Borax, Mercury, Blue Bowl or Sluicing?

John_Arizona

John_Arizona

Hero Member
Jan 30, 2013
562
708
Arizona
Detector(s) used
Spanish Death Rods
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
I have a lot of arizona flour gold to process, although I know Mercury is a little dangerous and I heard Borax takes the danger out.

Will the Keene Super Concentrator work for flour gold or should I just use the blue bowl with jet dry?

I tried to take this photo with my cell, it's a little blurry.

Any help would be appreciated.

I'm not finished processing this yet, just taking a short break.

It's hard to get a good shot to see the flour gold.

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Finished Result: 22 Troy oz, from 15 lbs of Ore on 6/10/14

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continue reading to understand how this was done.
 

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Bonaro said:
Coating a copper plate with mercury...hat you are making is called a sickening plate. When the coated plate becomes saturated with gold it is said to be "sick" and need to be cleaned and recharged with fresh HG. Ww all have heard the stories of the pioneer miners contaminating the streams with lost HG and creating a environmental catastrophe for generations to come, well, this is exactly how they did it. Sickening plates and mercury should never be used in a open system. If you are 100% self contained with some method of secondary containment then it is plausible.

If you have a couple hundred pounds of crushed ore, you can deal with this in a DIY amalgamation system. If you have a hundred tons...or even one ton, you are going to need MUCH better equipment.

Tumbling the cons in HG is a easy solution and you can scale up by using a cement mixer. You only need to tumble for a hour or so but each batch is only going to be 100 pounds. That will take 20 hours for a ton with non-stop work

You need another way
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I have a portable cement mixer and took the end off of 5 sledge hammers and was going to grind it up like that, but it will drive the neighborhood mad, so I might have to find an alternate way and I really don't want to use the Mercury. I like the crucible idea and the borax method. Guess I have a full time job the rest of my life with this project lol
 

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to charge the mercury use a battery, 12volt car battery works. take two insulated wires strip the ends, have a cup with your mercury in it with salt water on top of it. now take your negative wire and put the end in the mercury, take the positive end and have that in the salt water. leave it there to it starts bubbling and fizzing, note to be in an area with good ventalation and not to breath the gas put off by the bubbles.
 

Sounds like your ore is rich enough to find a local processor....it may be worth your money.Especially if you could deliver. I would look up small batch leaching. If you are recovering 1.5 ounces per pound I would just go with what you've been doing and have your final take refined professionally. Mercury is not the kind of thing I would recommend "learning " how to use.If you don't know it already its best left alone.
 

Goldwasher said:
Sounds like your ore is rich enough to find a local processor....it may be worth your money.Especially if you could deliver. I would look up small batch leaching. If you are recovering 1.5 ounces per pound I would just go with what you've been doing and have your final take refined professionally. Mercury is not the kind of thing I would recommend "learning " how to use.If you don't know it already its best left alone.
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I was going to take my unused pound of mercury back to the prospecting store, not interested in harming the environment and myself
 

John_Arizona said:
My little set up and some hard rock gold from my mine, before break I it down and classify it.

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Is your material, in fact, hard rock "ore" or could it be a naturally cemented deposit that contains placer gold? There is a distinct difference in the two and gold recovery methods can vary from one to the other. The pictures above plus your description that the deposit lies on gold bearing clay suggest the latter type of deposit to me. If it is free gold you are dealing with I think you should super concentrate the material, separate as much gold out as you can and leave any pyro or whatever process to professionals.
 

arizau said:
Is your material, in fact, hard rock "ore" or could it be a naturally cemented deposit that contains placer gold? There is a distinct difference in the two and gold recovery methods can vary from one to the other. The pictures above plus your description that the deposit lies on gold bearing clay suggest the latter type of deposit to me. If it is free gold you are dealing with I think you should super concentrate the material, separate as much gold out as you can and leave any pyro or whatever process to professionals.
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I have a cave with the ore inside and the vein goes surface outside and then drops into the ground. So, for now... I'm just playing around with different places on my claim and sharing them on here and thanks for your input/info
 

John_Arizona said:
My little set up and some hard rock gold from my mine, before break I it down and classify it.

