Mineralized Quartz Cut From Quartz Vein

[Kjavanb1234]

Two more samples as I was walking around close to area.


And this limonite quartz,


I have been busy with processing shredded blank circuit boards to recover copper also today finished stripping a kilogram of MRI cat scan films to recover silver so I can use that in my ore fire assay.

I will concentrate on these rocks.

 

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[Kjavanb1234]

Visited another site near my town. Unexplored until now,

Here is the quartz vein, the portion visible was 1.4m length and 30cm width. Heavily stained by iron oxide and lots of holes in the quartz.


Here is a chip sample I took home,


And these placer rocks also near the vein,


Host rock in the area as can be seen in photos is slate.

 

[Kjavanb1234]

Another quartz rock found in the mountain valley on the right where I went the other day. Quartz looked more pyrite oxidized.



And


And

 

[Assembler]

Some interesting rocks for crushing and panning to look further for any 'values'.

 

[Kjavanb1234]

Indeed they are. I will do that first thing.

 

[blackchipjim]

Looks like some good specimens hope it works out for you.

 

[arthos]

Material looks promising to me!

 

[Kjavanb1234]

Thanks fellows. I havent had the time to crush and assay these myself. I am involved in another form of mining which is called urban mining, processing ewaste.

I will assay these rocks and post results.

 

[gold tramp]

Thanks fellows. I havent had the time to crush and assay these myself. I am involved in another form of mining which is called urban mining, processing ewaste.

I will assay these rocks and post results.

Probably do far better with e waste than diggin ole quartz veins.
Good luck lets see your e waste button if ya can.
Gt...

 

[Kjavanb1234]

Probably do far better with e waste than diggin ole quartz veins.
Good luck lets see your e waste button if ya can.
Gt...

Hi,

I have been into ewaste mining since 2009. You may look for my posts and photos of my buttons in this great forum called gold refining forum. Great people and very informative. They also have a section on prospecting and veins.

Indeed the ewaste mining has much higher yeild compare to ore mining. But rocks are more available.

These quartz veins investigation for me is part of a humanitarian project, that I like to explore, assay these veins and provide my finding with villages around them, so they can proceed and claim it and process it.

Best regards
KJ

 

[Kjavanb1234]

Hi

Another series of quartz rocks I came accross. One thing I noticed, in slate host rock,there are more quartz indices at altitude below 6000 ft, than there are above that.

Here are some outcrops photos,


And


This sample is not quartz, but it is sedimentary rock, again heavily mineralized, host rock is serpantine and ophiolite.


And this is the vein sample came from, it is 1 foot wide and 30 feet long and visible,


I am anxious to fire assay these but still busy with my ewaste processing.

 

[Kjavanb1234]

Update,

Had some free time, selected few pieces of rocks seen above, and dropped them in chain mill, litterly pulverize them instantly. Here is the freaky part, I put all the fine powder in a glass bowl, added water and liquid soap to break the sand, and used a chopstick to stir. After few seconds the whole glass bowl broke into pieces??!!

I mean really spooky, glass bowl was at room temperature, water also room temperature, to this monent I have been puzzled why did the bowl shattered into pieces.

 

[arizau]

Update,

Had some free time, selected few pieces of rocks seen above, and dropped them in chain mill, litterly pulverize them instantly. Here is the freaky part, I put all the fine powder in a glass bowl, added water and liquid soap to break the sand, and used a chopstick to stir. After few seconds the whole glass bowl broke into pieces??!!

I mean really spooky, glass bowl was at room temperature, water also room temperature, to this monent I have been puzzled why did the bowl shattered into pieces.

Strange. Maybe the powder mixture became very porous, absorbed water, settled and mostly expanded laterally and broke the bowl? Quartz would not do that so maybe the rock is or contains another mineral. Bentonite and diatomatceous earth does much the same thing and is used sometimes to seal oil wells in much the same way.

 

[Xasan]

Take a few samples every five feet or so from the vein and crush and pan out.Mark a seperate bag as to know where each sample came from.It's only ore if it's payable to work.If you do not want to crush just pan out the dirt,clay and small quartz chips slowly.If you've a good amount of gold..pan into another pan or tub.Any color out of a quartz vein is worth further sampling.

Good info. Thanks.

 

[Kjavanb1234]

Long time no post. I have been busy with other projects. Over the weekend I tried aqua regia assaying some of the rocks I have collected.

Here are photos of sample rocks I assayed,

Sample 1


Sample 2


Sample 3


Sample 4


Sample 5


Assay procedure:
This is credit to Deano from Goldrefiningforum.com, first rocks are pulverized, sifted to fine powder, mixed up well, and a 20 gram sample is collected.

In a 600 ml beaker, 250ml of 4:1 aqua regia is prepared (that is 200ml hydrochloride acid mixed with 50ml nitric acid).

20 gram sample is added slowly to the aqua regia solution and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes. First you notice the brown fumes of nitric and as process closes to end the white fumes appear, let it simmer for another 5 minutes and cool it off to room temperature.

Now take a drop from aqua regia solution and add a drop of stannous chloride testing solution, if color of solution changed to a pale purple to purple, it indicates there was gold in your sample.

I went through all samples using this procedure, and only sample 5 turned to a pale purple indicating gold in it. The rest of samples were negative.

