Super bad clay issue

[Kuntzy]

I went out digging this past thursday. There was ice on the river, and the gravel bars were frozen down to around 6 inches. I wasn't able to classify any material at the river due to the temps so i just filled 20 unclassified buckets of material to bring home and work during the cold weather.

While digging i punched through two different clay layers. The first layer i hit was a mix of blue clay and smaller rock.it is a pretty soft clay. The second clay layer is around an inch thick and hard as a rock, there is some cobble on it but none on the inside of these huge clay chunks

If there is gold in any of this clay i want it. any tricks or tips to get the majority of the clay broken up enough to pan?


Thanks, Justin.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Diving for Pleasure and Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[Laz7777]

I've found ifthe clay is not water soluble, there is likely little or no gold in it.
think about it: if water can't penetrate it, neither can gold.
will it dissolve fairly easy in your pan?
try a pan of it, agitate it, using warm water might help. if you don't find much in your first pan, might as well toss the remainder out.
I hate working for nothing, which if this is as tough as I've seen some clays, it will be nothing, in abundance.

 

[Kuntzy]

So just run the easy to dissolve clay and dump the rock hard thick stuff?

 

[kcm]

Don't discount the possibility of gold in the harder clay. It may not have always been hard. To work it, let it dry hard, then crush fine and pan out a little at a time. If you find no gold in the clay, then chances are you can ignore the hard clay for that area. If nothing else, you may want to just scrape off the top layer of the hard clay and see if any gold has worked its way down to this hard layer yet.

If it were me, I would also see if there are any other layers under the hard clay. There's always the possibility that some massive geologic event brought in lots of silt and ash (probably from a volcanic event) that covered up gold-bearing ground. In the end, it's up to you how much digging you want to do - but skipping over clay layers without testing what's in or under them could mean the difference between a good day and an awesome week!

When running clay, you can also mix in more coarse sand to help keep the clay broken up while working - sorta like watering it down, so to speak.

 

[Kuntzy]

i dug the clay layers while trying to get deeper. got down to around 6 foot deep before i ran out of buckets. i just figured the clay layers were acting as a false bedrock and wanted opinions on what to do with it.

 

[Underburden]

Sounds like you have a little bit of Hoffmanitis. Let's run 10,000 yards through the plant before we take a sample pan.
Sorry, that's all I could visualize when you mentioned 20 buckets

 

[Terry Soloman]

i dug the clay layers while trying to get deeper. got down to around 6 foot deep before i ran out of buckets. i just figured the clay layers were acting as a false bedrock and wanted opinions on what to do with it.

Put a surfactant, like Jet Dry, in a Five gallon bucket of warm water and break the clay down by hand / small hand shovel, then pan it out. At least that way you can see there's nothing in it.

Illumin - A Chemical Engineer's Guide to Cleaning Just About Anything

 

[Kuntzy]

yes i may have gotten Hoffman Disease, but dang man it was cold. i just wanted to bring to material home to work. the material is good and producing. its just the clay is driving me mad.

 

[Laz7777]

here's something I forgot to ask: does the clay have gravel throughout it? that might be a hint that there's some gold.
like water, if nothing else has penetrated the clay, neither will gold.
believe me, I've spent enough time messing with thick gooey clay years ago, I leave it alone now if it doesn't break up in the pan immediately, not 10 minutes from now.
ok?

 

[hvacker]

I ran across a bunch of You tube's on this very subject. Just type
"Gold in clay" and there will be several.
One in particular discusses the different color clay's and some he won't bother with.

 

[goldenIrishman]

When I hit hard clay I do the following:

1: Break it up into fist sized or smaller chunks till you have a 1/2 bucket of it.
2: Soak it in the bucket using warm water with a 1/2 cup of washing soda mixed into it. Always mix the soda into the water BEFORE you add it to the chunks!
3: Use a drywallers mud mixer in a 1/2 inch variable speed drill and mix it up until you have as smooth a consistency as possible.
4: Pan in small amounts or run slurry through a small sluice system and then pan cons.

