Placer Claim Mined Out?

desertgolddigger

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May 31, 2015
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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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Assembler

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Hey Gents/Ladies, I've given this some thought, and come to a decision. I'm giving up the prospecting and hard rock stuff. I'm not knowledgeable enough, and just too old to pursue this line of interest. I will stick with placer mining, but at a much scaled back frequency. I got what I wanted, that being one ounce of placer gold.

That means the crusher, bowl and table I purchased, as well as the 8x8 Shelter Logic shelter I have, I will be disposing of. Since I cannot move these here, all I can do is ask anyone here that knows of anyone seeking stuff like this to contact me via PM, I'll give details to those who respond once we establish contact via email, off this forum.

And no, I'm not giving up digging for gold, but will invest my money, instead of fuel, into gold bars and coins. I will continue to dig for fun.
Even if you decide to not keep the equipment you can still use your metal detector and better yet the simple hammer and magnifying glass to spot some small values in rocks you have not investigated before.
Just a point here remember it is not that some rocks have minerals in them it is more a factor what nature did (events) that effected that rock and minerals. So if you start seeing rocks that really look different as far as the minerals goes it is a good time to get the magnifying glass and hammer out to check it out. This factor could really help out with your panning even dry washing as well.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Was out yesterday for my weekly dig at the claim. I didn't do any volunteer work like road repairing.

But I did get 1/2 a gram of the nice yellow stuff. I'm guessing most of it was contained in the disintegrated rock I'm still scratching away at. Most of the gold was smaller than 30 mesh, but I did manage 10 pieces that were between 16 and 30 mesh, which was a little over 1/5 gram of that 1/2 gram total.

I'm not expecting such a windfall the next time out, but I'll keep working on that disintegrated rock until I hit firm bedrock. Just wish there was an easier way to scrape it up. I'm using my Paleo-Pick, which is a good tool, but only scrapes up a tiny bit at a time.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Hi Everyone, I had a very nice Saturday. What made it so nice was my invite to Gold Tramp's Claudette Mill.

He and his daughter, Jennifer gave me a complete tour, and I was really impressed with what he had created. In the days before power equipment to drive the Mill. a horse was probably tethered to it. His uses two stones to grind the ore. Here's a link to one with a single stone. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=109836 His is run by an old WWII vehicle vintage car parts.

He also showed me other things he uses to process the crushed ore. I won't mention those, as I don't want to tell the world what he has. It's a privacy thing.

He showed me how he uses liquid mercury to clean up a pan full of fine gold, then handed me a vial with that amalgam in it, and told me to bring it for processing when it's a solid ball. Thanks so much GT.

And he kept handing me things, a baggie of pulverized ore from his Mill, a baggie with examples of gold ore, and a lot of crystals he's found over the years. WOW!! They are soooo very kewl.

He also showed me an example of a finished (polished) piece of ore rock, a stone wall he's building with rock from his excursions, and so much more.

GT is super talented when it comes to his work with rock (Masonry).

A lot went on for that 4 hour visit, and I am grateful for his taking the time to show me everything, and all the knowledge he imparted.

Everyone, please wish him well, as he's just recovering from being sick.

I probably could go on and on, but I'll leave things as is. I look forward to whenever he will let me visit, and learn more about the processing of gold ore.
 

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gold tramp

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Couple pics for you Desert Golddigger from Claudette mill , what we started when visited.

20230320_084116.jpg

20230320_112335.jpg

Finished pulp ..
Another days work and we are back up n running for the season.
Gt...
 

gold tramp

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Desert Golddigger,
2.30 wake up call its raining in my desert finaly.
You probably won't be drywashin in the hills for awhile.
Maybe I can teach you to run the shaker table n you can get some of these buckets I have around here cleaned up. ive procrastinated long enough and I think I got about 20 hours of tabling to get things caught up.
It's just monitoring the water n keeping the feeder full, lot of standing in one area, grabin an occasional test pan off the finish port just to see how things are producing.
Something you might wanna try your hand at keep you finding that yeller stuff.
Gt.....
 

delnorter

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Very interesting guys. After processing
the ore in the arastra is any of the gold visible? I understand you use mercury for the recovery, but is any of it able to be seen with magnifier?
Mike
 

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desertgolddigger

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I processed the fine crushed ore GT gave me. It was loaded with super fine gold, and a smidgen of what looks like fool's gold, though it doesn't act like fool's gold when panned. It stays with the gold in the corner of the pan.

I used that small mercury ball to have it suck up the real gold. That's why I mentioned what seems to be some kind of gold look alike. I had put the mercury back in the little bottle, and decided to repan the material GT gave me. I guess my initial panning leaves something to be desired. I ended up with another line of gold almost as much as the first panning. I'll just keep that, and all the rest of my fine gold concentrates, and try again in a month or so, after I accumulate enough to break out the mercury. I don't want to fool with the stuff any more than needed.

