Gold mining question

[Nitric]

This may sound really dumb! And I know everyone has been down the road of answering these kind of questions often! lol

Just because I'm curious....Ok, for the guys that are at prospecting and mining pretty hard, what would be a realistic gram per hour or gram per day average? I'm meaning this question for the guys that hit it hard. Small scale 1 to 3 person group. How rare would it be to find a place that produces a gram or a gram in a half an hour? Is this almost non existent, common,etc...? What do you look for in claims? I hear all kinds of different things...

Do you or know anyone averaging this or better, consistently?

 

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[goldenIrishman]

Oh, and some places in the east? You will never find enough to go full time. No offense to the guys from Ohio. Some people will never realize the work to get what those guys are showing in the threads. I know! I moved tons and tons of dirt one summer. Every weekend for a summer, long days, to get almost a Gram all summer. So, they won't have to worry about finding a rich deposit. I have heard of a few guys that did pretty good considering the area though.

That's where I bought A high banker cheap! Used maybe twice. The guy thought he was going to make money. Told me he didn't find a thing. When I got it home, i thought, just for fun I'm going to clean the carpet into a bucket. It was loaded(for ohio) with real fine gold. He found it, and didn't even realize, It didn't show up in the sluice like it does on TV. lol

And you wonder why I moved back out west where the gold is plentiful? I was in Georgia for seven years before I escaped and moved to Arid-Zona. Sure there's some good gold up in the north part of the state, but down around Macon I never found squat!

It sounds to me like the guy you got the highbanker from didn't take time to learn his equipment or how to do a proper cleanout. His loss for sure!

 

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[Nitric]

Hi Nitric,

I like this thread, hope your questions are getting answered to your satisfaction.

Will give you my take on your question.



First....... "Prospecting" is the act of searching for gold and sampling areas to see how much and what type of gold is available in a particular spot. At the same time you must determine if the values will support your time, effort, and energy by using the formulas presented by Clay Diggins in his post above.

If so, that's when the process of "mining" begins by whatever means that will support your profit/loss scenario. Which typically could be as little as 1/4 gram a yard on up.
And yes, there is plenty of placer ground out there capable of producing a profit provided you adhere to those profit /loss formulas.

*NOTE: Figuring Au per ton of material is common for Lode Mining and Au per yard of material is common for placer mining.


Go for the Gold,
GG~

Yes, The formula Clay Diggins posted, Gave the information I was reading a structure.

With that part of it, I can relate it to other things I do have experience with. Buying and selling scrap pm's is one of them.

Switch a few words around and the same formula has to work to make a profit. If I move volume at 50 cents a dwt(or gram) I can still make profit. If there isn't volume, I need more profit off each piece. So, that part of it I can relate mining too, by switching things around. So, finding and moving volume and juggling the numbers around, it has to work for profit. Instead of ground, your prospecting and mining other dealers,pawnshops,etc..And in some cases, and areas, you can relate some of them to dirt or snakes and bears.(joke intended) You can probably be killed just as quick, if you deal with enough people and volume. So, the hazards can even relate.

Same thing there too, it's getting harder and harder, because of more and more showing interest, Most don't last long, because they see gold and not the numbers. That and laws, permits,licenses, keep changing making it harder for someone to do legally.

The ground question is also being answered. I wasn't sure how rare it was to find workable ground. If it was almost impossible or if it is realistic? I see where "workable" changes, depending on person, equipment or area etc....

Yes, there is a ton of information in this thread, everyone that has posted has added something valuable to me!

So, now it's a matter of, how creative,research,numbers juggling,personal resources, and looking at things with reality. If I can find workable ground. Maybe? lol I know there is a lot more to it than that......Geology,maps,surveys,laws,legal problems,funding,etc......

 

[rodoconnor]

That's where the phrase "prudent man" comes into play. Technically, that is what determines the validity of a Fed. claim.

 

[Nitric]

Also, anything else I ever wanted to check into, I knew people that were already successful at it. So, it was a lot of help to just call them up, ask questions, or hang out and see what they were doing. It was easy to learn and adjust things to make it work for me. This is something that I'm kind of relying on what I read or a thread to gather info. That makes it a lot harder. For a few reasons...

I'm getting some great info, and possible directions...Another thought is maybe a job in the field, not sure what the realities of that are either. That gets me in the direction of a lot of subjects also. lol

 

[Clay Diggins]

There has been some very good feedback on this thread. Lot's of folks sharing real experience is a good thing.

Let's talk about what a yard is. Without an understanding of the measurement used for placer mining we can't really get an understanding of just what good paying ground is.

A yard is a cube of material that's 3 foot on each side. Sometimes that yard might be a little more than 40 buckets and sometimes that yard may be a small part of a boulder. Some yards are mostly troublesome cobbles and other yards could be good paying pea gravel. All yards are counted in figuring out the number of grams per yard in a placer deposit - even the overburden and boulders.
Think about that for a minute.