Here is procedure for sample 4 for your reference,

Sample 4 pulverized and sifted,


The sample is added to warn aqua regia acid in a glass jar in water bath,


Brown fumes emerge as ore sample dissolves,


This is the end of aqua regia dissolution,


Here is photo of sample 4 aqua regia solution after it is cool,


If there is any silver in ore sample, it can be detected as purpule layer of silver chloride on top of the ore at the bottom if you had left the beaker outside in the Sun to cool.

This is a drop of the solution,


Addition of a drop of stannous chloride test solution to above yield no color change,


So it means no gold was in the sample 4. The rest of them turned out to be like this, except the sample 5 as it can be seen here,

A drop of sample 5 aqua regia solution,


Testing that with a drop of stannous chloride test solution,


Hope these help you out there prospecting, it is very cheap compared to other methods, and can tell if any rocks has gold or not. There is a colorimetric method to actually assay the quantity of gold in a sample using aqua regia assaying which I will post about it.

Next step would be a cyanide leach test.


Thanks and best regards
Kj

 

[Kjavanb1234]

I am going nuts with this super easy and quick assaying method. Here is the sample 6,


This is where sample 6 was taken from the wall on the right. This was inside a military base years ago and has been released to public land, so my guess is military exploited major amount of gold from it as it is evident. To give sense of dimensions its width ranges from 3-5 meters and length hoes for 1000 meters with height ranging from 50cm to 1.5 meters.


This time I collected 70 grams from pulverized powder of sample 6, and dissolved it in 250ml aqua regia,


This is a drop of solution above,


Addition of stannous chloride test solution to above changed color, indicating micro gold in solution,


Here is a better shot of that,


This is so cool and easy, I definitely encourage everyone who prospects do it.

I will post colorimetric procedure and photos soon

 

[SaltwaterServr]

Long time no post. I have been busy with other projects. Over the weekend I tried aqua regia assaying some of the rocks I have collected.

Here are photos of sample rocks I assayed,

Sample 1
View attachment 1621206

Sample 2
View attachment 1621207

Sample 3
View attachment 1621209

Sample 4
View attachment 1621210

Sample 5
View attachment 1621211

Assay procedure:
This is credit to Deano from Goldrefiningforum.com, first rocks are pulverized, sifted to fine powder, mixed up well, and a 20 gram sample is collected.

In a 600 ml beaker, 250ml of 4:1 aqua regia is prepared (that is 200ml hydrochloride acid mixed with 50ml nitric acid).

20 gram sample is added slowly to the aqua regia solution and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes. First you notice the brown fumes of nitric and as process closes to end the white fumes appear, let it simmer for another 5 minutes and cool it off to room temperature.

Now take a drop from aqua regia solution and add a drop of stannous chloride testing solution, if color of solution changed to a pale purple to purple, it indicates there was gold in your sample.

I went through all samples using this procedure, and only sample 5 turned to a pale purple indicating gold in it. The rest of samples were negative.

Here is procedure for sample 4 for your reference,

Sample 4 pulverized and sifted,
View attachment 1621222

The sample is added to warn aqua regia acid in a glass jar in water bath,
View attachment 1621223

Brown fumes emerge as ore sample dissolves,
View attachment 1621224

This is the end of aqua regia dissolution,
View attachment 1621225

Here is photo of sample 4 aqua regia solution after it is cool,
View attachment 1621226

If there is any silver in ore sample, it can be detected as purpule layer of silver chloride on top of the ore at the bottom if you had left the beaker outside in the Sun to cool.

This is a drop of the solution,
View attachment 1621227

Addition of a drop of stannous chloride test solution to above yield no color change,
View attachment 1621230

So it means no gold was in the sample 4. The rest of them turned out to be like this, except the sample 5 as it can be seen here,

A drop of sample 5 aqua regia solution,
View attachment 1621232

Testing that with a drop of stannous chloride test solution,
View attachment 1621233

Hope these help you out there prospecting, it is very cheap compared to other methods, and can tell if any rocks has gold or not. There is a colorimetric method to actually assay the quantity of gold in a sample using aqua regia assaying which I will post about it.

Next step would be a cyanide leach test.


Thanks and best regards
Kj

Deano is a bad ass when it comes to his specialty. IIRC, he's worked in several mines in NSW.

That said, I don't trust myself to get it right without someone confirming or denying. I was doing some test work on a solution that I tested with stannous chloride I made. Showed no gold. I know for a fact that there was gold in the solution; the sample gold I put in came out about a tenth gram lighter than when it went in!

So always get an assay, to be sure and back up your own tests.

 

[Eu_citzen]

I need to try that aqua regia assay method. So far I've mostly had other companies do the assays or used my own fire assays.
Need to get back to fixing the furnace soon.

 

[pczim]

Similar to the sampling method to check gold in cyanide solution I have found a color change at anything over .2g per cube of solution.

Awesome write up, well done

 

[Kjavanb1234]

Saltwatersrvr

Thanks for your comment. I am glad you know Deano as well. He has been a great contributor to a lot of members on forum.
As per Deano recommendation, for ore samples with lots of sulfides or iron, the iron compounds will interfere with smelting process, hence his AR assay method.
It happened to me before, sent a sample for fire assay and results were in ppb, while a cyanide leach yielded in ppm. So maybe xrf of the ore can determine the best assaying methods.

Pczym
There is a gentleman blog I can't recall the link but it is something like propector paradise, he talks about a method that according to color change from a known solution of gold one can estimate the ppm for the ore.

Best regards
KJ