At the same time, I put the fine gold I've collected over the years into the pan, and the mercury sucked up all of it. So none was this kind of imitation gold.

I also repanned all the super fine drywasher tailings I'd gotten fine gold out of, and yes, there was another small line of gold. I put that in the same container as the fine gold concentrates to run at a later date. And I decided not to throw away all that fluff that the fine gold was in. I'll just accumulate more, then run it with my mini cleanup sluice. I'm sure my panning didn't get half of what was in there. Maybe the sluice will be more efficient.
Very interesting guys. After processing
the ore in the arastra is any of the gold visible? I understand you use mercury for the recovery, but is any of it able to be seen with magnifier?
Mike
You can see gold specks. I'm guessing most of it is smaller than 100 mesh, but GT says he also gets larger gold. I would imagine the ore he has contains some really fine gold, but not sure if he can recover stuff smaller than 400 mesh. Only GT can tell you that. I was only there one day for four hours.
 

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gold tramp

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Thank you dgd. All very interesting.

Very interesting guys. After processing
the ore in the arastra is any of the gold visible? I understand you use mercury for the recovery, but is any of it able to be seen with magnifier?
Mike
I will let dgd tell you all about it when she gets over here to run table,
Yes one can see the gold with miners lens, stuff I gave her as samples if you have good eyes is visible with out aid of lens.
Gt....
 

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desertgolddigger

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May 31, 2015
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Since it rained the past few days, I assumed the claim would not be fit for dry washing. But I discovered it either didn't rain in that area, or very little.

So I went with my first plan for the day. Prospecting. I managed to dig four holes, and pan some of the dirt. None showed anything but a smidgen of black sand.

Next I went to one of the mine locations and dug between two of them, discovering quartz that was nearly falling apart. I also sampled in that area, and got zilcho.

Last chance was hiking up to the mineralized dig, and trying to find tailings that might still have some gold. Again, I got skunked, and fooled again with that darn tiny speckled pyrite, or maybe it's called peacock ore.

The only shiny thing I found was silver colored pyrite. I looked it up online, and it is apparently called arsenopyrite.

I'm guessing I won't know what to look for until I have a field trip with Gold Tramp. Hopefully that will happen before it gets too hot. I can only work in the dark when summer arrives with the use of my two flood lights.
 

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desertgolddigger

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I again had the dreaded cabin fever. I don't know why I dislike my humble abode's four walls. Some people seem to like laying around, doing nothing.

My fix was to go out and explore. My first stop was Gold Crown Mine and the associated ruins. This place is pretty big. On top of one hill is some kind of processing point where the tailing slag was released, and flowed down into the valley. The valley is just covered in this light brownish stuff. There is at least two vertical shafts, along with half a dozen surface mines. I would imagine this area is pretty picked clean of gold by the old timers, and the modern miners. There unfortunately trash strewn everywhere to take away from the visual experience.

After that I returned to Gold Crown Road, and turned left onto it. I guess I went 1/4 mile, and turned right onto another fairly good road, following it to where it forked. I went left, and it ended at another significant mining location. I haven't a clue as to its name. I looked around, finding one vertical mine shaft (not fenced), and two horizontal mines. Since I was alone, and not stupid, I only looked at the entrances, not even getting close. I was afraid, with my terrible luck, a rock would fall and hit me. Yeah, I have that kind of luck. I know my description to get to this place, and how it looked is terrible, but if anyone knows its name, I'd like to know so I can annotate my map.

I probably will try another venture in the near future to see if I can get to some of these other mines. Maybe someday I might find something I could stake a claim to, if it isn't already taken, or void of the gold ore the old timers might have missed. The modern miners have done a pretty good job of stripping the rest of the values.

And no, I found absolutely zilch again, sampling a couple of locations. Couldn't do more, as the wind was howling.
 

HeavyMetalThunder

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I again had the dreaded cabin fever. I don't know why I dislike my humble abode's four walls. Some people seem to like laying around, doing nothing.

My fix was to go out and explore. My first stop was Gold Crown Mine and the associated ruins. This place is pretty big. On top of one hill is some kind of processing point where the tailing slag was released, and flowed down into the valley. The valley is just covered in this light brownish stuff. There is at least two vertical shafts, along with half a dozen surface mines. I would imagine this area is pretty picked clean of gold by the old timers, and the modern miners. There unfortunately trash strewn everywhere to take away from the visual experience.

