need help

[wyalusing jim]

first off, I'm a total newbie to gold prospecting. if I sound dumb, it's because I am.

I have a source for a nice quantity of paydirt which seems to have a fair amount of fine to super fine gold in it (nothing in a 30 screen, lots in the 50, 70 and 100 screens). I have tried the blue bowl with some success. I bought a miller table which so far has yielded nothing but a few flakes, it all washes off the table with the sand. now I am panning the classified material with better success.

I think that the problem with recovering this gold is that the flakes are not only small, but very thin and flat. any water current lifts some of the flakes and they flutter like leaves in the wind.

my question to you guys is, what is a good method to get this gold out of the sand at a decent rate of recovery?

I think a logical question you might ask is, am I sure that it's gold? I have had my dirt analyzed using x-ray spectroscopy and the analysis showed that my sample contained 5.56 ounces to the ton which I think is worth going after.

I'm working at this, but thought that maybe someone would be willing to advise or even help figure out the best method of recovery or at least concentration. I would be willing to give someone some of my material to try, if they would share their results with me.

I am located in northeast pa., so if anyone close by wants to try it we could meet, or I could mail some dried dirt to someone with experience with fine flakey gold.

thanks, jim

 

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[KevinInColorado]

Flakes that flutter in the water are not usually gold, they are mica. Even tiny flat gold will sit down on the bottom of the pan pretty quick.

 

[russau]

Kevins post maybe your answer BUT I sent you a PM anyway. 5.56 troy OPT is rich dirt.

 

[wyalusing jim]

Flakes that flutter in the water are not usually gold, they are mica. Even tiny flat gold will sit down on the bottom of the pan pretty quick.

I understand your skepticism about it being gold. let me elaborate.

there is no mica in my dirt, the process which produces my dirt would destroy it.

the flakes are gold in color and they shine in any light.

the pretest indicates the presence of gold as I said before, and additionally a small quantity of the recovered gold makes a pinpointer sing as gold would.

I do get some pickers in the blue bowl now and then, and under magnification it is definitely not mica.

when I said that it flutters like a leaf in the wind, I would add that it flutters when kicked by a grain of sand up into the stream of water. once lifted out of the sand, if it is too close to the outlet of the blue bowl it will go out. if they are not close to the outlet, they will sink back down in a bit. once on the bottom of the bowl and clear of sand, they slide across it and remain there. the problem I have with the blue bowl is that it would take me days to recover a reasonable percentage of the gold since I have to run it so slow.

I am real sure that this is gold, but again, I am a newbie.

jim

 

[wyalusing jim]

5.56 troy OPT is rich dirt.

agreed. in the pan or in the blue bowl, this dirt sparkles like stars on a clear night. even its' source rock sparkles everywhere. it is fine gold, but there's a lot of it.

jim

 

[galenrog]

I am going the route of the naysayer here. Was a fire assay performed? ICP OES testing? If a handheld XRF device, was the device AND the software designed for use with ores or powders? Until answered, I am with Kevin on this.

 

[Oakview2]

What do you use for intial recovery? Do you use a surfacant in the water of your secondary recovery system. If you can send some pics of your recovery process perhaps someone can offer some tips. If I had concentrates that were that rich, I would be running a large concentrating table that could run at least ton per hour.

 

[kcm]

One question nobody has yet asked is, just how much is "a source for a nice quantity of paydirt"? Are we talking a couple of full 5-gal buckets? A couple small loader buckets?? A couple pickup loads?? More?? Is your supply something that you can continue and replenish? How much material you have can greatly affect the best and most economical method of recovering any gold.

 

[winners58]

there is no mica in my dirt, the process which produces my dirt would destroy it.

not sure what that means? Mica is pretty inert to heat and acid's
might have to get it as concentrated as you can, then use a mercury or leach process.

 

[arizau]

There are many methods/types of equipment for concentrating and you already have the most basic one and that is a gold pan. Production panning is to add raw feed material to the pan then only partially reduce the volume while retaining the heaviest of the material then add more material to the mix, reduce and repeat to the point where most of what is in the pan is black sands, gold, etc./CONCENTRATE. This method is the slowest, most basic, and least expensive but is also very effective in retaining gold for further processing to recovery! Various other concentration methods mostly involve a sluicing system of some sort that adds to your equipment cost and most if not all of them are very capable of capturing gold of the sizes you mentioned. Bear in mind that no method will capture 100% of the gold so that should not be your goal. Your goal is to recover what gold is retained in the concentrates.

Good luck.

