Blue Clay / Sandy Gravel Assay Results

[racingjoe66]

Okay Guys and Gals, I had 2 samples of material tested and came back with the following results:

Sample 1----gold 0.142 oz per ton
------------silver 0.275 oz per ton
------------platinum 0.021 oz per ton
------------palladium 0.014 oz per ton
------------osmium 0.028 oz per ton
------------ruthenium 0.020 oz per ton
------------iridium 0.007 oz per ton
------------rhodium 0.004 oz per ton

Sample 2----gold 0.133 oz per ton
------------silver 0.199 oz per ton
------------platinum 0.017 oz per ton
------------palladium 0.016 oz per ton
------------osmium 0.023 oz per ton
------------ruthenium 0.021 oz per ton
------------iridium 0.007 oz per ton
------------rhodium 0.005 oz per ton

I am new to all this and wondering if the gold / silver is even worth mining with these results? I assume the other material results are so minor they aren't worth going after? The material sent off to be tested was a mixture of sandy gravel that is sitting on top of a blue clay layer and mixed in with these 2 samples was some of the blue clay that was right there at the sandy gravel layer. Would it be worth it to go deeper into the clay to have it tested further for gold and silver only? Going lets say 6 inches deep and then again at like 24 inches deep into the clay or what do people suggest?

Thanks for any and all input!!!

 

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[racingjoe66]

Thanks. I will have my son do some more planning and see what we got. I talked with a miner on the phone earlier and he said .142 oz per ton was extremely good material.

As for the clay. I might save down 3 to 4 inches from the surface to process as well for gold.

 

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[N-Lionberger]

Thanks. I will have my son do some more planning and see what we got. I talked with a miner on the phone earlier and he said .142 oz per ton was extremely good material.

As for the clay. I might save down 3 to 4 inches from the surface to process as well for gold.

Yeah 4 plus grams a yard ain’t bad I’d mine that spot, hopefully you didn’t accidentally hit a hot pocket. It’s interesting all the other metal values that showed up. My grandmas placer mine they did a bunch of sampling in the 70ies and after pulling all the easy gold from the concentrates they sent the black sands for assay and had some pretty interesting results. I have found gold on top of clay and then I’ve found gold in clay. On the North Yuba I used to mine out by Goodyear’s Bar and would see all kinds of colors of clay often sandwiched together, up there I found most in the red clay, a little in the purple clay and not much in the other colors which surprised me as in other locals I did well in the blue clay but not the red. As mentioned earlier if you have some solid deposits of clay you may be able to make a side profit selling the stuff to local artists.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

I hope I wasn’t coming off aggressive or negative. Just trying to help.

Gold is unmistakable to people that know. The way it behaves in a pan, the way the light reflects off it, the manner in which it is deposited in ore.

You have assay reports so you know there is some gold there, but I’m confident the rocks you are sharing are not gold ore.

Granted, I was raised around gold country and properly instructed in panning during my prepubescent years, but gold is unmistakably different from mica in the pan. Similar to how much different blond sands are from hematite and magnetite sands.
You want to see something like the picture below when your done panning. No blond sands, no floating earthy materials…just heavy black sands and gold. The flour gold usually will be difficult separate from the black sands.

I would be very careful about acting financially on the results of your assay.
Placer gold typically isn't deposited uniformly in gravels. It can be very spotty.
a 12” thick layer of gravel doesn’t add up to much yardage very quickly. Additionally, trying to dig up such a thin layer of gravel on top of clay is very difficult to do without getting clay into your pay gravel. Even when using a trommel, clay can ball up and roll through your sluice box picking up gold on its way out the box.

I would suggest spending the winter getting familiar with gold mining, then making decisions as wether or not to tear up 6.5 acres of land. I’d certainly investigate further.

Last word of caution…Math calculations rarely hold true when mining.

 

[racingjoe66]

Yeah 4 plus grams a yard ain’t bad I’d mine that spot, hopefully you didn’t accidentally hit a hot pocket. It’s interesting all the other metal values that showed up. My grandmas placer mine they did a bunch of sampling in the 70ies and after pulling all the easy gold from the concentrates they sent the black sands for assay and had some pretty interesting results. I have found gold on top of clay and then I’ve found gold in clay. On the North Yuba I used to mine out by Goodyear’s Bar and would see all kinds of colors of clay often sandwiched together, up there I found most in the red clay, a little in the purple clay and not much in the other colors which surprised me as in other locals I did well in the blue clay but not the red. As mentioned earlier if you have some solid deposits of clay you may be able to make a side profit selling the stuff to local artists.

Interesting, the clay you have found gold in. Was it a flour gold or what type or size? Was it in the sandy part of clay or in solid clay?