After that I returned to Gold Crown Road, and turned left onto it. I guess I went 1/4 mile, and turned right onto another fairly good road, following it to where it forked. I went left, and it ended at another significant mining location. I haven't a clue as to its name. I looked around, finding one vertical mine shaft (not fenced), and two horizontal mines. Since I was alone, and not stupid, I only looked at the entrances, not even getting close. I was afraid, with my terrible luck, a rock would fall and hit me. Yeah, I have that kind of luck. I know my description to get to this place, and how it looked is terrible, but if anyone knows its name, I'd like to know so I can annotate my map.

I probably will try another venture in the near future to see if I can get to some of these other mines. Maybe someday I might find something I could stake a claim to, if it isn't already taken, or void of the gold ore the old timers might have missed. The modern miners have done a pretty good job of stripping the rest of the values.

And no, I found absolutely zilch again, sampling a couple of locations. Couldn't do more, as the wind was howling.
Capture helicross mine.JPG
 

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desertgolddigger

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I visited Gold Tramp this morning to see how he's fairing. He's not doing that well. He has two health issues that are taking a toll on him. This coming week he will be getting test to determine what is causing his not feeling well. I also found out that he is just not up to making appearances on this Forum, and other social media he has, in the past posted on, and probably won't in the future. His daughter might stop by to look at hos social mail to pass on to him, so hopefully some of you that know him will try to pass on you best wishes.

He pointed me to a place where there might still be some gold ore inadvertently deposited in the waste pile. He gave me two pieces from this dig as examples. I went out, but found very little even resembling his examples. So I just loaded half a bucket to run through the chain mill to determine if there is anything. Based on his two samples, I sorted my take into three piles, promising, possible, and not very likely. But I will run it all for that just in case. It will tell me if I'm still picking up junk rock, or maybe getting closer to understanding the local geology.

On the way out of the back country, I stopped again at that mountain I'd been trying to find possible gold sources at, and also find that elusive main mine it has. I finally found it in an area I actually spied from our club's claim. It happened that the Sun was shining on it that day so the waste pile stood out. It isn't fenced in, and is a vertical shaft at least 50 feet deep. I didn't get any closer to see all the way down, as I feared the footing might be bad. I sampled the wash just below it, but got nothing but a lot of black sand. No color. I also picked up some rock that glinted lime gold, but it's probably my Pyrite Nemesis.

Will write when I finish processing all the rock.

Tomorrow, and for the next several days, weather permitting, I want to work the placer at the club claim. I'm short about half a gram for my three month 6 gram total.

EDITED: UPDATE - I just finished running the promising ore. Results are 5 specks around 70+ mesh, and a thin line of the yellow stuff below 70 mesh. I can't remember the last time I found gold in a rock. Probably three plus months.
I'm not sure the waste pile has fines in it, but the next time I'm digging through it, I'll bring along my 50 mesh screen to check it out. I'll probably load up four buckets of that to run through my big cleanup sluice. I'll hopefully find some more promising ore. Some of what I found was on the pit. It's just a matter of peeling off things, then tapping the hard rock its attached to, to dislodge it into the bucket like I did this morning.

All I can say is YIPPIE!! I didn't get skunked.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Second report for probable gold ore. I guess I should've lumped the promising and possible together. The possible actually produced one piece larger than 50 mesh, and 11 pieces larger than 70 mesh, and the line of gold was greater for smaller than 70 mesh.

I've got to think my last category, not very likely, has to be the skunk. If not, then this pile of waste is better than I thought it would be.

I've revised my classifier size to 30 mesh because of that one piece just larger than 50 mesh. It will be interesting to see if this waste pile, and the waste in the pit contains fines. My thought is that as the prospector hammered, and chiseled the ore, some fines got knocked off. Since my rock mining has produced next to nothing prior to this, anything that adds to the total is welcome.

Not sure when I'll get to the not very likely bucket. But need to process that before returning to this isolated dig. If this last bucket produces gold, then I guess I'll just be loading buckets, and not being picky.
 

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desertgolddigger

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I did some placer mining at the club claim. It was terrible. 14 full buckets classified to 4 mesh, and a total of 11 pieces (0.093 grams, better than I thought). If nit for the baby picker, which weighs twice as much as the rest, it would've been a disaster.

I went again to the distant waste pile to do a sampling of material classified with a 70 mesh screen. The material amounted to about four cups. There's definitely fine gold in the discard pile. Not a whole lot, but the pile is huge, so there might be a few grams.

While classifying the waste, I picked out the rocks that had mineralization, and others similar looking to what I ran yesterday, that got me some fairly good gold.

So today wasn't a total bust. Taking tomorrow off so I can do chores around the house, and process the rock I have on hand, I don't want to accumulated large quantities of material, only to discovery the stuff is worthless. I learned my lesson last year when I had the wrong impression, that our local quartz contained gold. Most of the local gold is contained in highly mineralized rock.
 

