Gold ring help

[Jason in Enid]

I went detecting at a local snow sledding hill today and I dug a ring. It had spots of gold showing but it was VERY cruddy, and the crud had a greenish hue to it. Junk ring with gold plating I figured and tossed it into my bag. I wanted to clean it up when I got home (just now) just for the sake of, well I was bored I guess. I took a pocket knife and went to scraping. Scrape, scrape, scrap. No copper, no silver, no under coat. The spots I thought were corroded was just crud stuck to it. I finally got enough scraped out of the inside to read <symbol>30 14K R.G.P. My crude little scale reads it weight at 1/2 ounce. It was 8 inches deep under a tree root.

Something gold plate? Never heard of RGP. Googled gold RGP and found nothing. Coudl be initials. I am going to carefully continue cleaning it and see what I get.

Pictures coming soon. What is your opinion?

[coinnut]

Hey Jason, I at first thought of the term Plum, for the P in that set up. Plum means that it is assured to be an accurate weight, but I googled 14rgk and came up with this. I would think it means rolled gold (plate?). Hope it helps

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_14k_rgp

[Jason in Enid]

Well, I already got an answer on another site. It would appear I found a 14K rolled gold plate which constitutes 30% of the total weight.

Here are the pics anyway...
First is after a basic tooth-brush cleaning
Second is after some scraping
Third is the stamping in the band.

I see coinnut came up with the same answer while I was posting my followup. Thanks coinnut. I wonder why I didnt find that answer when I googled it?

[coinnut]

I see, it's a 1/30, so it's 1/30th the total weight. Still a good find and most of it should clean up well. Better than just junk electroplate lol

[jkress]

It's a nice looking ring.

Found this online...

Gold filled means that an item has a layer of karat gold bonded on the outside of another metal called the base metal. The process used, and the base metal, may vary, but the gold content will be indicated by a fraction such as 1/20th 12Kt G.F. meaning 1/20th of the weight of the product is 12Kt gold. Rolled gold plate is a form of gold filled commonly used in the manufacture of older watches. The backs of watch cases were marked 10K R.G.P or 14K R.G.P. to indicate the content of the gold in the outer layer.

Coinnut is right.

I found a ring with the same corrosion you mentioned. The hallmark seemed to suggest a better quality ring. After I cleaned it up, I could tell the two outer rings were gold, but whatever they used between the two was definitely junk metal.

http://homepage.mac.com/j.kress/AmericanDetectorist/pictures/picture-48.jpg

The method that removed almost all of the crud was the foil, baking soda method described here...
http://www.americandetectorist.com/forum/index.php?topic=813.0

It took several times with a fresh batch each time, but eventually it all came off. After the first couple of soaks, I think I even increased the amount of baking soda to 3 tablespoons.... figured it would deliver more punch. :rolleyes: I really couldn't tell you if that is true though.