I do have someone interested in the clay and interested in getting a minimum of 150 to 200 loads of a 16 ton / truck asap. Talking next couple weeks.

So that is why I'm trying to figure out whether let the clay go and just keep the gravel layer and top 3 to 5 inches of clay ontop. I can easily strip this off. I have a crawler loader also to help as well as I am well trained on the excavator to be meticulous.

I have done my research on how to run the clay to extract any gold. I would dry the clay then run it in a cement mixer with ball bearings to crush it into a powder to run it.

 

[N-Lionberger]

On the North Yuba the red stuff containing the gold was of a rougher nature had fines to nuggets in it but the other layers of different color clay was of a different consistency. More actually potter grade material didn’t have anything in it. After it there was good gold on the bedrock. Every spot is different yah gotta sample it. I recently cleaned up some bedrock that had nuggets in the top gravel under the cobbles but there wasn’t shit on the bedrock. It’s a total crap shoot.

 

[racingjoe66]

I hope I wasn’t coming off aggressive or negative. Just trying to help.

Gold is unmistakable to people that know. The way it behaves in a pan, the way the light reflects off it, the manner in which it is deposited in ore.

You have assay reports so you know there is some gold there, but I’m confident the rocks you are sharing are not gold ore.

Granted, I was raised around gold country and properly instructed in panning during my prepubescent years, but gold is unmistakably different from mica in the pan. Similar to how much different blond sands are from hematite and magnetite sands.
You want to see something like the picture below when your done panning. No blond sands, no floating earthy materials…just heavy black sands and gold. The flour gold usually will be difficult separate from the black sands.

I would be very careful about acting financially on the results of your assay.
Placer gold typically isn't deposited uniformly in gravels. It can be very spotty.
a 12” thick layer of gravel doesn’t add up to much yardage very quickly. Additionally, trying to dig up such a thin layer of gravel on top of clay is very difficult to do without getting clay into your pay gravel. Even when using a trommel, clay can ball up and roll through your sluice box picking up gold on its way out the box.

I would suggest spending the winter getting familiar with gold mining, then making decisions as wether or not to tear up 6.5 acres of land. I’d certainly investigate further.

Last word of caution…Math calculations rarely hold true when mining.

Not aggressive at all!! So no worries!! I have no experience close to what you have with gold and truelly appreciate your help! As for how the gold acts I'm the pan vs pyrite or mica and such. Yes some pieces I have are mica for sure as they break when I touch them with the pin and when in the shade look like brass or darker. But the gold pieces I'm sure are gold stay skinny no matter if in the shade or light is on them. And when water moves over them in the pan they don't move from there spot, they like stick. But then some of them that I'm sure are gold (flour gold) seem to float a little or move around some but stick with the black sand like crazy. Our pan in the picture we didn't fully clean out of the blonde sand, sorry about that. It got dark and we stopped for the night.

The rock piece I found I think you might be correct that it is mica or most of it at least.

As for the clay, I would dry it then run it in a cement mixer with ball bearings to crush it into a powder to them run it to get any gold out.

I have someone wanting to get 150 to 200 loads of 16 ton trucks asap within next few weeks of the blue clay. I am digging a 3/4 to 1 acre pond in this spot.

So trying to figure out if to just keep the gravel layer and 3" - 4" of the top layer of clay and if it turns out to be nothing I can dispose of the material later. Or if keeping a deeper layer of clay would be safer like 12". Or should not let any clay go for the time being and have an assay done on the clay itself at different depths before letting the blue clay go.

I was looking at getting a mountain goat trommel system for the kiddos to run the material to start if it checks out

 

[racingjoe66]

On the North Yuba the red stuff containing the gold was of a rougher nature had fines to nuggets in it but the other layers of different color clay was of a different consistency. More actually potter grade material didn’t have anything in it. After it there was good gold on the bedrock. Every spot is different yah gotta sample it. I recently cleaned up some bedrock that had nuggets in the top gravel under the cobbles but there wasn’t shit on the bedrock. It’s a total crap shoot.

Seems like a crap shoot with anything now a days!!

So basically the potter type moist clay had nothing but a rougher grittier type clay seemed to have gold?

The top 3 to 5 inches of my clay is grittier and then down so far is potter type clay that's very moist and solid and very moldable. That I find hard to believe anything could penetrate it.

 

[racingjoe66]

Here is some of the clay when the excavator teeth go through it. Just molds

 

[mikep691]

I may be incorrect, but I've heard that blue clay is a strong indicator of silver. I believe the Comstock Motherlode in Virginia City, Nv. was discovered in blue clay. I understand now you're on private property, so check your local ordinances before anything else. Just having a general geographic location can help as well.

