Placer Claim Mined Out?

[desertgolddigger]

I belong to a local club that owns a claim. This club has had this claim for many years, and acquired it after the old timers had mined it previously, and others after they commercial outfits closed up.
I walked quite a bit of the 160 acre claim, and noted that just about every wash had been worked. Most of the surface nuggets has also been detected by those with gold detectors. In other words, this place has been picked over and over and over.
But I m a stubborn type of person, and I figured, just watching how people ram their puffer and blower drywashers, that some gold was just being blown through them. maybe not much, but some small stuff that never got a chance to settle behind the riffles.
I know many of you would never go to the effort of digging for three to four hours through the tailings in these washes. Again, I'm a bit stubborn, and anyway, I just wanted to have some fun locally, instead of driving 300 miles roundtrip to something that gives a little more for less effort.
I've spent the last three weeks, digging a few times a week along about 30 yards of wash, and have recovered just about a gram of gold. That might not seem like much, but I have only dug up 5 grams, not counting this one gram in almost 20 years out here drywashing in the desert of southern California.
As you would know, things always seem to go wrong. My gas powered blower motor decided it was time for the repair shop, and haven't heard from the shop in two weeks. So I purchased a WORX WG521 corded electric leaf blower to use with my Royal Large drywasher. I'm using a portable generator to provide the power. And it actually is working better than with my old gas powered blower. I have to run the blower on the lowest speed, or I just blow everything through the riffles. Results are very good, as I am getting gold specks so small that I will have to use the Blue bowl in order to recover them.
I'm not only getting a little gold, I'm having some fun, and I am getting a good workout. I've lost 10 pounds since I started. So things are going well.
I'm still digging test holes around the old time hard rock mines in the hope I will find where the gold has drifted downhill below these mines. So far just a couple specks here and there. I figure I just have to move laterally one way or the other before I get something better Of course, I' don't really know if the old timers stripped the hillsides. Even if they have, they apparently aren't as thorough as I am. I hope that I may be lucky and find a larger piece of gold that the old timers, previous placer miners, and detectorists have missed.
Hope everyone is having as much fun as I have been having.

 

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[desertgolddigger]

Today I crushed a bucket of the pea gravel from the waste pile to see what I could find. But I only panned 10 cups of the material mesh 100 and smaller.

Sorry for the bad image, but this is the result of those 10 cups.

 

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[N-Lionberger]

Yup get a cast iron mortar and pestle or dolly pot. If you are or know someone handy with a welder they are pretty simple to make from some scrap metal. I have a small one in my truck and a couple big ones at home. I carry a square of canvas to catch the bits that fly out. A restaurant type bus tray works well as a compact panning tub. I use a classifier to screen the crush every few womps of the pestle as the fines tend to cushion the larger pieces from the stamp action. A good magnifying glass is needed to inspect your panning concentrates when dealing with such small samples. A hammer is handy for breaking larger samples to fit in the pot. You will get your answer on the spot out in the field. I might have a spare.
I’m not sure about all that wind tunnel blowing dirt around on tarps talk especially with the bit about using a magnetic shop sweeper, guy’s describing stuff that I have never seen implemented by anyone in the field, if it was such a great process you would see people doing it. I would take any information from such sources with a grain of salt.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Yup get a cast iron mortar and pestle or dolly pot. If you are or know someone handy with a welder they are pretty simple to make from some scrap metal. I have a small one in my truck and a couple big ones at home. I carry a square of canvas to catch the bits that fly out. A restaurant type bus tray works well as a compact panning tub. I use a classifier to screen the crush every few womps of the pestle as the fines tend to cushion the larger pieces from the stamp action. A good magnifying glass is needed to inspect your panning concentrates when dealing with such small samples. A hammer is handy for breaking larger samples to fit in the pot. You will get your answer on the spot out in the field. I might have a spare.
I’m not sure about all that wind tunnel blowing dirt around on tarps talk especially with the bit about using a magnetic shop sweeper, guy’s describing stuff that I have never seen implemented by anyone in the field, if it was such a great process you would see people doing it. I would take any information from such sources with a grain of salt.

I've got everything I need to sample rocks: prospector's hammer, sledge hammer, manual rock crusher, magnifying loupe, pan and basin and water. Oh yes, and a good magnet. I have it all in a tote, and can just load it into the truck when I decide to look around

 

[JohnWhite]

I wish I could return to some of my old stomping grounds…I used to have so much fun prospecting…Maybe one of these days I’ll overcome my paranoia and get back into the swing of things…Only time will tell…

Ed T🤪

 

[JohnWhite]

https://listado.mercadolibre.com.mx/acodo-nitrico?skipInApp=true The next time I head down South I am going to pick up some of this…🙂…I recommend it to be used with caution..,

Ed T

 

[DizzyDigger]

https://listado.mercadolibre.com.mx/acodo-nitrico?skipInApp=true The next time I head down South I am going to pick up some of this…🙂…I recommend it to be used with caution..,

Interesting site .....seems they sell an assortment of acid and protein supplements.