If you process 42 five gallon buckets of material from a crack in a boulder or 42 five gallon buckets of classified material the gold you recover is not a valid measurement of grams per yard in your deposit. The true grams per yard is figured by processing yards of cubic material as they are found in the deposit.

Imagine a post planted every 3 feet in each direction on your placer. This would make a field of posts in a square grid all over your placer. Tie a string around the first post and wrap it around the next post in line and the next etc. until you come to the end of the placer. Do this with all the posts so your posts and strings form a string fence around each three foot section. Now dig down three feet in each box. Each box will now have one cubic yard of material removed. Process all those yards and you will have an accurate count of just how many grams of gold your placer will produce in the top cubic yard.

As you do this you will rather quickly run into several problems depending on where your placer was discovered.

If you are on the typical California river you will mostly be processing larger rocks and boulders. Those larger rocks and boulders don't produce any gold but they do make the job much tougher. When you count your gold after processing a field of boulders you won't get much gold per yard of actual material moved at all but you will be very tired and frustrated.

If you are on the Carlin Trend in Nevada you will spend a small fortune processing those yards. The tough part there is finding an efficient way to recover gold so small and scattered you would have a difficult time seeing the gold without a microscope.

The California river might have looked like a few grams per yard when you were just picking the material out of cracks in the rock but as soon as you exhaust those cracks you will have to move those boulders to get to the cracks below. If you don't you will quickly run out of ways to get gold. Your placer will be a bust no matter how many grams it holds. If you can't get to it efficiently you will end up looking for the next few crumbs with only the prospect of someday finding no more gold.

The Carlin Trend will make it obvious you will need to process a lot of material to get a little gold. This is big equipment territory. The big money and numbers are mined in the Carlin Trend because there is a lot of yards with a little gold.

If you look these two situations over you will see that in neither one are there a lot of grams per yard. The river placer will pay off for a few weeks or months of mining for a miner or two but doesn't suit a large operation or a long term income. The Carlin deposit will pay off for years to come for a large well funded miner with big overhead and huge custom equipment investment, but it is worthless to the one or two man team.

As you can see the actual grams per yard may be less important than the effort required to move and process that yard.

I wrote that we look for easy access - easy working placers that produce 3 grams, or better, per yard. That's the bottom limit for a small team working easy ground. I know many individual miners who manage to survive on 1 gram deposits. As long as they are working 2-3 yards a day at 1 gram per yard they can get by. As soon as that pay streak goes below 1 gram they are in trouble. Experience will tell that the 1 gram pay streaks always fall below that level - usually sooner than later.

This isn't a lesson about mining. The information here isn't really of much use to a miner. It IS a lesson about prospecting. Prospecting isn't about finding some gold or even about finding 1 or 5 or 10 grams per yard. Prospecting is about finding and defining a deposit that will pay a profit when it's mined. That profitable deposit may need to reliably produce 50 grams per yard if the yards are difficult to process and the deposit is small. It may only need to reliably produce 3 grams per yard if the material is easy to process and a large deposit.

It's up to the prospector to find the deposit that is worth working. No matter how many grams per yard the prospector finds it will not be worth mining if it can't reliably produce a profit.

Prospect first and then mine.

Heavy Pans

p.s. 1 gram deposits aren't rare but they are usually small or hard to work. 3 gram deposits with legs are few and far between. There is a reason gold is so valuable - it's rare and a lot of work to mine.

 

[Bonaro]

Nitric, perhaps you are comfortable calling it a hobby because you have yet to pan out a fingernail size flake or watch as a nugget the size of a pinto bean pops out of a crevice. I am thinking once you see this first hand you will instantly start taking the activity to whole another level of seriousness...

 

[Nitric]

Nitric, perhaps you are comfortable calling it a hobby because you have yet to pan out a fingernail size flake or watch as a nugget the size of a pinto bean pops out of a crevice. I am thinking once you see this first hand you will instantly start taking the activity to whole another level of seriousness...

View attachment 1090753

That maybe, I'm not meaning any insult or to make it sound like it's not serious. It's the way the word is used in different areas I think. If you look at the link I have in one of the posts, you will see what I was getting at.

Yes, if I started seeing gold like that It would turn into a disease! lol I saw the videos of the potato patch(liberty gold mine). That was unreal! I believe that was in Washington.

That is an awesome nugget you have!

 

[Nitric]

There has been some very good feedback on this thread. Lot's of folks sharing real experience is a good thing.

Let's talk about what a yard is. Without an understanding of the measurement used for placer mining we can't really get an understanding of just what good paying ground is.