 

[racingjoe66]

I may be incorrect, but I've heard that blue clay is a strong indicator of silver. I believe the Comstock Motherlode in Virginia City, Nv. was discovered in blue clay. I understand now you're on private property, so check your local ordinances before anything else. Just having a general geographic location can help as well.

Your correct, that people do say that about blue clay. I own all mineral rights etc etc, with no restrictions of any kind or ordinances to worry about. I'd rather not give the location at the moment

 

[Clay Diggins]

Your assays don't show profitable values. When clay is involved with fine gold your mining efforts are going to result in either marginal recovery or a huge investment in customized process development to get more than marginal recovery. There is always a difference between gold in the ground and gold you can recover.

Even if you weren't dealing with clay the "assay" values you show would require an immense deposit and a huge investment to mine it profitably. That type of investment would have to be made by a large well funded mining company. There are no large mining companies that will even consider mining a placer deposit these days let alone one that shows such poor values.

In my experience with small miners the absolute bottom break even placer vales start around 3 grams of gold recovered per yard. Once you add in any access, mining or processing difficulties unique to the site the recovery per yard has to increase above that 3 gram/yard return.

I too understand that "assays" of placer deposits are about worthless. You need to "sample" many many yards of material from several locations and depths before you can even begin to get an idea of the values in a placer deposit. That sampling has to be done with the same equipment that you would be mining and processing with. If you aren't already an experienced well equipped placer miner your sampling expenses are going to be through the roof.

In future when discussing placer mining it could help if you used cubic yards in the ground as your values reference, tons are the measure used for hard rock (lode) deposits, placer deposits are measured by cubic yards in the ground. It's a small thing but professional miners smell a greenhorn pretty quickly when they don't know the trade lingo.

You can learn more about how to determine the value of your deposit by downloading the free
Cost Estimation Handbook for Small Placer Mines and the Placer Examination, Principles and Practice books from the Land Matters LIbrary. Those two books alone will help you understand what your minerals are worth. While you are in the Library it might be a good idea to do a search for "placer", there are a lot of good resources available there relating to your new interest.

If I owned the minerals there I would forget about mining the gold, I would sell the clay If I needed the income and I would probably put 20 or so yards to the side so future generations could experience the joys you have experienced of learning how to pan gold from your own land.

Heavy Pans

 

[russau]

Thanks Barry for the Land Matters and your excellent advice and tutelage !

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Not aggressive at all!! So no worries!! I have no experience close to what you have with gold and truelly appreciate your help! As for how the gold acts I'm the pan vs pyrite or mica and such. Yes some pieces I have are mica for sure as they break when I touch them with the pin and when in the shade look like brass or darker. But the gold pieces I'm sure are gold stay skinny no matter if in the shade or light is on them. And when water moves over them in the pan they don't move from there spot, they like stick. But then some of them that I'm sure are gold (flour gold) seem to float a little or move around some but stick with the black sand like crazy. Our pan in the picture we didn't fully clean out of the blonde sand, sorry about that. It got dark and we stopped for the night.

The rock piece I found I think you might be correct that it is mica or most of it at least.

As for the clay, I would dry it then run it in a cement mixer with ball bearings to crush it into a powder to them run it to get any gold out.

I have someone wanting to get 150 to 200 loads of 16 ton trucks asap within next few weeks of the blue clay. I am digging a 3/4 to 1 acre pond in this spot.

So trying to figure out if to just keep the gravel layer and 3" - 4" of the top layer of clay and if it turns out to be nothing I can dispose of the material later. Or if keeping a deeper layer of clay would be safer like 12". Or should not let any clay go for the time being and have an assay done on the clay itself at different depths before letting the blue clay go.

I was looking at getting a mountain goat trommel system for the kiddos to run the material to start if it checks out

I’d say sample the gravels by panning or sluicing..that’s the only way you will figure out if it’s worth it for you. Start out panning and scale up slowly from there. By the time you need a trommel that can be fed with an excavator, you will know for sure. Doesn’t take much gold to impress most people so the little sampling trommel for the kids is a good idea probably. Saving gumbo clay for mining is not something I’d likely expect to be doing unless it was used to line a couple ponds.

