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]

Same old stuff I clean, and process concentrates for a few hours. I regrind and pan with mercury to capture the micro gold thats still in the slimes. Tried melting a small crucible of concentrates crucible cracked flowed like lava out of a volcano. Waiting for it all to cool to regrind again. I should have stayed with panning with mercury at least I could see some gold sticking to the mercury.

 

[russau]

Watching that crack would make me cry!

 

[southfork]

Watching that crack would make me cry!

It took 2 1/2 hours to get a nice fluid melt then the crucible failed. But it was a used crucible with a number of melts all material is captured so just a regrind and new melt.

 

[KYgotGOLD]

Keep it up!

 

[southfork]

Playing with a small piece of Quartz that my son said gave off a weak tone Dolly pot and panned. We have Gold a little pinch and some micro dust.

 

[southfork]

Working on our property we had a few hours left on rental equipment so a little time for mining. My son was clearing an old road making it more accessible and a fire break across some tailing piles. A new spot to metal detect and do some sluicing when we get some water. A gram or so

 

[southfork]

The new trail across the tailing piles this makes it a lot easier for me to get close with the quad. We are working in the bottom of the ravine dry this time of the year but too much moisture for Dry washing. But I hauled a tote up that we dug from the bench under one of the piles we hope is a pay pile that was stocked during the gold rush waiting on the rainy season. We will run this through a recirculating high banker to see if there's any color. Happy Mining

 

[Tesorodeoro]

The new trail across the tailing piles this makes it a lot easier for me to get close with the quad. We are working in the bottom of the ravine dry this time of the year but too much moisture for Dry washing. But I hauled a tote up that we dug from the bench under one of the piles we hope is a pay pile that was stocked during the gold rush waiting on the rainy season. We will run this through a recirculating high banker to see if there's any color. Happy Mining

Something tells me your boy didn’t run that fire break up there for nothing. Good move.

There is a pile of treasure that was stockpiled during the hot season and it will be incredible.

Highly recommend a piss pump at the min. Everywhere you take anything gas/diesel powered.

Fill it with antifreeze as they suggest in the fall, if not to have fire protection in the winter, it keeps the insides of the pump from rusting and seals shrinking. I’ve put out enough random fires around the home base to speak from knowledge. You can put down a lot of fire edge with 5 gal water.

 

[southfork]

Something tells me your boy didn’t run that fire break up there for nothing. Good move.

There is a pile of treasure that was stockpiled during the hot season and it will be incredible.

Highly recommend a piss pump at the min. Everywhere you take anything gas/diesel powered.
View attachment 2213910
Fill it with antifreeze as they suggest in the fall, if not to have fire protection in the winter, it keeps the insides of the pump from rusting and seals shrinking. I’ve put out enough random fires around the home base to speak from knowledge. You can put down a lot of fire edge with 5 gal water.

I've had one of those on my back a few times in my youth. Our mechanical excavations are done until cooler weather we had an excavator and a Bobcat moving dirt. Too steep if a fire started.

 

[southfork]

Our first tote load was sad a few small specks and some mercury balls bird shot size. Thats prospecting if it was easy everyone would be out there. But my recirculating high banker worked great took about 2 1/2 hours to run a tote. Cleanup another hour looked like 50 cents an hour lol headed down for another load.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Our first tote load was sad a few small specks and some mercury balls bird shot size. Thats prospecting if it was easy everyone would be out there. But my recirculating high banker worked great took about 2 1/2 hours to run a tote. Cleanup another hour looked like 50 cents an hour lol headed down for another load.

You can run more material than people would think in a Rubbermaid storage container. I split mine in 1/3 with a swamp cooler mat sandwiched between hog wire. That way any grass or floating stuff wasn’t sucked up. I also used a catch basket with small drain holes to keep the sand and gravel out of the water.

I ran 4-5 5 gallon buckets through it one afternoon. My sluice was a split piece of black corrugated drain pipe nailed to a board. Extremely high recovery rate for small gold to pickers as long as there was not lots of black sands. Larger gold would tend to roll through with the rocks. I did some testing with a 1/4 oz. of gold and was pleased.

Once the water got bad or low, I’d tap into the drum of water in my truck bed.

Used it a couple times during the summer then tossed it into the dump.

 

[southfork]

This homemade recirculating 12-volt bilge pump high banker works great easy setup. Light weight and portable loads into the quad trailer. I place a short bucket under the end of the sluice to catch the tailings sand gravel and mud. When the leaves and grass twigs get heavy, I just fill to overflowing to float off gives me more hours of run time before mucking. I can place the pump into the creek to refill when we have water or haul water down.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

This homemade recirculating 12-volt bilge pump high banker works great easy setup. Light weight and portable loads into the quad trailer. I place a short bucket under the end of the sluice to catch the tailings sand gravel and mud. When the leaves and grass twigs get heavy, I just fill to overflowing to float off gives me more hours of run time before mucking. I can place the pump into the creek to refill when we have water or haul water down.

Ok, that looks more like a water trough. Looks like some hard rock tailings. It will be blistering hot soon, but if your set up, you could get up early and off the hill before most folks have breakfast. Amazing how gold motivates entrepreneurs.

 

[southfork]

Ok, that looks more like a water trough. Looks like some hard rock tailings. It will be blistering hot soon, but if your set up, you could get up early and off the hill before most folks have breakfast. Amazing how gold motivates entrepreneurs.

Broken slate most of the creek bottom bedrock is slate lots of quartz stringers crisscrossing

 

[Tesorodeoro]

If that’s the case, I they may have tossed overburden to the side and focused on cleaning bedrock if it was shallow enough. Sounds like a great trap. I worked a section of creek that had 2-3/4’ of barren gravel. The last 4” was dark black slime covered in flat rock laying face down on bedrock. Every low spot in the bedrock was sprinkled with pickers and nuggets (all stained black). I tested a few buckets of the overburden and detected it for awhile, but after I figured out what the pay dirt looked like, I tossed that overburden as fast as I could pry it loose. Shoveled it back in the trench behind me and reclaimed it each day so nobody was the wiser.

 

[Red_desert]

This homemade recirculating 12-volt bilge pump high banker works great easy setup. Light weight and portable loads into the quad trailer. I place a short bucket under the end of the sluice to catch the tailings sand gravel and mud. When the leaves and grass twigs get heavy, I just fill to overflowing to float off gives me more hours of run time before mucking. I can place the pump into the creek to refill when we have water or haul water down.

I've read a couple high banker articles once in a prospecting magazine. There were people who would set it up on a bank above a stream with running water. Then take rocks which dried with clay/silt stuck to surface of rocks. Scrubbing rocks clean using wire brushes then run material through a high banker. I guess the idea is knowing where and how to collect rocks coated with clay containing gold.