A yard is a cube of material that's 3 foot on each side. Sometimes that yard might be a little more than 40 buckets and sometimes that yard may be a small part of a boulder. Some yards are mostly troublesome cobbles and other yards could be good paying pea gravel. All yards are counted in figuring out the number of grams per yard in a placer deposit - even the overburden and boulders.
Think about that for a minute.

If you process 42 five gallon buckets of material from a crack in a boulder or 42 five gallon buckets of classified material the gold you recover is not a valid measurement of grams per yard in your deposit. The true grams per yard is figured by processing yards of cubic material as they are found in the deposit.

Imagine a post planted every 3 feet in each direction on your placer. This would make a field of posts in a square grid all over your placer. Tie a string around the first post and wrap it around the next post in line and the next etc. until you come to the end of the placer. Do this with all the posts so your posts and strings form a string fence around each three foot section. Now dig down three feet in each box. Each box will now have one cubic yard of material removed. Process all those yards and you will have an accurate count of just how many grams of gold your placer will produce in the top cubic yard.

As you do this you will rather quickly run into several problems depending on where your placer was discovered.

If you are on the typical California river you will mostly be processing larger rocks and boulders. Those larger rocks and boulders don't produce any gold but they do make the job much tougher. When you count your gold after processing a field of boulders you won't get much gold per yard of actual material moved at all but you will be very tired and frustrated.

If you are on the Carlin Trend in Nevada you will spend a small fortune processing those yards. The tough part there is finding an efficient way to recover gold so small and scattered you would have a difficult time seeing the gold without a microscope.

The California river might have looked like a few grams per yard when you were just picking the material out of cracks in the rock but as soon as you exhaust those cracks you will have to move those boulders to get to the cracks below. If you don't you will quickly run out of ways to get gold. Your placer will be a bust no matter how many grams it holds. If you can't get to it efficiently you will end up looking for the next few crumbs with only the prospect of someday finding no more gold.

The Carlin Trend will make it obvious you will need to process a lot of material to get a little gold. This is big equipment territory. The big money and numbers are mined in the Carlin Trend because there is a lot of yards with a little gold.

If you look these two situations over you will see that in neither one are there a lot of grams per yard. The river placer will pay off for a few weeks or months of mining for a miner or two but doesn't suit a large operation or a long term income. The Carlin deposit will pay off for years to come for a large well funded miner with big overhead and huge custom equipment investment, but it is worthless to the one or two man team.

As you can see the actual grams per yard may be less important than the effort required to move and process that yard.

I wrote that we look for easy access - easy working placers that produce 3 grams, or better, per yard. That's the bottom limit for a small team working easy ground. I know many individual miners who manage to survive on 1 gram deposits. As long as they are working 2-3 yards a day at 1 gram per yard they can get by. As soon as that pay streak goes below 1 gram they are in trouble. Experience will tell that the 1 gram pay streaks always fall below that level - usually sooner than later.

This isn't a lesson about mining. The information here isn't really of much use to a miner. It IS a lesson about prospecting. Prospecting isn't about finding some gold or even about finding 1 or 5 or 10 grams per yard. Prospecting is about finding and defining a deposit that will pay a profit when it's mined. That profitable deposit may need to reliably produce 50 grams per yard if the yards are difficult to process and the deposit is small. It may only need to reliably produce 3 grams per yard if the material is easy to process and a large deposit.

It's up to the prospector to find the deposit that is worth working. No matter how many grams per yard the prospector finds it will not be worth mining if it can't reliably produce a profit.

Prospect first and then mine.

Heavy Pans

p.s. 1 gram deposits aren't rare but they are usually small or hard to work. 3 gram deposits with legs are few and far between. There is a reason gold is so valuable - it's rare and a lot of work to mine.

Ok, this is where I was really thinking wrong, I know what a yard of concrete is. So, I was relating it to the same kind of material. Sand,gravel,everything in between. Not thinking about how boulders, and other obstacles are in the mix. I kept thinking, why couldn't someone run a yard of material fairly quick? lol I also worked concrete, so two guys can wheel and move 9 to 10 yards pretty quick. This is what I was relating it to. It's the only thing I had experience in that dealt with a yard. lol

Thanks guys, for all the great details! I have read a lot in the past, half of it I forget, If I put it to structure or a visualization, It's clear and in there forever! lol That and there really is a lot to it!

 

[Nitric]

I'm not real good at this yet, but I'm noticing the look of the gold kind of gives a clue to the area or deposit it comes from. Color,shape,size, I saw a post of a pic on a different site, I'm almost 90% positive it didn't come from the area the poster claimed it came from. I studied that area pretty hard. I know what the deposits are and how the gold was mined in that area. So, that's another interesting topic.

Also saw a bottle of nuggets in Ohio, that the guy claimed he got in Ga. I have not seen a pic posted yet, of anyone finding the size and shape nuggets from Ga, that this guy had. He claimed he mined them on a week trip with a pan. If that's the case? I want to find that spot!