This One's a First - Old Lake :cam:

[Mrchile]

[size=large]Afternoon hunt at the Old Lake
Excal Loot - 1' to 3' water[/size]

[size=large]What is this green C``p?? It's on alot of the metal objects.
At first I thought it was because the items were brass or copper...
The only items I haven't seen it on is silver....it's very hard to remove...[/size]

[size=large]This is all that is left of the picture that was inside?[/size]

[size=large]This one floated by me while I was on the hunt...........?
A little Breezey today[/size]

[size=large]Home Made - Another Keeper[/size]

 

[Bobbie]

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[JSinkAZ]

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[deerman]

one way to tell if the cameo is real is to see if you can see thru it, If yes real, if no nitro

 

[bdahunter]

The green crud is tarnish created by the oxidization of the base metal used to cut a gold ticket or the underlying metal of a gold plated ticket. Typically the gold is cut with some copper as well as other metals to give strength to the gold while maintaining color, lustre and malleability. 24k gold is pretty soft and just not durable or strong enough for most jewellery applications. By cutting the gold to 14k which is strong but still has all the important qualities of pure gold you get almost two rings for the gold value of one and they are more durable rings than a pure gold ring.
Gold will not oxidize (tarnish) but the base metals will; even silver will tarnish but the tarnish is black as there is virtually no base metal in a .925 piece of jewellery (it's 92.5% pure).
It takes a fair bit of time for the base metals that have been blended with the pure gold to leach out in the form of green crud onto the surface of a gold ring so if you find a gold ring with green tarnish and it is marked as 14k then you know that this find has been in the water for a long time.
Platinum is like gold in that it will not tarnish either. Best of luck to all you pirates out there in the quest for the noble metals.

Cheers,

BDA

 

[Mike from Balto]

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[ThatCannonballGuy]

Mrchille asked:
>What is this green C``p?? It's on alot of the metal objects.
>At first I thought it was because the items were brass or copper...

I'm not a Chemist myself ...but a for-real Chemist told me the green crud on our dug relics is Copper-Oxide ...which is a molecular combination of the atomic elements Copper and Oxygen. It forms quickly when copper is exposed to water which contains even a very tiny amount of any type of acid (such as Tannic Acid, from decayed plant-leaves).

First, it's important to know that many of the metal items we dig up are "alloys" which contain a significant amount of copper. For example:
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc.
Pewter is an alloy of copper, tin, antimony, and (sometimes) lead.
Most coins contain some copper ...a buffalo-nickel is actually 75% copper with 25% nickel.

Most "silver" coins are actually composed of silver alloyed with copper ...but apparently copper-oxide doesn't form on them because they contain only 10% (or less) of copper. Sterling-silver is 92.5% silver with 7.5% copper.

Hope this info is helpful.

Regards,
TheCannonballGuy [PCGeorge]

 

[BEACH HUNTER]

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