Sluicing for Herkimers

[swizzle]

I was on a new friends private mine and he got to talking about his dream of running his own mine. It all sounds good to me and if I can help out I might be able to become like a full life time partner. So I'm hoping anyways. It is a lifetime dream of mine as well to be a professional gem miner. As he was showing me the property we walked around and were picking A to AAA quality gems right off the surface. After less then a half hours worth of picking n walking I had collected around 11 grams of these little beauties. With AAA's selling at $8 a gram I would like to be able to recover as many of these as humanly possible. A friend of mine is working on a trommel sifter to remove the larger gems and rocks and give a concentrate that we can work on in the winter inside when it gets to cold to mine. In the mean time the sifted fines should be easier to sluice I would think, hope and pray anyways. The fines will most likely be going through a 1/4" hardware mesh sifter. So I was thinking that a sluice with 1/4" slots would collect a higher concentration of these little gemmys. Would there be an easier way the sluicing. We are dealing with some clay and it will roll into balls in the sifter if its too damp. I'm basically looking for a way to turn a few tons of dirt in a day into say a 5 gallon bucket of concentrate which could then be gone through by hand or panned later. Any help or suggestions would be awesome. A good way to dry out several tons of dirt for finer sifting would also be helpful in getting the fines even finer. When this stuff is dry it flows through the screen. Almost no sifting required. Ok lets see what you guys can come up with and thank you for reading this far. Jason

 

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[Fullpan]

NICE little beauties - thanks for posting. Others can chime in on sifting, - have you thought of conveyor belt for plain ol' eyeballin'? There's a Sunstone mine
in Plush, Oregon that relies mainly on a horizontal conveyor with two people on each side looking for the flash.

http://plushsunstone.com/Plush_Mines.html

 

[Jim in Idaho]

I was on a new friends private mine and he got to talking about his dream of running his own mine. It all sounds good to me and if I can help out I might be able to become like a full life time partner. So I'm hoping anyways. It is a lifetime dream of mine as well to be a professional gem miner. As he was showing me the property we walked around and were picking A to AAA quality gems right off the surface. After less then a half hours worth of picking n walking I had collected around 11 grams of these little beauties. With AAA's selling at $8 a gram I would like to be able to recover as many of these as humanly possible. A friend of mine is working on a trommel sifter to remove the larger gems and rocks and give a concentrate that we can work on in the winter inside when it gets to cold to mine. In the mean time the sifted fines should be easier to sluice I would think, hope and pray anyways. The fines will most likely be going through a 1/4" hardware mesh sifter. So I was thinking that a sluice with 1/4" slots would collect a higher concentration of these little gemmys. Would there be an easier way the sluicing. We are dealing with some clay and it will roll into balls in the sifter if its too damp. I'm basically looking for a way to turn a few tons of dirt in a day into say a 5 gallon bucket of concentrate which could then be gone through by hand or panned later. Any help or suggestions would be awesome. A good way to dry out several tons of dirt for finer sifting would also be helpful in getting the fines even finer. When this stuff is dry it flows through the screen. Almost no sifting required. Ok lets see what you guys can come up with and thank you for reading this far. Jason View attachment 829223

Since Herkimers are quartz, It doesn't seem to me that you can recover them by sluicing, or panning. The specific gravity of quartz is about 2.54 which is really close to the SG of most plain old rocks, so It doesn't seem like the quartz would settle out very much. Most gemstones run from 3.5 (diamond) to 4.2-4.5 (garnet), and about 4.0 for ruby and sapphire.
Jim

 

[swizzle]

Fullpan, I don't think that would work for us. We're back up in the woods and anything we bring up would have to be ran by a generator. The thought of a big conveyor in the woods sounds like a whole lot of buying and lugging parts n pieces. I was hoping for something a little cheaper and maybe a tad more portable. I like the way you think though. I think we would need a 3rd person to shovel the dirt onto the conveyor.

Jim I was afraid of that. I was just hoping it was something that could be concentrated into one spot. The small ones do have a tendency to be round in the middle and roll a bit at the right angle. The main problem is the clay. It seems to stick to the diamonds. Need to figure a way to remove the clay out of the mix and then dry the dirt so it can pass through one of 2 screens. 1/4" mesh and then something a little wider then window screen would be good I think. Anything smaller then that wouldn't be worth messing with. Now I'm kinda thinking to maybe lay out a few pallets and cover the pallets with some cloth and then pile the dirt on. That would allow air flow underneath and some 2x2's and plastic I could build a make shift solar kiln. That might work! Any more thoughts or ideas? If anyone can come up with a better way to extract these little gemmies I'll send you the first 20 grams worth and they're selling for $8 a gram!! Thanx guys. Jason

 

[Jim in Idaho]

That darned clay is the nemesis of all prospectors....LOL I think your idea of drying them is the only cheap way to do it. Maybe a mechanized vibrating screen to remove the clay after drying? You could rig one up that used a 12V battery so noise wasn't a problem. (I hate the sound of a gas engine while prospecting) All my stuff is built to run on 12volts...nice and quiet.
The screen would have to be contained on all 4 sides, and you'd have to run batches. Trial & error to know how long to run each batch.
Here's another idea....put all the gravel in a bag of some kind, and agitate the bag heavily to knock the dried clay off. Maybe a small burlap bag.
Jim

 

[swizzle]

I don't want to agitate too much and end up cracking crystals. Who knows maybe we'll get this bobcat soon and we can bring loads of dirt to the barn to dry, not sure how much space he has there though. It would be extra work and gas though. Only other thought I had was running a long stove pipe in the ground and protect and cover it with cement or flat stones. Start a fire and see how much moisture you can drive out of the dirt. Still seems like a major time commitment and a bit of a money drain if we pour cement. Could use sifted gravel too I suppose. The gravel would help hold heat and continue drying into the night. Quite a process to think about.

