will make it brittle for sure any rock actually

I’m just here for the support

You’re having way to much fun with this

I've been waiting for this video crazy how well.it worked. Firesetting is a ancient practice that has been found in very old mines the Romans also used it on a industrial scale. Just incase anyone get the idea for conglomerate be careful as riverrocks explode when heated

The old timers definitely knew what they were doing Chris! Thanks for sharing⛏🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

My rock smacker is called "Nudge"

hermoso oro amigo👍👍👍

would it crush just as easily had you not done the vinegar ?

Wow that looked sugary.

Interesting process, it'd be nice to know what function the vinegar performs, other than being a cool liquid on a hot rock. Could you get similar results from very cold water or does the hot acid (vinegar) do something to weaken the quartz matrix?

I have used this technique n it is working like you said.keep it up.

Hey neighbour! It’s my 1st time watching, and I’m definitely a fan of gold … Awesome work brother 😎👍✨

The dissimilar materials, rock and gold have different, expansion and contraction rates, hence fracture lines around the gold and tho the rock, during flash cooling and contraction, boiling vinnigar yes, but to flash cooling,, I wonder if cold ice water migh work as well , or better for the contractions side of prosses, if you try it I'd love know you're results... nice interesting video thanks. Thom in Scotland.

Wow, not entirely sure your total time put in from hunting for the ore, obtaining it, doing the fire vinegar process, crushing, panning blah blah blah, but you earned about $5/hour is my guess. I'm not quitting my day job yet

Great video! Way cool!

if you drive a few rods through the fire barrel and put a grat on top ...and pump that fast air under the fire....it gets way hotter...if you find the white stuff...drop some vinegar on it ...if it bubbles it is good for further processing.....put it in the fire, get the rock red hot, let cool.... lightly mix water into rock powderr just to a pasty texture .....let dry...the product is ready for cement mix....you blacksmith you...

Vinegar on heated rock to fracture it is an ancient technique used by Alexander The Great to remove huge boulders when he was moving his armies through the mountains. _ Cheers

Forget how much the gold was worth, the proof of concept is priceless.

You reduced it to powder. Pretty sure silica dust is a death sentence when breathed in. It’s only a matter of how much time you have.. wear a respirator my dude. Can’t make videos for us if your dead.

Whatever you do with the rock and quarts after your finished extracting the gold, go get all of it and burn it then crush it super fine then pan all that you might get a lot of gold!!

great stuff Chris with the vinegar who would of thunk it!!!!i must say the old timers had the best the most original ideas ever i also watch a guy do the same thing heat up the quartz then just added water instead of vinegar it had the same effect on the quartz that's why i say to my two sons if an old bloke has something to say just listen and learn helped one of my boys when he started working in the gold mines in WA but his abstract way of speaking now from listening to the old timers well i should of warned him about that . he comes home with some colourful language some ripper stories but he forgets that he can not speak this way to his mum and dad gets him in trouble all the time but he can call me Big Horse

I put the rocks in fire and get real hot, then drop in a 5 gallon bucket of cold water and they shatter, leaving the gold loose in the gravel

Someone probably has mentioned this, but why vinegar? Well I think what makes the quartz so crumbly is the temperature shock, so water should do the same thing. But vinegar dissolves the sulfites, and for many reactions as temperature increases, so does the reaction rate; making the vinegar break down the sulfites very quickly. Oh, and because you're mixing a sulphur compound and an acid, only do this outdoors in a well ventilated space. Not sure how you'd do this indoors anyway 😆

Hannibal used this when he crossed the Alps in 218 BC. Heat the limestone and pour vinegar on. Carved a path for his elephants to get down the other side.

Hi. I tried it out myself with a MAPP gas torch and industrial produced vinegar (ca. 12.5 % acid) it worked out fine.

You should burn your ore more often plus it's always a bonus to have a beer around the firepit afterwards 🍻

That one really cool specimen looks like a dog 🐕 from the right angle.

Good morning man. Brilliant video as always stay humble stay hydrated and enjoy the day.

love this one man. The slow mo moments are fantastic! This would make a nice series. Like mythbusters for prospecting!

Thank you for mentioning the heat generated by a wood burning fire isn’t hot enough to melt the gold. Great point.

easy button smashy

Thanks Chris. Great Idea to collect your ore in summer and burn and crush when it’s too cold to prospect, love ya stuff!

The leaf blower is a survivor tool for fire starting in our family

Another banger!

Would be cool to see a side by side comparison of your traditional crushing method vs. boiling vinegar. Maybe a couple buckets per, mixing the rocks together to avoid concentrations and see how economical the vinegar method is..

let me tell you something after your barbecue become ash ... you can gather the ash and put diluted sulfuric acid on the ash , you will see that acid will dissolve carbonates in the ash ,,, after that put water on solution to let the acid release metals which is inside solution .. actually you need gold.. you can add nitric acid to kill other metals

Brilliant m8

Yeah hard rock university is right…..so just water but it has to be a really fast cool down…..quarts turns to almost play dough sand.