PS The use of a blue bowl or miller table requires some fine tuning of water speed, flow, etc. and that takes patience and experimentation..

 

[wyalusing jim]

I am going the route of the naysayer here. Was a fire assay performed? ICP OES testing? If a handheld XRF device, was the device AND the software designed for use with ores or powders? Until answered, I am with Kevin on this.

thanks. I understand your doubts. no assay has been performed yet, I have only just begun to try to separate the "gold" out. at this point, I might have a couple of grams of the stuff.

as I said, I am having difficulty separating it.

jim

 

[wyalusing jim]

ok, not sure what you mean by "initial" and "secondary" recovery.

here's what I do...I first run the raw material through a 20 screen using a garden hose to wash it down through, into a bucket. I then stack a 30, 50, 70 and 100 screen on top of a bucket and wash it down through those with the hose again. no jet dry.

after that I was running the individual sizes through the blue bowl with a couple of drops of jet dry. I got some, but most went over the top of the bowl.

I am now down to panning the material. a couple of drops of jet dry and a couple of swirls and the gold stuff walks out of the sand to the empty part of the pan and I suck it out. repeat about 20 times and the gold stuff is so fine that I dump it.

the pan is working, but I would like to concentrate it somehow, without losing so much of it. I have never panned before and I'm sure that I suck at it.

basically, I'm looking for a way to speed things up a bit.

also, I probably was running the water too fast in the blue bowl, but I didn't feel like waiting hours to get down to what I wanted.

thanks for your reply,
jim

 

[wyalusing jim]

One question nobody has yet asked is, just how much is "a source for a nice quantity of paydirt"? Are we talking a couple of full 5-gal buckets? A couple small loader buckets?? A couple pickup loads?? More?? Is your supply something that you can continue and replenish? How much material you have can greatly affect the best and most economical method of recovering any gold.

more...way more. and the supply is endless. I do not know if the concentration of the gold stuff will hold forever, but the source of material is endless.

wj

 

[wyalusing jim]

not sure what that means? Mica is pretty inert to heat and acid's
might have to get it as concentrated as you can, then use a mercury or leach process.

there is an abrasive aspect to the process by which this material is produced. I do not think that mica could survive except in microscopic sizes.

additionally, I have never seen mica in the source rock. it's origin is sedimentary. not that a little couldn't have washed in syndepositionally, but I've never seen any around this stuff.

and also, this gold stuff looks nothing like mica. it is metallic and shiny. though not always, it tends to show with iron deposits imbedded in the source rock.

jim

 

[wyalusing jim]

There are many methods/types of equipment for concentrating and you already have the most basic one and that is a gold pan. Production panning is to add raw feed material to the pan then only partially reduce the volume while retaining the heaviest of the material then add more material to the mix, reduce and repeat to the point where most of what is in the pan is black sands, gold, etc./CONCENTRATE. This method is the slowest, most basic, and least expensive but is also very effective in retaining gold for further processing to recovery! Various other concentration methods mostly involve a sluicing system of some sort that adds to your equipment cost and most if not all of them are very capable of capturing gold of the sizes you mentioned. Bear in mind that no method will capture 100% of the gold so that should not be your goal. Your goal is to recover what gold is retained in the concentrates.

Good luck.

PS The use of a blue bowl or miller table requires some fine tuning of water speed, flow, etc. and that takes patience and experimentation..

thanks! I do accept that I am a bit impatient here. at first the miller table wouldn't catch a thing, but I tweaked it to where it would catch a flake here and there. I fully recognize that I am probably not using it correctly. I am currently frustrated with that approach.

the blue bowl does work, but it is too slow for me, and so I'm down to panning. that is working the best for me so far, but I have very little skill with it so far.

the sluices interest me right now, but after having purchased to first 2 methods with little to show so far, I am here hoping that someone with these types of equipment might run some of this stuff and speed me along to a better solution. I'd rather someone with more experience do the testing and let me know which way to go. it'd be great if someone nearby wanted to play with a truckload of this stuff. otherwise, I guess I'd mail a small amount to someone more distant in exchange for the help.

material I have, experience and patience are what I'm short of.

if my initial tests were even close, and there were a couple of ounces per ton, and I could recover better than 50% with a sped up process, I would consider that a success.

I am not looking for a get rich quick scheme, and probably this won't turn into a lifelong hobby. I just want to see if I can make this work.

jim

 

[kcm]

ok, not sure what you mean by "initial" and "secondary" recovery.

here's what I do...I first run the raw material through a 20 screen using a garden hose to wash it down through, into a bucket. I then stack a 30, 50, 70 and 100 screen on top of a bucket and wash it down through those with the hose again. no jet dry.

after that I was running the individual sizes through the blue bowl with a couple of drops of jet dry. I got some, but most went over the top of the bowl.