 

[lastleg]

Herkimers aren't diamonds or gemstones, just clear quartz.

 

[Oakview2]

Saruca Screens Here you go...

 

[Oakview2]

Here you go...Saruca Screens

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Saruca Screens Here you go...

Saruca screens rely on specific gravity differences. If the stones you're after aren't heavier than the typical background stones, they don't work...quartz isn't heavier than the background stones. You'll note in the Saruca video that there's no quartz showing in the center when they flip the saruca.
Jim

 

[swizzle]

Just seems like there's gotta be a way to sort out these little gemstones. Maybe a vibration table but that's dealing with really small amounts of high concentrate. I'm thinking that I'll have to use a few different sifters and sift as the material is dry enough to do so. Jason

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Just seems like there's gotta be a way to sort out these little gemstones. Maybe a vibration table but that's dealing with really small amounts of high concentrate. I'm thinking that I'll have to use a few different sifters and sift as the material is dry enough to do so. Jason

That's what I'm doing in Wyoming for garnets and diamonds. Once I find a really decent spot, I'll bring in my little mineral jig, and get more serious. In the meantime, I just run everything through a 1/2" screen, and then a 1/4" screen, and then a #12 screen to get rid of as much dirt as possible...then you simply look at the material. If you have water available, that makes it much easier, as you can clean the gravel you have to look at. Where I'm working in Wyoming I have to haul the water, which isn't much fun.
There are two reasons for screening into two different size ranges....when using the jig, it works better if all the gravel is close to the same size...so I need two different classifications. If you are looking at the gravel to find your Herkimers, if the gravel isn't close to the same size, the small Herkimers may be hidden by the larger pieces of gravel.
Jim

 

[Oakview2]

Jim

The video does say the quartz will lie just outside the heavy ring. Without a major effort and expenditure, they may be his best bet for sampling.

 

[swizzle]

I do remember hearing that in the video so that might still be a possibility. I gotta get a hold of my buddy who's building my trommel and see what he thinks about interchangeable barrels. One to get the course stuff off and one to refine and see how that concentrate looks. If it looks good we might be able to pick from there but my guess is that I might be able to have a concentrated ring of little gemmy's that can be scooped out with a spoon, dried and sorted with a bicycle rim and some window screen. It'd be nice to get a few pounds of them perty little gems with only a couple siftings. In the pockets there does seem to be a lot of sand so it might sort faster then I think. Just gotta get out there and try a few different things until I get something that works. Thanx for all your help guys. Jason

 

[Oakview2]

They are beautiful, but do they have commercial value that would warrant getting a mineral jig?

 

[swizzle]

Depending on quality and size you can get between $8 - $15 a gram for the smaller ones. I was at my friends mine on Saturday and found at least 8 more grams. Some B grade but most were A to AAA quality. If there's as many there as I believe there to be then it would warrant a mineral jig in the future when we have the money to invest into it.

 

[Fullpan]

They are beautiful, but do they have commercial value that would warrant getting a mineral jig?

You would be surprised, Oak - daughter-in-law is a vendor at Reno's annual "Psyhic Fair" The oo-wee-oo crowd spends big dollars on stones of different
"healing powers". And of course the homemade crafts people like quartz crystals too.

 

[dawnhvr]

Rock tumbler ? Could you dry out the clay and tumble out the stones?

 

[Clay Diggins]

The Herkimer "diamonds" get their value from their beauty. Any efforts to tumble, jig or screen the crystals is going to result in a loss of value due to scratching and chipping.

Part of the reason for the value of the Herkimer crystals is the simple fact that they need to be hand mined to preserve their value. There is no quick or easy way to sort these crystals and retain their natural beauty. Unlike sapphires or other true gemstones Herkimer quartz crystals are only valuable in their natural crystal shape. The cleaner and better formed the more valuable. A sapphire is cut to reveal it's beauty, a Herkimer loses value if it is not in it's best natural form.

Water may help you to visually sort the crystals. Gentle use of screens with running water may help reduce the amount of material you need to look through. Drying mine run material with heat is a very expensive process. The greater the mass to be heated and the more the moisture that needs to be removed the more energy is required.

You are getting a fair return for your efforts. If you wish to be more productive in your mining I would suggest you put your efforts to defining the location of the crystal pockets before you mine. Mechanical concentration has little hope of improving your production per hour but a good discovery plan could easily improve your productivity.

Sparkly Pans

 

[rodoconnor]

Has anyone worked the Payson [Az] diamonds? They're also quartz and similar to Herkimers .