Gold Ore

[southfork]

A little sample that was found with a metal detector. Crushed by hand then panned to wash away some of the dirt and clay? The photo is macro so real small particles, but the quartz shows and what looks like iron and free gold. I think we need a small smelter to retrieve the values trying to speed up the recovery what's your thoughts ?

 

[southfork]

Hey Southfork absolutely diggin the ore you're finding and your low budget inventive methods of getting the shiney from the gaunge. I run a chain mill too and have the same issue you have with the screen clogging up. If the ore is completely dry and I run a shopvac to the screen I can usually run without having to take the cover off and clean. BUT I don't have that horrible problem you got with gold balling up and clogging my screen! Ha! Did want to mention that in spite of the manufacturer's directions I have run a wet system through the mill. Welded up a hose holder at the input and a bucket holder tipped at about the right angle for the vibration of the machine to jiggle the ore in at a slow but steady rate. It worked all right, still clogged up but not near as often. The mesh tended to be a bit more coarse because the water seemed to push the ore through the screens faster than gravity and air. I couldn't find a picture of the wet setup but here's the dust deputy/shopvac setup. Thanks for postin those finds! Very encouraging.

I found that if I just let it run and toss a rock in now and then it doesn't clog. When the dust stops I feed it and it works perfect not made for production but for hobby mining just right . Feeding the mill slow let's it turn everything to powder I have a small pile of large sand to rerun this morning from feeding the mill too fast.

 

[RTR]

That was a small baggie full of ore samples that made the detectors scream you could see visible gold on all the pieces. The rest of the 30 pounds of ore was micro gold but produced a good pinch. Three guys worked a good part of the day breaking rocks everyone shared in the results. I was number 4 but I had a shady spot and a chair watching the chain mill and sluice.

Like the looks of that quarts/gold specimen ! Hope ya didn't crush it

 

[southfork]

Like the looks of that quarts/gold specimen ! Hope ya didn't crush it

Thanks' We don't crush specimens.

 

[RTR]

Thanks' We don't crush specimens.

Thats good its a beauty

 

[southfork]

Cleaning up a little slurry from crusher cleanout from yesterday and waiting for some shade. 92 degrees and climbing I have buckets of rock to crush latter.

 

[southfork]

Too hot to pulverize rock I gave myself a break I'm playing with the camera. Fresh out of the Whink 7 days maybe? 26.5 grams.

 

[southfork]

Wow. Outstanding! Interesting how it’s balling up!

Some of the gold is in little stringers too big to pass though the screen and gets pounded into little balls. We always find a pinch when we clean the little mill.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Southfork, I sure hope you don't pulverize those specimens in your previous photos. Those are beautiful, something a collector would purchase for way more than the gold value. I'd really love to get something like one of those, but unfortunately I'm what one person told me I live on the borderline of being considered poor by today's standards. At least I'm not homeless.

Those photos almost want to make me explore the open pit hard rock quarries on our claim. I wonder if there might still be fine gold in the sides of them just buried deeper in the sides. There's sure a lot of white quartz in them.

 

[southfork]

Southfork, I sure hope you don't pulverize those specimens in your previous photos. Those are beautiful, something a collector would purchase for way more than the gold value. I'd really love to get something like one of those, but unfortunately I'm what one person told me I live on the borderline of being considered poor by today's standards. At least I'm not homeless.

Those photos almost want to make me explore the open pit hard rock quarries on our claim. I wonder if there might still be fine gold in the sides of them just buried deeper in the sides. There's sure a lot of white quartz in them.

I'm still working on specimens I love to see what's hiding inside of gold ore. The older mines still have plenty of gold in those tailing piles, but it takes special equipment and hard work to extract the gold. I was out crushing sluicing and blue bowling a good part of a day for a couple of grams. But I love mining under a shady oak we were out early with a single jack smashing big rocks into little pieces for the rock crusher. The specimens I've been posting are all from waste rock piles found with a metal detector.

 

[Ohiogoldfever]

I love this thread. Your hard work is sure paying off. Thanks for letting us see what you guys have been up to.