I am now down to panning the material. a couple of drops of jet dry and a couple of swirls and the gold stuff walks out of the sand to the empty part of the pan and I suck it out. repeat about 20 times and the gold stuff is so fine that I dump it.

the pan is working, but I would like to concentrate it somehow, without losing so much of it. I have never panned before and I'm sure that I suck at it.

basically, I'm looking for a way to speed things up a bit.

also, I probably was running the water too fast in the blue bowl, but I didn't feel like waiting hours to get down to what I wanted.

thanks for your reply,
jim

HOLY COW!! You're wasting time here. Get yourself a recirc setup or an in-stream sluice and run the classified materials to make your concentrates. THEN you can worry about the blue bowl!

Some people will run the material, then classify the concentrates. However, if you don't mind classifying first, you'll end up with MUCH better results pre-classifying.

 

[arizau]

thanks! I do accept that I am a bit impatient here. at first the miller table wouldn't catch a thing, but I tweaked it to where it would catch a flake here and there. I fully recognize that I am probably not using it correctly. I am currently frustrated with that approach.

the blue bowl does work, but it is too slow for me, and so I'm down to panning. that is working the best for me so far, but I have very little skill with it so far.

the sluices interest me right now, but after having purchased to first 2 methods with little to show so far, I am here hoping that someone with these types of equipment might run some of this stuff and speed me along to a better solution. I'd rather someone with more experience do the testing and let me know which way to go. it'd be great if someone nearby wanted to play with a truckload of this stuff. otherwise, I guess I'd mail a small amount to someone more distant in exchange for the help.

material I have, experience and patience are what I'm short of.

if my initial tests were even close, and there were a couple of ounces per ton, and I could recover better than 50% with a sped up process, I would consider that a success.

I am not looking for a get rich quick scheme, and probably this won't turn into a lifelong hobby. I just want to see if I can make this work.

jim

I don't want to be a pest here but it is still not clear (to me) from your responses that you are in fact only trying to recover gold from material that you have already concentrated. Is that the case?

 

[wyalusing jim]

I guess I should add that roughly 30% of this material is heavy clay. I cannot do anything with it until I have broken the large mass up with water through a screen. this takes me maybe 5 minutes, and only then can I classify the material.

i wash off the clay in the bucket until the remaining sands are clear of clay. otherwise i wouldn't be able to see the bottom of my pan.

probably a significant percentage of the gold stuff goes over the bank with that clay, but i can't see any other way to deal with it.

jim

 

[kcm]

You know, there's something that just keeps gnawing at me. In the OP, these things were stated:
"I have had my dirt analyzed using x-ray spectroscopy and the analysis showed that my sample contained 5.56 ounces to the ton"
"I am located in northeast pa"
Post #11 states: "no assay has been performed yet"
Something HAS to be flawed with the spectroscopy!! The best method of assaying is by fire assay, but you don't assay raw material - ONLY finished concentrates. All placer miners run their material multiple times. Each time gets the material more and more concentrated. Being in Pa., I doubt seriously you would have found a spot that held 5.56 ounces/ton. But the primary thing is, how can you know HOW MUCH gold is there without an assay?!?!?

Post #4 states:
"there is no mica in my dirt, the process which produces my dirt would destroy it"
Post #14:
"there is an abrasive aspect to the process by which this material is produced. I do not think that mica could survive except in microscopic sizes."
Unless the material is all going through some sort of complex crushing circuit, you're not likely to destroy the Mica.

Sorry, I'm totally a naysayer on this one.

My very best and most solemn advice is to go back and read the Gold Prospecting sections of this forum. For even more info, I'd also recommend visiting GPEX.com and ICMJ.com as well, as there is tremendous knowledge in the archival threads there. nevada-outback-gems.com, NuggettShooter.com, GoldGold.com, etc, etc, etc.

Yeah, I know...not supposed to refer folks to "the competition", but you GOTTA admit, this time is warranted!

 

[wyalusing jim]

I don't want to be a pest here but it is still not clear (to me) from your responses that you are in fact only trying to recover gold from material that you have already concentrated. Is that the case?

sorry. after washing and classifying i then pan. no concentration other than classification is used yet. i realize that classification is not concentration per se', but i am eliminating the big stuff and also washing the clay away, so i do reduce my volume quite a bit.

jim