Asmbandits
Bronze Member
- #1
Thread Owner
I know of a mine here in Northern CA that ive been to a few times, mostly metal detecting but the last time I brought a pan as there is a small creek right below the mine and I managed to produce color from it, very very fine color. There are audits all over the property and what I believe to be ore piles as there very uniform in color and different stacks of rocks near the audits. Most of the audits have been purposely collapsed but there is one that is different from the rest as the majority of the audits are in a red soil area of the property and this audit is into the a slab of a dark rock with quartz veins. Ive been back to the face of this and took a few samples and did find color from a pan of crushed rock from the area they last worked.
Ive crushed samples of everything and Ive found color in all of it, maybe a few specks in a softball size of the red/purple ore, about the same in the honeycomb decade looking stuff, and maybe about a few specks to a whole pan of the dark stuff. A buddy of mine brought home a nice size chunk of the honeycomb stuff, crushed and panned it and I was surprised when he showed me a few nice shards of fresh gold. It looked very different from the placer gold im use to seeing since it had not traveled and worn but its for sure gold. This honeycomb stuff is more scattered through out the property and harder to find. Some of the darker stuff has a mix of silvery gray rock and quartz and what looks like the inside of a geode.
From what Ive found historically the mine was a decent gold and mercury operation back in the 1920's, they do mention that they were chasing gold in decade slate, maybe this is the darker rock? Other than that this is all I can find on the mine. Im wondering if the red/purple rocks are most likely a cinnabar rich ore put aside for processing for mercury, or maybe it was a lower/higher gold grade ore? This seems to be the majority of the stockpiled rock.
I guess im curious to know from a hard rock miners perspective, does it seem feasible to spend more time on, possibly build a ball mill or impact flail and gather up some of the better looking stuff and see what it my hold? The nice part is that there is already a good stockpile of material to run, but im kind of cautious and unsure about the possibility of working with cinnabar rich material and what the health risks may be depending on how you process it. My idea would be to get it down to run through a miller table type setup and see what free mill values were, then go from there. Not very familiar with tellurides or sulfides and am aware or the processes involving hg and leaching but I dont even know enough to get involved with that at this stage, mostly would like to see if I could pull enough free mill value to make it worth working. If it be that the only way to pull workable values from this stuff is HG/leaching then id be in over my head at that point more than likely.
Ive crushed samples of everything and Ive found color in all of it, maybe a few specks in a softball size of the red/purple ore, about the same in the honeycomb decade looking stuff, and maybe about a few specks to a whole pan of the dark stuff. A buddy of mine brought home a nice size chunk of the honeycomb stuff, crushed and panned it and I was surprised when he showed me a few nice shards of fresh gold. It looked very different from the placer gold im use to seeing since it had not traveled and worn but its for sure gold. This honeycomb stuff is more scattered through out the property and harder to find. Some of the darker stuff has a mix of silvery gray rock and quartz and what looks like the inside of a geode.
From what Ive found historically the mine was a decent gold and mercury operation back in the 1920's, they do mention that they were chasing gold in decade slate, maybe this is the darker rock? Other than that this is all I can find on the mine. Im wondering if the red/purple rocks are most likely a cinnabar rich ore put aside for processing for mercury, or maybe it was a lower/higher gold grade ore? This seems to be the majority of the stockpiled rock.
I guess im curious to know from a hard rock miners perspective, does it seem feasible to spend more time on, possibly build a ball mill or impact flail and gather up some of the better looking stuff and see what it my hold? The nice part is that there is already a good stockpile of material to run, but im kind of cautious and unsure about the possibility of working with cinnabar rich material and what the health risks may be depending on how you process it. My idea would be to get it down to run through a miller table type setup and see what free mill values were, then go from there. Not very familiar with tellurides or sulfides and am aware or the processes involving hg and leaching but I dont even know enough to get involved with that at this stage, mostly would like to see if I could pull enough free mill value to make it worth working. If it be that the only way to pull workable values from this stuff is HG/leaching then id be in over my head at that point more than likely.