View attachment 1006480

View attachment 1006481

View attachment 1006483
Click to expand...
Is your material, in fact, hard rock "ore" or could it be a naturally cemented deposit that contains placer gold? There is a distinct difference in the two and gold recovery methods can vary from one to the other. The pictures above plus your description that the deposit lies on gold bearing clay suggest the latter type of deposit to me. If it is free gold you are dealing with I think you should super concentrate the material, separate as much gold out as you can and leave any pyro or whatever process to professionals as was suggested by Goldwasher.
PS How do you crush and grind the material and what size classifiers do you use?
 

arizau said:
Is your material, in fact, hard rock "ore" or could it be a naturally cemented deposit that contains placer gold? There is a distinct difference in the two and gold recovery methods can vary from one to the other. The pictures above plus your description that the deposit lies on gold bearing clay suggest the latter type of deposit to me. If it is free gold you are dealing with I think you should super concentrate the material, separate as much gold out as you can and leave any pyro or whatever process to professionals as was suggested by Goldwasher.
PS How do you crush and grind the material and what size classifiers do you use?
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The ore was assayed at 1000 ounces per ton, so since my partner had to go back to the Philippines... I'm having to do it myself for now. I'm looking into hiring a refiner/processor for this part. I have another guy working for me, but he has been working inside and I'm on the outside. I'm looking at expanding and bringing in more people that are experts in this/or having trucks haul it to be crushed down and refined... before I can expand and grow bigger and do it myself. I'm not looking for investors or people trying to buy in. That's not going to happen.

Classifier sizes I use; #8, #12, #30, #50. I just picked up a small 4 piece set to classify it down very fine and micron... to run through the blue bowl. I'm just experimenting right now, that's why all the questions. It is tedious but I'm fine with that.
 

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Assays are deceiving in that the sample may not represent the totality of the vein. It sounds like you may have cherry picked a sample from an obvious part of the the vein for your assay. This is OK if that is the only material you intend to remove but that is usually not the case. The gold OPT may be, is probably, much less in a representative sample of the entire vein. In any case, good find and good luck!
 

Ed T said:
No...You do not use mercury on a miller table... The gold just stops on the top of the table... I don't think it works very well on flour gold... [snip]
Ed T :)
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Actually, a Miller Table works fine on very fine gold. Just classify, adjust water and slope and it will give you bright shiny gold.
 

I can't figure out if this is an old drift placer deposit, or if the clay he describes is Koalin on either side of a vein? He is bringing in 1.5 ozs per pound???

arizau said:
Assays are deceiving in that the sample may not represent the totality of the vein. It sounds like you may have cherry picked a sample from an obvious part of the the vein for your assay. This is OK if that is the only material you intend to remove but that is usually not the case. The gold OPT may be, is probably, much less in a representative sample of the entire vein. In any case, good find and good luck!
Click to expand...
 

Ed T said:
Hey John...I'm sorry but I don't do the friend thing...One thing you should know...When it comes to the treasure thing...TRUST NO ONE!!! So I'm sorry that I can't accept your friend request... I hope you can understand why...Because when it comes to these things you may be dealing with lots and lots of cash and some people will do just about anything to get their grubby little hands on it... :(

Do it on your own... This is what I have decided to do...hehehe

Ed T
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Nodda problemo Ed :thumbsup:
 

Ed T said:
Look on the bright side John...You know where it is at...As long as you don't let anyone else know where it is at...You have all of the time in the world to educate yourself in how to process it... Just don't let anyone else know where it is at...LOL

Shoot...You won't see me telling anyone where my little holes are at...And believe me...I think that I have learned quite a bit and I don't think that anyone has found my versions of Tayopa and El Naranjal...Shoot...One of my ores has thousands of ounces of Ag per ton ...And this is really blowing my mind...And as for the PGM's and AU ..Let's just say that there are many many opt... hehehe ...And nobody wanted to buy any of it when I posted it for sale on eBay...oh well...

Ed T :)
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that location will die with me and in the mean time... I'm being educated by you fella's and experimenting with things. Imagine where all of you were at when you started, so you can see where I'm at then and I do appreciate all the feedback. Thanks for that!!

There's all types of Treasure Hunting, Prospecting, Hard Rock Mining so on and so forth... some of us or 'me'... might be good in other areas and not so good in some areas... ' or at least according to me '
 

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?John

Just make sure if you are goin to use a shaker or wave table, make sure you have the proper crush and grind and classify everything, I would go down to minus 100. Still can't figure out if you are processing hardrock or some type of old drift placer
 

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