Desertgolddigger: Key word is "have fun" (OK, key words).

Next time you take a pic like the pan, above, hold the camera/phone a bit further away. An image can always be cropped, and you'll be able
to get it in focus.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Just did some more research on gold size. Seem someone with good eyes can see 25 micron gold particles, which is somewhere around 500 mesh.

Considering that fact, there's no point in my classifying anything other than 100 mesh. A lot of my gold is around the 400 mesh size, so I'm going to try canceling the two classifiers I ordered yesterday.

 

[JohnWhite]

Interesting site .....seems they sell an assortment of acid and protein supplements. View attachment 2079006

Desertgolddigger: Key word is "have fun" (OK, key words). View attachment 2079007

Next time you take a pic like the pan, above, hold the camera/phone a bit further away. An image can always be cropped, and you'll be able
to get it in focus.

I am mainly concerned with the 55% nitric acid…You can pick up muriatic acid just about anywhere…With these two acids you can make a poor man’s aqua regia…You just need to use caution when using it…

Ed T

 

[desertgolddigger]

Strong good light is needed. If it is in a seam (at times the size of hair strand) one can walk along and see it.

Cancellation was rejected.

Yes, good light is needed. An individual gold particle near 400 mesh isn't visible to me, even with a 10X loupe, but when there's hundreds (thousands?) of them in a line, I can see them without aid.

Anyway, It looks like I might as well go back to sluicing the material, even though it creates a terrible mess. It's easier sluicing than having to pan a five gallon bucket of this fluff from the chain mill.

I'll set the sluice up adjacent to my wastewater sump, so all I have to do is urn on the pump to pump out the water when finished

 

[desertgolddigger]

QUESTION: My mercury/gold amalgamation is getting cranky. It's calving small solid bits, even though it's still picking up this ultra fine gold. Should I continue using this fat ball, which still picks up gold, or start a new one?

 

[N-Lionberger]

Yeah recirculating sluices can be a messy ordeal. When your mercury ball gets crumbly like that you can use a syringe with a cotton ball as an amalgam press. Pull the plunger from the syringe and insert a wet cotton ball, then the amalgam and then the plunger give it a good squeeze to press the excess mercury out. The old skool method was to squeeze it out in a piece of deer skin. There’s an interesting method for using mercury where you coat a polished copper gold pan with mercury and pan your crush in it, the gold will amalgamate to the surface of the gold pan which is scraped off and pressed when done panning.

 

[Reed Lukens]

You need to charge the mercury in order to get it to stick to a copper pan or plate. Once the ball starts clumping and falling apart, suck the excess off with the syringe or sucker tweezers and start out with a new clean mercury ball. Put your amalgam ball into a jar and keep it covered in water until you are ready to retort. I store mine in this old 3oz vial filled with water and capped closed -

 

[desertgolddigger]

You need to charge the mercury in order to get it to stick to a copper pan or plate. Once the ball starts clumping and falling apart, suck the excess off with the syringe or sucker tweezers and start out with a new clean mercury ball. Put your amalgam ball into a jar and keep it covered in water until you are ready to retort. I store mine in this old 3oz vial filled with water and capped closed -

Reed, I'm glad you said to keep the mercury ball covered in water. Someone else told me not to, as the mercury gets ruined by water contaminants.

I cut the ball in half, and things are working again.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Sluiced this morning, Everything went fine except for some balls of muck that kept refusing to fall apart.

The material was from the same bucket I posted a picture of my first gold results from. Seems the first 10 cups were fairly rich. The last of the half bucket ended up producing slightly more than my first panning test.

I've still got to run the stuff captured by the magnetic riffles. Seems the ultra fine gold likes to get trapped in those riffles; at least from experience from my first sluice run I did about a week ago. Will let you know how that goes.

After panning things down to the point where I could see the gold in the pan, I looked at it with a 10X loupe. I then looked with a 20X loupe, and found gold particles that I couldn't see with the 10X.

So my sluice is catching the super fine stuff.

Also, I reran the material that went through the sluice, and picked up mostly that super fine gold. I get the feeling that those piles if sluice tailings still have that super fine stuff. Won't bother with it now, but maybe when I run out of this gold ore, and haven't found another source, I might try running that slag pile again.

