Have you ever seen a conglomerate like this?

[Flup]

Sup guys, Aruba prospector here.
So over here we have no running streams, no rivers.
But lots of quartz veins all over the eastern part of the island.
Normally i stay around the old goldmines.
The ground here is too tough to work with, (not to mention the hot weather conditions) so they abandoned those mines somewhere in the beginning of the 1900's. So there us still alot of gold there, if you can get to it.
So today i found a partly-exposed vein in another part of the island, far away from the goldmine ruins.
And i found this conglomerate there.
Seems like some black-ish quartz crystals inbedded in very hard sand.
So i took the chisel and broke some pieces off and found some iron in there, i guess.. Because its so heavily stained.
Now of course the big question is: anyone know if there is possibly some gold in this stuff?
Should i crush it up? Or is it useless because theres noting in there?
Any tips on desert quartz vein gold mining would also be great.

 

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[Laz7777]

it's not a placer formation, but I've seen similar conglomerates we call peanut brittle up where I mine.
there is only one way to find out what the values are: crush and do a gravity seperation...if there's free-milling gold that is.
being a lode formation, it might need to be leeched to get any values out of it.

this is all top-of-my-head, I know roughly zilch about lode deposits.

 

[arizau]

Looks like some kind of cemented sedimentary deposit. Rounded stones in the sample would probably confirm that. From what I have read the gold in Aruba is associated with quartz and there looks to be quartz in the conglomerate......I might not fine grind a whole sample but I would at least break it down to fines and coarse rocks then pan the fines. You can probably eyeball the quartz pieces for visible gold and if seen then crush and pan them.

Good luck.

 

[Golden_Crab]

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Sup guys, Aruba prospector here.
So over here we have no running streams, no rivers.
But lots of quartz veins all over the eastern part of the island.
Normally i stay around the old goldmines.
The ground here is too tough to work with, (not to mention the hot weather conditions) so they abandoned those mines somewhere in the beginning of the 1900's. So there us still alot of gold there, if you can get to it.
So today i found a partly-exposed vein in another part of the island, far away from the goldmine ruins.
And i found this conglomerate there.
Seems like some black-ish quartz crystals inbedded in very hard sand.
So i took the chisel and broke some pieces off and found some iron in there, i guess.. Because its so heavily stained.
Now of course the big question is: anyone know if there is possibly some gold in this stuff?
Should i crush it up? Or is it useless because theres noting in there?
Any tips on desert quartz vein gold mining would also be great.

Not an expert but resembles welded tuff material formed from pyroclastic ash flows which readily decomposes with acidic rains.

 

[Flup]

Thanks for the response.
Tomorrow i'm finally off, and then i'm going to crush it up, see whats in it. I will keep you updated.
Aruba got pushed up by volcanic activity millions of years ago.
There is a shearzone running across the island.
The most gold here has been found in quartz. And people found nuggets.
The dry desert outwashes contain a little gold. You'll have to dig at least 3 feet deep and then have to pan buckets and buckets for some specks of gold.
Then the outwashes that have standing water in them actually contain a decent amount of gold. But you'll have to go through some really thick clay.
Its a pain in the ass and is time-consuming.
Also found loads of pyrite that i'm saving up to cook some day.
So what i do is i try to find new or more exposed quartz veins after the rain season and hope the oldtimers didnt dig that far yet.
I did find alot of flourgold , but its still in black sand.. Saving that up too to give it the mercury treatment when i collected enough.
Thanks again, and i'll keep you updated.

 

[Laz7777]

gold is a pain in the ass (and back, knees, hands)...time consuming? what better way is there to consume time? I could think of a couple things......

hope you have a retort for the amalgam you're going to create. you can roast it and vaporize the merc, make sure to leave the area if you do it that way.

there are desert areas on Aruba...have you contemplated drywashing? there are plans available online, build your own....it's a lot easier panning concentrates than gravels.

 

[Laz7777]

gold is a pain in the ass (and back, knees, hands)...time consuming? what better way is there to consume time? I could think of a couple things......

hope you have a retort for the amalgam you're going to create. you can roast it and vaporize the merc, make sure to leave the area if you do it that way.

there are desert areas on Aruba...have you contemplated drywashing? there are plans available online, build your own....it's a lot easier panning concentrates than gravels.

 

[Flup]

Yeah i meant getting gold out of that clay is a pain in the ass lol.
Imagine standing knee-deep in rotting water, shoveling clay in 104 degrees.
Then you can either try to pan it at home with some toothpaste and hydrogen peroxide, but even then you have to work it with your hands for a while before you can really start the panning.
And then you can also let it dry in the sun. But that takes forever, even here.

Some guys here told me how to roast it with a potato lol.

Drywashing is very interesting. I'm looking it up on youtube as we speak. Thanks for the tip. Sure seems a hell of a lot better than carrying all those buckets through the desert lol.

 

[Lanny in AB]

I remember visiting the site of the old gold mine on the island. They sure did a lot of work there, but I never did find out what the total production was.

Regardless, it was a total surprise as I was there Scuba diving and had no idea the island was gold bearing.

I hope you find what you're looking for, and if you can get access to where they worked any heavy concentrations of gold in quartz, you may get lucky with a detector as it will see inside the quartz to find what was missed in any hand-sorted ore.

All the best,

Lanny