Might want to clean your rocks

[bottlecap]

Hey guys when I was in Colorado last week I conducted a little experiment. I have always heard people talk about cleaning your rocks saying a lot of gold can be sticking to them but always wondered how much gold a guy would really be missing by just pitching them. Decided when I was down there it was a good time to conduct my experiment so for one full day I pitched all of my large rocks into a bucket of water and washed them off in there. At the end of the day surprisingly I had a good 1/3rd of a 5 gallon bucket full of dirt. I brought those cons back home with me and finally got it cleaned up last night. Here's what I found. I actually found my largest flake in this batch, you can see it in the pic but the pic didn't turn out very well.
This gold would have been missed if rocks wouldn't have been cleaned off.

 

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[johnedoe]

.... Good job.....

 

[HMiller]

Oh man now you've done it. You harvested to soon. Those small ones won't grow up to be big nuggets now. I'll bet their parents are upset.

Nice job. :thumbup:

 

[KevinInColorado]

Great illustration of a theory.

I'd love to know what % of your total for the day this was. Looks like it could be more than the 10% figure I've heard tossed around!

 

[HMiller]

I was being funny. Really meant nice job on recovery.

 

[ffmurray]

well I am convinced, I will defiantly clean all on my rocks looks like it probably made a pretty big difference. I also would like to know what % of your daily take that was

 

[DizzyDigger]

Hard to work with cell phone pics, but did my best to clean it up..

 

[bottlecap]

well I am convinced, I will defiantly clean all on my rocks looks like it probably made a pretty big difference. I also would like to know what % of your daily take that was

You know if I had to guess I would say maybe 20%. You also have to keep in mind this wasn't EVERY rock, anything big enough to run through the Bazooka ended up in the Bazooka cons for that day. I would say anything bigger than a baseball got cleaned in the rock bucket, anything smaller I hold under the water when I dump material into the Bazooka till it's clean then let it fly down the shoot. One other thing to consider is I was in a moist area but not IN the river and not totally dry so there was quite a bit of dirt clinging to these rocks. I bet if you combined all of the gold that came off the rocks I ran through the Bazooka and the gold from the rock bucket the amount would be pretty staggering.

 

[delnorter]

Bottlecap, a good thread. I totally agree with your assessment about loss or gain of gold sticking to rocks when sluicing as well as panning.

Besides sluicing, I've done a lot of test and "production" panning here in the northwest corner of California. To get a more accurate estimate of small gold in a given area I find additional "washing the rocks" is a must.

There is always a compromise between the amount of labor versus return in prospecting/mining. Obviously not all rocks need to be washed. Round river run rocks generally do not need to be washed, but those with cracks, crevices and or a coarse surface should get more attention. When screening dry upland material I'll either toss the larger rocks, with material sticking to them, into a pile for later washing or directly into a 5 gallon bucket of water for washing periodically right then. The recovery of otherwise lost gold is sometimes considerable.

Mike

 

[triple d]

People always blame the sluice for losing gold. But ive thougt a lot of the loss was gold sticking to rocks. After the cons are washed. They get washed more in the tailing pile. And if you test these and find gold you think its the sluice fault.But is it really the sluice fault.And Ive found even after running the cons thought a sluice.I have a bazooka and get more larger tailings.By drying the larger cons and classifing. I always find a little more gold. And those cons get washed real good in the trap of the bazooka. And i am sure if you classify you lose gold in the tailings that get dumped. Also my two cents.

 

[deserdog]

On the Little Crystal clain in southern CA, i decided to do the same thing. But I just took some water, buckets, a scrub brush and a pan and panning tub. I washed off a bunch of rocks from the big tailing of dry whseers, all the big rocks. When I had a 3 inch layer of dirt in the bucket, I panned it out. And I had as much gold as you would get in a full 5 ga. bucket of material from this claim. some nice flakes too!

 

[bottlecap]

I thought it was super interesting to see the amount of gold that came out of what appeared to be nothing. Like Delnorter said though you have to consider the time involved, for the time it takes to wash one large rock you may have another 2 shovels of material in the bucket, but as deserdog pointed out he had as much gold in a few inches of rock dirt as he usually does in a full 5 gallon pail. My opinion is wash your rocks as the trade off in gold leans more towards more gold from washing rocks than in however many shovels of dirt that costed you. We all know how just one little trowel of dirt from a nice crevice can produce as much gold as a 5 gallon bucket off of a gravel bar(maybe a little extreme) but you see my point, we also know gold somehow seems to sink quite a bit through dirt fairly quickly(I mean flood gold already being 6 inches down 6 months after the flood), rocks make a nice little nesting point for the gold and it can't sink any deeper. God dang it talking about all of this makes me want to take another trip, like I am seriously mad I am not on a gold adventure right now.

 

[bottlecap]

I was being funny. Really meant nice job on recovery.

It was funny! I gotcha. Trust me, Kevin knows I am a little bit of a smart ass!