South Carolina Gold

Goldspeed

Full Member
Oct 13, 2016
114
165
Carolinas
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Hello everyone. I've posted on here before and I am trying at it again. I live in Lancaster South Carolina. Home to the second largest gold mine east of the Mississippi. I don't live really close to it but on my property there is a convergence of about four creeks that meet. I've panned here and there but I know I need to get deep enough to get loose gold. I've found a lot of very fine gold and a lot of pyrite. I've done a lot of research and the geological settings match that of haile gold mine. It is extremely difficult to recover the fine gold but I'm sure there is an abundance of it. I'm posting a picture of a piece of Quartz I found. I believe it is loaded with pyrites gold and electrum. Any suggestions on how to remove super fine gold without chemicals? ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1546440341.870466.jpg
 

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RTR

Gold Member
Nov 21, 2017
8,180
32,468
Smith Mt. Lake Va.
Detector(s) used
Teknetics Liberator
Falcon MD-20
***********
Blue Bowl
Angus MacKirk sluice
Miller Table
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Hello everyone. I've posted on here before and I am trying at it again. I live in Lancaster South Carolina. Home to the second largest gold mine east of the Mississippi. I don't live really close to it but on my property there is a convergence of about four creeks that meet. I've panned here and there but I know I need to get deep enough to get loose gold. I've found a lot of very fine gold and a lot of pyrite. I've done a lot of research and the geological settings match that of haile gold mine. It is extremely difficult to recover the fine gold but I'm sure there is an abundance of it. I'm posting a picture of a piece of Quartz I found. I believe it is loaded with pyrites gold and electrum. Any suggestions on how to remove super fine gold without chemicals? View attachment 1666624

Smash it into powder,then classify it .And run it on a Miller table.This DIY table has NO problem AT ALL at extracting minus 100 mesh gold.Good luck !:) 014.JPG
And its way faster at doing it than panning . Some minus 80 mesh under magnification 015.JPG
 

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arizau

Bronze Member
May 2, 2014
2,479
3,854
AZ
Detector(s) used
Beach High Banker, Sweep Jig, Whippet Dry Washer, Lobo ST, 1/2 width 2 tray Gold Cube, numerous pans, rocker box, and home made fluid bed and stream sluices.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Hello everyone. I've posted on here before and I am trying at it again. I live in Lancaster South Carolina. Home to the second largest gold mine east of the Mississippi. I don't live really close to it but on my property there is a convergence of about four creeks that meet. I've panned here and there but I know I need to get deep enough to get loose gold. I've found a lot of very fine gold and a lot of pyrite. I've done a lot of research and the geological settings match that of haile gold mine. It is extremely difficult to recover the fine gold but I'm sure there is an abundance of it. I'm posting a picture of a piece of Quartz I found. I believe it is loaded with pyrites gold and electrum. Any suggestions on how to remove super fine gold without chemicals? View attachment 1666624

As has already been suggested, crush it to fines and screen it down into separate batches of like sized particles and process them separately. Screen your placer concentrates too to make gold recovery much easier. When gold is the same size as all the other material in a pan it is king and is relatively easy to separate by panning or by running on a miller table or in a blue bowl. A good starting point for screen sizes for fine gold recovery is 30, 50 and 100 mesh. Pioneer is one set that I use and you can find them here. https://www.google.com/search?q=pio...ome..69i57.19751j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.

Good luck.

PS: A simple crusher is a capped pipe or rod that fits into a larger pipe on a piece of plate steel. Insert the rock into larger pipe and pound away with the other to make short work of the process.
 

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OP
OP
Goldspeed

Goldspeed

Full Member
Oct 13, 2016
114
165
Carolinas
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
I need to obtain some screens to classify. I made a rock crusher. It does fairly well. I definitely need more practice panning. I also desperately need a shaker table or blue bowl set up. I've panned a little bit here at work. I'm a hydraulic mechanic so I have free time in between repairs. And there's definitely fine gold. And a whole lot of microscopic gold. . ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1546449670.231030.jpg
 

smokeythecat

Gold Member
Nov 22, 2012
20,682
40,649
Maryland
🥇 Banner finds
10
🏆 Honorable Mentions:
1
Detector(s) used
XP Deus II
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
I bought an ore crusher on ebay. Was pretty inexpensive and works very well. I use it a few times a year on a hot rock the detector picks up in gold areas.
 

arizau

Bronze Member
May 2, 2014
2,479
3,854
AZ
Detector(s) used
Beach High Banker, Sweep Jig, Whippet Dry Washer, Lobo ST, 1/2 width 2 tray Gold Cube, numerous pans, rocker box, and home made fluid bed and stream sluices.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
I need to obtain some screens to classify. I made a rock crusher. It does fairly well. I definitely need more practice panning. I also desperately need a shaker table or blue bowl set up. I've panned a little bit here at work. I'm a hydraulic mechanic so I have free time in between repairs. And there's definitely fine gold. And a whole lot of microscopic gold. . View attachment 1666660

That kind of puts the cart before the horse. In my book you first need a sluice/concentrator of some sort to produce quantities of concentrates from either a placer source or from a quantity of crushed rocks. From there you can determine if panning classified material will suit your needs. For many of us it does without the need for any extra equipment especially if one becomes proficient in panning. Save your rejected concentrates just in case you decide to add more equipment to determine if in fact you lost gold while originally panning them.
 

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ArthurC

Full Member
Mar 19, 2013
138
155
South Carolina
Detector(s) used
Whites M6

Garret Pinpointer
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
I’m in Batesburg-Leesville South Carolina if you ever want to go prospecting. I live right at the edge of the slate belt and saluda sc had several gold mines during the first gold rush. That’s a beauty rock, I would crush it and pan it and use jet dry.
 

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