 

[southfork]

I put a Dream Mat micro in the blue bowl and ran the fines from the catch bucket. I'm happy with the performance I was losing micro gold, and this really speeds up the cleanup you can run faster and still save the flour.

 

[southfork]

Trying to smelt some dirty gold crushed and blue Bowled with the dream mat. Still having problems with the heavy black sand concentrates. I smelted the concentrates out of the blue bowl with a little Borax in a cupel. Needs to be run again with a longer smelt time. 11 grams of precious metal

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Too hot to pulverize rock I gave myself a break I'm playing with the camera. Fresh out of the Whink 7 days maybe? 26.5 grams.

That is a superb specimen that will bring big money. I’d be very conservative with your asking price. You don’t find ones like that often.

 

[southfork]

Trying to smelt some dirty gold crushed and blue Bowled with the dream mat. Still having problems with the heavy black sand concentrates. I smelted the concentrates out of the blue bowl with a little Borax in a cupel. Needs to be run again with a longer smelt time. 11 grams of precious metal

I smelted the button again loss a half of a gram but nice and bright now.

 

[southfork]

I had this button soaking in muriatic acid to clean some pig iron off. The iron must have been all the way though it left a nice hole ready to hang. I'm not using collector metal, so the iron just floats on top when it cools, I have a layer of iron to remove. Even when I smelt/melt again it's still there but the muriatic removes it overnight. 11 grams and nice and shiny.

 

[russau]

Real nice button ! Happy 4th to you and to all !

 

[southfork]

I hope everyone had a good 4th. I'm trying to smelt / melt some slaggy dirty ore it takes about 3 different cupels and flux to get a black metal button like this. I'm not sure what the grey/black layer is for sure? but the muriatic acid removes it before the final melt. Hopefully we will have a nice gold button in a few hours. We still don't have a steel cone mold, so I have to sacrifice a bunch of cupels lol.

 

[southfork]

Today's button was putting on fireworks display well at least a weak sparkler. One more melt to finish this button it went from a mass of slag all of a sudden to a bright button. 17 grams of gold the other half of this slaggy mass is sitting in the furnace in another cupel in 4 or five pieces. I spilt the concentrates into two samples there was little balls of bright metal floating in the slag when it gets hot enough it drops into a gold button. I reached in with the tongs to lift out to add more flux and the cupel just crumbled. Waiting for it to cool and add the rest of the concentrates maybe a couple more grams of gold all from a five-gallon bucket of rocks.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Today's button was putting on fireworks display well at least a weak sparkler. One more melt to finish this button it went from a mass of slag all of a sudden to a bright button. 17 grams of gold the other half of this slaggy mass is sitting in the furnace in another cupel in 4 or five pieces. I spilt the concentrates into two samples there was little balls of bright metal floating in the slag when it gets hot enough it drops into a gold button. I reached in with the tongs to lift out to add more flux and the cupel just crumbled. Waiting for it to cool and add the rest of the concentrates maybe a couple more grams of gold all from a five-gallon bucket of rocks.

I’d grab an old shear top, aqua colored, pontil marked, wide mouth pickle/sauce jar and start filling it up with those buttons.

 

[southfork]

Today's button was putting on fireworks display well at least a weak sparkler. One more melt to finish this button it went from a mass of slag all of a sudden to a bright button. 17 grams of gold the other half of this slaggy mass is sitting in the furnace in another cupel in 4 or five pieces. I spilt the concentrates into two samples there was little balls of bright metal floating in the slag when it gets hot enough it drops into a gold button. I reached in with the tongs to lift out to add more flux and the cupel just crumbled. Waiting for it to cool and add the rest of the concentrates maybe a couple more grams of gold all from a five-gallon bucket of rocks.

The other button weighed 13 grams fairly clean but not as bright needs a little cleanup. And I still have a blob of slag with gold to smelt could be a couple of grams all from the same bucket of rocks. The cupels have gold showing in the slag at the bottom I will
smash and regrind and see what I can recover. I used about twenty cupels over the last couple of weeks some crack and fall apart others I can get a couple of smelts before they give up the ghost.