Gold Ore

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting

Attachments

  • P4210546.JPG
    P4210546.JPG
    727.2 KB · Views: 645
Upvote 23
OP
OP
southfork

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
If you run the Equinox 800 in Park 2, recovery speed 3-4, sensitivity 21-22, and iron bias second setting at 9, you can detect incredibly small gold. Gold 1 and 2 are extremely noisy- almost like a Whites GMT and it's easy to miss small gold/specimens. With Park 2 you can get a clear signal response and ignore iron giving you way better odds in a trashy mine dump area. This is how Seth has been finding an incredibly large amount of gold in trashy mine dumps and placer workings. This photo shows how small some of the gold is from his recent trip to Nevada.
 

Attachments

  • PA241353.JPG
    PA241353.JPG
    510.4 KB · Views: 37
Last edited:
OP
OP
southfork

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
If you run the Equinox 800 in Park 2, recovery speed 3-4, sensitivity 21-22, and iron bias second setting at 9, you can detect incredibly small gold. Gold 1 and 2 are extremely noisy- almost like a Whites GMT and it's easy to miss small gold/specimens. With Park 2 you can get a clear signal response and ignore iron giving you way better odds in a trashy mine dump area. This is how Seth has been finding an incredibly large amount of gold in trashy mine dumps and placer workings. This photo shows how small some of the gold is from his recent trip to Nevada.
Seth went back to his original mine dump yesterday afternoon and ran the Equinox 800 at the settings shown above. And recovered 15 or more little bits with gold he's crushing it with a mortar and pestle right now loaded with gold. This ore will need to be smelted but loaded with free gold. Metal detector mortar and pestle gold pan bingo we have gold.
 

Attachments

  • PA311372.JPG
    PA311372.JPG
    841.1 KB · Views: 35
  • PA311371.JPG
    PA311371.JPG
    806.2 KB · Views: 36
  • PA311374.JPG
    PA311374.JPG
    447.9 KB · Views: 37
  • PA311367.JPG
    PA311367.JPG
    809.8 KB · Views: 34
OP
OP
southfork

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
WoW! Amazing the prior prospectors missed so much. I think our claim had eagled eye prospectors, as not much got left behind.
The Oldtimers didn't have metal detectors and this stuff just looks like dirty rusty rocks. You would need a loupe or small microscope to see the free gold. When you pan the concentrate's, its red mud starting to think the whole pile has micro gold. We have it in the furnace and a nice button starting to form.
 

Tesorodeoro

Bronze Member
Jan 21, 2018
1,216
1,903
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
The Oldtimers didn't have metal detectors and this stuff just looks like dirty rusty rocks. You would need a loupe or small microscope to see the free gold. When you pan the concentrate's, its red mud starting to think the whole pile has micro gold. We have it in the furnace and a nice button starting to form.
The consistency of your finds kind of makes me think that the entire dump is commercially economical to haul off and process despite how much material doesn’t sound off with the detector.
 

Assembler

Silver Member
May 10, 2017
3,072
1,155
Detector(s) used
Whites, Fisher, Garrett, and Falcon.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
The consistency of your finds kind of makes me think that the entire dump is commercially economical to haul off and process despite how much material doesn’t sound off with the detector.
The gold is not in oll of the rock most likely. A lot was dumped for the easy to see ore in the past.
 

OP
OP
southfork

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
The consistency of your finds kind of makes me think that the entire dump is commercially economical to haul off and process despite how much material doesn’t sound off with the detector.
It's not commercially viable or possible to mine it's a hard hike maybe with a donkey. Sometimes it takes a bucket of rocks for a few grams of gold the next trip a baggie full will produce multiple grams of gold. Yesterday's ore samples were really dirty I smelted twice for 6 plus grams and still needs a cleanup, but it was just a pill bottles worth of ore. The rains are back we have a big pile of pay to sluice as soon as the creek starts flowing placer mining is so much easier. No dust no toxic fumes and cleaner gold and I can ride the quads right down to the piles lol.
 

OP
OP
southfork

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Turned out to be a great day I added the fines and remelted the button most of the impurities are gone. Nice 7 1/2-gram button. I still have a small button with lead as a collector metal to smelt another gram of gold possibly. My son is back out there today with a new plan of attack on the pile good rain yesterday maybe better conductivity.
 

Attachments

  • PB011378.JPG
    PB011378.JPG
    337.1 KB · Views: 19
OP
OP
southfork

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Yesterday's finds real rich ore and a photo after the crush tonight. I'll take a better picture in natural light in the morning this was hand crushed mortar and pestle. If we run this rich stuff through the mill, it balls the gold up and wraps it around the waste rock and takes longer to smelt. All these bits and pieces sure add up Happy Mining
 

Attachments

  • PB041393.JPG
    PB041393.JPG
    379.8 KB · Views: 26
  • PB041394.JPG
    PB041394.JPG
    562 KB · Views: 25
OP
OP
southfork

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
A little piece of free gold from yesterday's crush maybe a little platinum or silver mixed in. The rest needs a better crushing this morning to free up the gold.
 

Attachments

  • PB041395.JPG
    PB041395.JPG
    289.7 KB · Views: 25
  • PB041396.JPG
    PB041396.JPG
    349.1 KB · Views: 24

Clay Diggins

Silver Member
Nov 14, 2010
4,862
14,180
The Great Southwest
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
A little piece of free gold from yesterday's crush maybe a little platinum or silver mixed in. The rest needs a better crushing this morning to free up the gold.
I suspect your "platinum or silver" is more likely to be arsenopyrite. Arsenopyrite actually provides the chemistry to concentrate the gold into veins. Arsenopyrite, in large part, created the motherlode.

I don't know the location of the deposit you are working but here is a paper that will help explain why this silvery metallic compound is so commonly associated with gold in the motherlode and elsewhere.


Arsenic in your region:


Heavy Pans
 

OP
OP
southfork

southfork

Bronze Member
Jun 15, 2014
2,299
7,478
California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
I suspect your "platinum or silver" is more likely to be arsenopyrite. Arsenopyrite actually provides the chemistry to concentrate the gold into veins. Arsenopyrite, in large part, created the motherlode.

I don't know the location of the deposit you are working but here is a paper that will help explain why this silvery metallic compound is so commonly associated with gold in the motherlode and elsewhere.


Arsenic in your region:


Heavy Pans
Thanks for the information there's a lot of pyrites in most of what's being found. Also, after smelting sometimes we find a little spot of bright silver metal on the buttons. The whole area is highly mineralized so no telling I'll leave the assaying to the experts. My son just called he found a fist sized chuck of ore that's making the detector scream another great day in the making. Platinum was found all over California most was recovered as a byproduct of placer mining some large nuggets of platinum were found in Trinity County.
 

Last edited:

Top Member Reactions

Users who are viewing this thread

Top