 

[alloy_II]

Okay Guys and Gals, I had 2 samples of material tested and came back with the following results:

Sample 1----gold 0.142 oz per ton
------------silver 0.275 oz per ton
------------platinum 0.021 oz per ton
------------palladium 0.014 oz per ton
------------osmium 0.028 oz per ton
------------ruthenium 0.020 oz per ton
------------iridium 0.007 oz per ton
------------rhodium 0.004 oz per ton

Sample 2----gold 0.133 oz per ton
------------silver 0.199 oz per ton
------------platinum 0.017 oz per ton
------------palladium 0.016 oz per ton
------------osmium 0.023 oz per ton
------------ruthenium 0.021 oz per ton
------------iridium 0.007 oz per ton
------------rhodium 0.005 oz per ton

I am new to all this and wondering if the gold / silver is even worth mining with these results? I assume the other material results are so minor they aren't worth going after? The material sent off to be tested was a mixture of sandy gravel that is sitting on top of a blue clay layer and mixed in with these 2 samples was some of the blue clay that was right there at the sandy gravel layer. Would it be worth it to go deeper into the clay to have it tested further for gold and silver only? Going lets say 6 inches deep and then again at like 24 inches deep into the clay or what do people suggest?

Thanks for any and all input!!!

From sample 1, -gold 0.142 oz per ton translate to 3.57 grams

Your silver at silver 0.275 oz per ton gives you 6.93 grams.

Looks like your in the mining business.

The clay is a false bottom that captured some values, you need to process the clay to recover the gold then go for bedrock where the real riches lay.

 

[Assembler]

A fire "Ton assay sample" may not be any real use to you. It appears that a fair amount of these minerals is in with the clay. Unless you factor this in you may not even be able to recover these minerals with your recovery process.

Try your own tests to see what you can recover to start with.

Now if you can spot the rock that these minerals are coming out of that is a different matter.

 

[alloy_II]

A fire "Ton assay sample" may not be any real use to you. It appears that a fair amount of these minerals is in with the clay. Unless you factor this in you may not even be able to recover these minerals with your recovery process.

Try your own tests to see what you can recover to start with.

Now if you can spot the rock that these minerals are coming out of that is a different matter.

An old cement mixer powered by its own engine or from the PTO from a tractor, would turn that clay into a slurry.

A centrifuge can handle an incoming feed with 60 percent solids.

 

[Assembler]

An old cement mixer powered by its own engine or from the PTO from a tractor, would turn that clay into a slurry.

A centrifuge can handle an incoming feed with 60 percent solids.

View attachment 2014754

If the clay can be dried you may be able to run some dry processes. Most will not do this due to the costs and time involved.
Finding the source makes more sense at these gram levels of values. The source rock should be way better to mine and may require less equipment. Just crush, screen and pan to start with if the values are a 'gravity free milling minerals'.

 

[Assembler]

It is possible that the source rock may not have much clay in it at all. If this is the case then finding and processing that rock should be a piece of cake and will require a lot less equipment / costs.

 

[Assembler]

O - yea I forgot that most clay has an electric charge making it cling to most gold and other minerals. Drying out the clay will help however still it is a pain as the charge is still there.

Best to find the source rock that the minerals are coming out of if you can.

 

[et1955]

Okay Guys and Gals, I had 2 samples of material tested and came back with the following results:

Sample 1----gold 0.142 oz per ton
------------silver 0.275 oz per ton
------------platinum 0.021 oz per ton
------------palladium 0.014 oz per ton
------------osmium 0.028 oz per ton
------------ruthenium 0.020 oz per ton
------------iridium 0.007 oz per ton
------------rhodium 0.004 oz per ton

Sample 2----gold 0.133 oz per ton
------------silver 0.199 oz per ton
------------platinum 0.017 oz per ton
------------palladium 0.016 oz per ton
------------osmium 0.023 oz per ton
------------ruthenium 0.021 oz per ton
------------iridium 0.007 oz per ton
------------rhodium 0.005 oz per ton

I am new to all this and wondering if the gold / silver is even worth mining with these results? I assume the other material results are so minor they aren't worth going after? The material sent off to be tested was a mixture of sandy gravel that is sitting on top of a blue clay layer and mixed in with these 2 samples was some of the blue clay that was right there at the sandy gravel layer. Would it be worth it to go deeper into the clay to have it tested further for gold and silver only? Going lets say 6 inches deep and then again at like 24 inches deep into the clay or what do people suggest?

Thanks for any and all input!!!

From My experience mining the sultan river here in Washington state, all the best gold is found just on top of the clay but also in the indentations of rocks on the clay. This area is very red in color because of the decomposing iron next to the clay. Processing clay is so hard , just mining that 4 inch layer above the clay was hard but the gold was awesome. I found a lot gold in crevaces on the exposed clay in the river and I did try to dig threw it but I stopped after 2 ft. It is not worth digging down further for me cause I have learned the history of the river, in ancient times the river flowed on a different path and no gold was deposited before the clay layer was created, then it changed because of glacial interaction. I have dug into many benches on the river, at the start I find a lot of gold and then I hit an ancient deposit that has no gold, the old timers hit that layer too and stopped mining. I just found what they missed.