One other thing. When I ran the second 1/4 bucket, I poured a gallon of water in it, let it set to get completely wet, then stirred vigorously with a stick. The results were that 90 percent of that material was held in suspension. I put cup sized ladles of this slop through the sluice, and it ran very easily. I kept stirring that bucket to keep things in suspension until a point where I just poured the rest through the sluice. The sluicing process was much quicker, and with better results.

EDITED: The material caught up in the magnetic riffles was about 1/6th of the previous gold from sluicing. Still wasn't a whole lot weight wise because most if it verges on the invisible without magnification. A single speck would be invisible to my eyes.

Still, another day learning something new, and how to make my next sluicing easier. The biggest discovery was keeping the material, 80 mesh and smaller, suspended in solution.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I keep milling ore, classifying the results, and panning, and I continue to learn.

Seems the ore that seems to lack any kind of mush, usually has very little gold in it. This ore is whitish with brownish streaks through it, and usually produces only super fine gold (200-400 mesh, with a smattering of slightly larger gold), and probably amounts to only a few thousandths of a gram. It's gold, and I'm happy, but for the effort, the only thing keeping me processing this stuff is the fun and adventure.

The pea gravel stuff I've sifted out, and the other rock I've carefully pick out the greyish colored rocks and tossed, seem to produce a mush like clay, which produces very dirty working conditions. I'm guessing the majority of this material is highly mineralized. The results usually produce somewhere around 1/20th to 1/10th of a gram per 5 gallon bucket, usually the lower amount, like I showed in my blurry picture previously posted.

For now I'm going to keep picking all the greyish rock, and tossing it, and cart home just the buckets of pea gravel, and the half inch/larger rock that seem to produce good results; results I consider good.

I also sift out the dirt, and material 1/8 inch and smaller, and run it through my drywasher. This has netted me about 1/20th of a gram from eight 5 gallon buckets. The Royal mid sized drywasher seems to be able to pick up the very fine gold, and anything smaller just filters through the cloth, dropping down into its bottom.

I also looked around at a few other hard rock tailing piles in the area, toting home a few samples. The brownish rock produced nothing, while a yellowish-white rock with brown streaks gave fairly good results from the equivalent of a fist sized rock. This ore looks like the whitish rock with brown streaks, but has a yellowish tinge. Problem is there isn't much lying around. The mining shaft it came from is vertical, and 10 feet deep. It's not something I can work at my age, so I will just keep poking around this area, hoping something pops up that previous prospectors missed.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I've a few questions for the experts.

Firstly, setting up the first question, my chain mill doesn't pulverized everything to 100 mesh and smaller. I pan on running this larger material through my drywasher to catch the larger sized gold. My question is, does this material larger than 100 mesh possibly still contain the ultra fine gold, and is it worth runnin it through my rock tumbler acting as a ball mill, to release that gold?

Second question is, and I set it up with this information. While I do a fair job at panning the ultra fine gold the first time around, I'm apparently still losing about 35-40 percent. The same seems to be the case with my large sluice, though possibly a bit better. Question is, is it worthwhile for someone like myself to purchase the Keene ST-1 Shaker Table, with base and pump, to improve gold ore processing? I'm basically a hobbyist that does placer mining, and has branched out into the hard rock area. It's possible I will eventually find a hard rock gold ore deposit that I can work, but currently am just working old hard rock tailing piles, and have so far found a couple of them that do have some gold ore that was tossed in the tailing piles. Right now there's enough of this gold ore to keep me busy for several years just processing with a chain mill, and panning half a bucket a day.

I do have the financial means to purchase equipment, but it's something I'd like to avoid doing, if the purchases aren't right for my particular situation. Thanks ahead of time for any help you can provide.

PS My preference when it comes to a Shaker table would be to get a used one with the base and pump, but they seem to be quite rare in used condition, and usually are snapped up almost immediately upon posting.

 

[southfork]

I've a few questions for the experts.

Firstly, setting up the first question, my chain mill doesn't pulverized everything to 100 mesh and smaller. I pan on running this larger material through my drywasher to catch the larger sized gold. My question is, does this material larger than 100 mesh possibly still contain the ultra fine gold, and is it worth runnin it through my rock tumbler acting as a ball mill, to release that gold?

Second question is, and I set it up with this information. While I do a fair job at panning the ultra fine gold the first time around, I'm apparently still losing about 35-40 percent. The same seems to be the case with my large sluice, though possibly a bit better. Question is, is it worthwhile for someone like myself to purchase the Keene ST-1 Shaker Table, with base and pump, to improve gold ore processing? I'm basically a hobbyist that does placer mining, and has branched out into the hard rock area. It's possible I will eventually find a hard rock gold ore deposit that I can work, but currently am just working old hard rock tailing piles, and have so far found a couple of them that do have some gold ore that was tossed in the tailing piles. Right now there's enough of this gold ore to keep me busy for several years just processing with a chain mill, and panning half a bucket a day.