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desertgolddigger

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I ran some ore that I felt might not be great from today's haul. Ended up with two specks larger than mesh 70, and maybe 20 specks smaller than mesh 70. There was also a lot of lead, I'm assuming it's lead because it didn't want to move away from the gold. It just sat there resisting everything I tried to get it separated from the gold.

This ore was either all reddish, or was partially reddish. Not sure if the reddish will keep producing, but there is a lot of it in that mine waste pile.

To me this is still a positive, as I got something for my efforts.

I didn't take a lot of time being careful with the panning. I just wanted to see if something was there. I'll run the material again with my sluice to try catching what I might've missed.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Busy today with chores. I got most of those done early, so I set up my drywasher in the back-back yard, and ran my panning tailings. Results were surprising. I got two baby pickers (sized between 1/16 and 1/8 inch), and three other pieces. The baby pickers I should never have missed. Must have been tired from that' days digging. I only got three other pieces, so my panning is improving somewhat. I estimated the weight at about 1/20th gram. Every little bit helps.

I also ran the waste dirt I'd dug up from the mine waste pile through the drywasher. I got one speck larger than 70 mesh, and almost not a thing in the gold 71 mesh and smaller. But I said to myself, hold on a b9it, and checked the bottom of the drywasher. And yes, I had made sure before running things that the drywasher housing was clean. I ended up with a very nice little line of fine gold. Seems that any very fine, small wire or flat gold just loves to drop into the housing below the screen. Again, this is the reason I harp, and keep telling people not to dump the material from the drywasher bottom. One person told me that it wasn't worth the effort to dump it in a pan, and see if anything is in it. I wish all people with that attitude would sent me all the material from the bottom of their drywashers. I'd probably have gotten my first ounce of gold years ago.

I then ran some whitish ore through the chain mill. The only reason was that previously, I'd run something similar, though not as hard as today's ore, and gotten some gold. This time there was absolutely nothing larger than 70 mesh, and I was prepared to see nothing in the pan of 71 mesh and smaller. I was floored when I saw the densest line of gold yet from this waste pile I've been digging. Most was very very fine in size.

Done for the day I figured I'd better load up my equipment for tomorrow, and then clean up the panning mess. I'm keeping the panning tailings to pan again. I poured the water in a bucket, and carefully poured it into my wastewater sump, careful not to pour out the very fine silt in the bottom. I decided to pan this tiny bit of material, just knowing nothing was in it, but not being positive. Glad I didn't toss this silt, as there was again, a very tiny bit of gold in it, though invisible to the naked eye.

Sorry for being long winded, but my hard rock endeavours are finally becoming fun again.
 

southfork

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Busy today with chores. I got most of those done early, so I set up my drywasher in the back-back yard, and ran my panning tailings. Results were surprising. I got two baby pickers (sized between 1/16 and 1/8 inch), and three other pieces. The baby pickers I should never have missed. Must have been tired from that' days digging. I only got three other pieces, so my panning is improving somewhat. I estimated the weight at about 1/20th gram. Every little bit helps.

I also ran the waste dirt I'd dug up from the mine waste pile through the drywasher. I got one speck larger than 70 mesh, and almost not a thing in the gold 71 mesh and smaller. But I said to myself, hold on a b9it, and checked the bottom of the drywasher. And yes, I had made sure before running things that the drywasher housing was clean. I ended up with a very nice little line of fine gold. Seems that any very fine, small wire or flat gold just loves to drop into the housing below the screen. Again, this is the reason I harp, and keep telling people not to dump the material from the drywasher bottom. One person told me that it wasn't worth the effort to dump it in a pan, and see if anything is in it. I wish all people with that attitude would sent me all the material from the bottom of their drywashers. I'd probably have gotten my first ounce of gold years ago.

I then ran some whitish ore through the chain mill. The only reason was that previously, I'd run something similar, though not as hard as today's ore, and gotten some gold. This time there was absolutely nothing larger than 70 mesh, and I was prepared to see nothing in the pan of 71 mesh and smaller. I was floored when I saw the densest line of gold yet from this waste pile I've been digging. Most was very very fine in size.

Done for the day I figured I'd better load up my equipment for tomorrow, and then clean up the panning mess. I'm keeping the panning tailings to pan again. I poured the water in a bucket, and carefully poured it into my wastewater sump, careful not to pour out the very fine silt in the bottom. I decided to pan this tiny bit of material, just knowing nothing was in it, but not being positive. Glad I didn't toss this silt, as there was again, a very tiny bit of gold in it, though invisible to the naked eye.

Sorry for being long winded, but my hard rock endeavours are finally becoming fun again.
Glad your finding gold some of those mine waste piles are just a big pile of low grade ore. But once in awhile they toss out some treasure. It all adds up Happy Mining.
 

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