The clay up here in N.W. Aridzona is not very common (so far, knock on wood) but down in the south part of the state it was a bear to work with at times. I can think of several members on here that have also worked in that area near Greaterville and found the same thing. Come to think of it, I"m pretty sure that nasty clay was the reason AzViper decided to build his trommel.

 

[Kuntzy]

here's something I forgot to ask: does the clay have gravel throughout it? that might be a hint that there's some gold.
like water, if nothing else has penetrated the clay, neither will gold.
believe me, I've spent enough time messing with thick gooey clay years ago, I leave it alone now if it doesn't break up in the pan immediately, not 10 minutes from now.
ok?

the top clay layer has material all through it. second layer material is only on the top and bottom

 

[KevinInColorado]

the top clay layer has material all through it. second layer material is only on the top and bottom

Then definitely pan some!

 

[Hunt4gold]

ckm has good points.

If the clay has gravel in it, then it may have gold and should be tested. If you test three samples of the material (dried and crushed with hammer) then do not worry about going beyond that layer. Any clay with gravel may likely hold hold. I typically add the clay to a bucket with small gravel (other material from the source) and add water, then mix it either by hand or with a drill and attachment for mixing concrete.

Am currently working some spots with clay that has gravel in it and am getting gold out of the material.



Good luck and post some photos of what you discover!

 

[Goldwasher]

If the clay doesn't have coarse material in it, sample just the top of it here the last coarser material contacts, it is false bedrock. you can avoid having to break up a hole heck of a lot of clay that way.

When you hit a clay layer in a creek even on a bench or the bank area. if the clay is a hard later id is a silt deposit that hardened and had the material on top of it deposited later. "False bedrock"

You find bedrock with a clay layer on it. That bedrock was clean ad one point and the material from there up was deposited afterword.

Start hitting large cobble and boulders..."claylike material" is in the voids? grainy and and breaks up relatively easily...those large rocks were there and a flood carried silty material into the rocks and cobble. They sat there took the force and held back that material in the flow.

In the Mother lode you can find these situations because the creek was worked flooded worked....stripped flooded worked .............ten feet down stream it can all change.

man on the river you can find numerous clay layers..and still be ten feet above a rock wall built 160 years ago.

Sample the top of the clay.

 

[Goldwasher]

the color of clay has more to do with the country rock than anything. Especially in cracks when you start getting into several inches of the same color clay chances are you are digging past the gold and into decomposing rock.

There is only one " Great Blue Lead" somehow it still shows up in every gold bearing state

 

[Laz7777]

blue clay on the south fork mostly means good gold....but dark brown is nice too, sometimes charcoal grey.
everything else has been said about the subject.
I'll take the first 1/8"-1/4" of the nasty stuff and pan it slowly with added gravel, of course this has already been said.
rarely I've found gold beneath the heavy stuff. very hard to dig, nothing in it, nothing underneath.
on the south fork, I believe a lot of the clay formed from hydraulic tailings and settled down fast without much gold getting the chance to settle into it.

anyhow, the best experience is experience.
doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results is one definition of insanity.

 

[Jeff95531]

the color of clay has more to do with the country rock than anything. Especially in cracks when you start getting into several inches of the same color clay chances are you are digging past the gold and into decomposing rock.

There is only one " Great Blue Lead" somehow it still show up in every gold bearing state

I googled the great blue lead and found some of the best research for me to do as it gets closer to my neck of the woods than most AND tells me what to look for. Thanks GW

 

[rodoconnor]

The Big Blue Lead can be found in So Kal in the El Pasos and the San Gabriel Mts . I don't know for certain, but I suspect it is as far south as Julian/San Diego. Where you find it , you find gold.

 

[goldhog]

I did a video on this very subject.... not breaking it down, but "should I run it" / is there gold in it.
Might help some.... I'll post below.
NOTE... I agree with the "Hoffman reference"... why the heck would you run a 1000 yard test (hours to set up and run) and then do a 7 hour cleanup?
Run one yard samplings from the general area through a highbanker and do the math. Gosh almighty!!!!!!!!!!!
The SMART ops we work with do this non stop to make sure the pay going to the plant is productive.