I do have the financial means to purchase equipment, but it's something I'd like to avoid doing, if the purchases aren't right for my particular situation. Thanks ahead of time for any help you can provide.

PS My preference when it comes to a Shaker table would be to get a used one with the base and pump, but they seem to be quite rare in used condition, and usually are snapped up almost immediately upon posting.

Just curious about how long you let the chain mill run. I let my mill run until nothing, but dust is falling down the Shute then I dump a couple more cups in. You can tell when its ready for more it gets, quiet and just dust coming out. I haven't timed it I always have a couple of operations going at the same time, but it comes out like flour. There's always a few pebbles and flour caked in the back of the chain mill. I save all the pebbles / small rocks and run again. I would love to have a vibrating miller table. It takes way too long on my ribbed sluice. I have an old becks dry washer but my material will cake up its real fine and a little moisture.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Just curious about how long you let the chain mill run. I let my mill run until nothing, but dust is falling down the Shute then I dump a couple more cups in. You can tell when its ready for more it gets, quiet and just dust coming out. I haven't timed it I always have a couple of operations going at the same time, but it comes out like flour. There's always a few pebbles and flour caked in the back of the chain mill. I save all the pebbles / small rocks and run again. I would love to have a vibrating miller table. It takes way too long on my ribbed sluice. I have an old becks dry washer but my material will cake up its real fine and a little moisture.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I put in about 5 cups of smaller than 1.5 inch material, then let that run at least a minute between adding material. At the end, I think it runs 3-4 minutes. I'm not getting dust coming up the feed chute any longer, and I'm basically just getting dust blowing down i to the bucket.

But my average percentage of coarse material (larger than 80 mesh) is still about 1/3rd of the total volume run.

If I understand you correctly, you run all that coarser material over and over. If that's true, I'll give that a try.

I've finally settled on only running 1/3rd of a 5 gallon bucket per day. That seems to not make the processing a chore, and is more enjoyable.

Today's 1/3rd bucket gave me a nice 2 inch line of the ultra fine gold. It's still not enough to bother weighing each time I run a batch, so I just weigh the amalgam ball each Sunday to see what the week total was. I'm guessing only 1/10 gram this week, but that's just a guess. That's actually pretty good considering most of the gold is smaller than 300 mesh.

EDITED: southfork, don't know what your weekly gold take is, but from what I've seen on your thread, an ST-1 or ST-4 shaker table would probably be great, especially if your son and friend can keep bringing in decent ore. You get in one day what I only manage in a month, and I'm still considering the Shaker Table. It would run things faster, and improve my gold recovery probably about 30 percent.

 

[southfork]

I mentioned in an earlier post that I put in about 5 cups of smaller than 1.5 inch material, then let that run at least a minute between adding material. At the end, I think it runs 3-4 minutes. I'm not getting dust coming up the feed chute any longer, and I'm basically just getting dust blowing down i to the bucket.

But my average percentage of coarse material (larger than 80 mesh) is still about 1/3rd of the total volume run.

If I understand you correctly, you run all that coarser material over and over. If that's true, I'll give that a try.

I've finally settled on only running 1/3rd of a 5 gallon bucket per day. That seems to not make the processing a chore, and is more enjoyable.

Today's 1/3rd bucket gave me a nice 2 inch line of the ultra fine gold. It's still not enough to bother weighing each time I run a batch, so I just weigh the amalgam ball each Sunday to see what the week total was. I'm guessing only 1/10 gram this week, but that's just a guess. That's actually pretty good considering most of the gold is smaller than 300 mesh.

EDITED: southfork, don't know what your weekly gold take is, but from what I've seen on your thread, an ST-4 or ST-4 shaker table would probably be great, especially if your son and friend can keep bringing in decent ore. You get in one day what I only manage in a month, and I'm still considering the Shaker Table. It would run things faster, and improve my gold recovery probably about 30 percent.

The material I'm feeding into the chain mill is 1/4 inch or smaller. So maybe that's why I'm able to get so much flour. Our gold take varies from poor to fantastic lol some days it's not worth the effort. But this is still just another hobby for me.

 

[desertgolddigger]

The material I'm feeding into the chain mill is 1/4 inch or smaller. So maybe that's why I'm able to get so much flour. Our gold take varies from poor to fantastic lol some days it's not worth the effort. But this is still just another hobby for me.

I believe you purchased a jaw crusher recently. Is that why your ore going through the mill is pea gravel sized? A jaw crusher would probably be another good investment, especially with my arthritic fingers. Guess I'll look into that to put on my wish list.