I get why the ol’timers built fires on the vein. Weakening the vein would make it much easier to dig out and it’s prepared for crushing. 👍🤷‍♂️ Smart.

if your looking at doing that on a slightly larger scale consider making like a pizza oven converted into a lime kiln. the kilning process would make the ore hot enough and it might be better to shovel it into a waiting vinegar bath. of course if it dosn't work right you'll have a pizza oven as a conselation prize

I bet you can do this with water. The vinegar comes in if the ore is dissolvable with acid, therefore releasing, potentially, more gold. For me, with my layman's brain, the "trick" is to get the quartz red hot and shock cool it so its crystalline structure shatters, releasing the gold. FUN VIDEO!!!

Blacklight shows blood in rocks. Blood=Gold.

HANNIBAL !!! Used fire and vinegar( spoiled wine ) to carve a trail through the Alps for his elephants. It was limestone, so acid and carbonate in addition to heat shock. Add hammers.

I bet just super heating the rock then dropping it in ice cold bucket of water will be enough to temper the rock and make it brittle. and you would not have to use vinegar. You could dip it in acetone after you take it out of the ice cold bucket of water if you are in a hurry to get cracking or let it dry over night. I imagine the acid in the vinegar is mostly just used for cleaning

This is really informative. I wonder if Dan Hurd knows about this method, since he tends to grind his stuff through an automated crushing mill. I wonder how it would help/hurt his methods when you scale it up compared to what you've done here in this video.

That was interesting. I've often wondered what the old guys went through to learn. Purty smart fellers..

Hot rocks, cold liquid= fractures also the chemical reaction of the acid (vinegar) on the rock. And it’s a safe acid unlike the alternatives

Hello Chris, you could save nice specimen gold by dissolving quartz in melted sodium hydroxide (lye), all gold inc fines preserved,but I would have to describe the process fully for safety sake, it's absolutely save,if you stick to it,regards George

Hey Chris, 2 things, 1), cut a leafblower sized hole in the firepit at the bottom, blow the fire that way with say an old vacuum cleaner on "blow". 2) would "cleaning vinegar" work better than normal - the 14% stuff.. THAT would be an interesting update to see.

Here’s an interesting fine gold solution for you The old timers in the north Otago field used to use a crusher bowl (basically a motorised mortar and pestle) to crush down quartz tailings to get more gold out. They would shovel these tailings into the crusher bowl, fill it with water and vinegar and leave it turning for a day (the idea being that the friction heated the quartz enough for the vinegar) before processing the material to get the gold out. You could use a similar system for your tailings after just a crushing to get more gold out of them

just a suggestion: instead of burning wood on a fire, try using a fresnel lens to heat up the rock. it would be a good thing if you're in a desert that doesn't have fire wood, or in a place with a lot of firewood, but it rains a lot.

Just remember when adding vinegar to a hot Pan you stay up wind from the fumes otherwise you will smell and taste vinegar for multiple days on end no matter what you try to try or how you try to get rid of it

Don't breathe that steam !

Glad to hear spud engineering is yours. I thought it was someone who was just stealing your content

I heard about this method using water, not vinegar. It was just about fire treating the super hard quartz so it could be easily crushed. Worked great for me with just water, but I'd love to try it with vinegar to discover if that works even better. It's amazing how that quartz just shatters and crumbles after the fire treatment.

Wow! That really worked. I may have to give it a shot. Thanks for another fun video.

That is so awesome, thank you have a wonderful day!

It might work with just water. The sudden cooling cracks the rocks, and 5% acetic acid doesn't sound able to do that.

great video and results mate,looks like it more than halved the effort needed to crush your rock samples.

Gold, a fire, a great dog…add a beer into the equation and you are ticking all of the boxes!

That just looks like fun! What a way to spend a day.....

If i send you a picture of a ore can you tell me what kind it is

This is how Hannibal drilled holes and poured vinegar in holes to cut through the alps. For his elephants

why don't you dissolve those tiny bits in vinegar instead? the gold might get flatten when your hammering it.

Thank you for making these and your time in doing so. When I finished with the stuff here in UK I might take a look at the world with a prospectors eye. Be well.

😎 fascinating and most impressive but you would have grabbed one of your trash can lids or a one of those big fat flat shovels for scooping snow or sand and use it as a shield like we did when we were kids would have been funny, wasted opportunity LOL 🇺🇲🙏❤️♻️🌎☮️💯

?????How much gold do you find in the bushfire layer in the creeks.? Just a thought. Is this why the creeks keep giving?

Legendary thanks for showing us

Vinegar will weaken and dissolve limestone which is a common way to tunnel into a pyramid with hand tools

Mask and glasses are needed, also does everybody know what rocks not to heat up or cut.. Arsnic bearing minerals and mercury bearing gives off vapours. Just a thought 😎 .

I live on a farm with 2km of river with a shit load of quartz 🤔this is going to b gold PUN INTENDED

❤❤❤❤❤❤WOW FINALLY AMAZING THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING YOUR AWESOME