First Foray into Processing Crushed Rock

[Reed Lukens]

You can also throw a bar magnet under your table, then add magnetite to make a riffle that helps concentrate the fines on top. You'll need a better valve to regulate the water down for the micro gold either way.

 

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[desertgolddigger]

You can also throw a bar magnet under your table, then add magnetite to make a riffle that helps concentrate the fines on top. You'll need a better valve to regulate the water down for the micro gold either way.

Reed, I have a Royal Miller Table. The valve is fixed. I tried to figure out how to remove it, and couldn't figure how, without basically destroying the back end of the table. I guess I could cut the hose, and somehow clamp the new valve between the pump and current valve.

I've tried to find a good valve, but I find I'm not smart enough in that area to choose one. Maybe you or someone else who is familiar with my Table could recommend one on Amazon.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Another lesson learned today. I crushed a bunch of small quartz, none having the pockmarks that show gold was embedded in it at one time. My previous batch had about half pockmarked quartz, and that is what gave me the gold. I'm assuming they did anyway.

Today was a skunk, not one speck. There was plenty of some kind of silver metal, some of which might have been from the Crusher. But there was silvery pieces that had texture like gold does. I'm wondering if this might be either Silver, or Platinum?

Anyway, I figured the material is useless, and threw the whole batch in a waste bucket to take back to the claim for disposal, as I haven't a clue as to what to do with the silvery stuff. It didn't move liken gold does when a film of water moves over it. That film of water does move the pulverized quarts, and other stuff though.

I guess I'll be concentrating on picking up pockmarked tailings to see if my theory is correct about the origin of the gold I got yesterday. As my forays into metal detecting for gold have turned up Zilch, this might be the only way I can get gold from rocks

Now, what to do with all those white quartz rocks? Wonder if people use them in their gardens?

 

[arizau]

Another lesson learned today. I crushed a bunch of small quartz, none having the pockmarks that show gold was embedded in it at one time. My previous batch had about half pockmarked quartz, and that is what gave me the gold. I'm assuming they did anyway.

Today was a skunk, not one speck. There was plenty of some kind of silver metal, some of which might have been from the Crusher. But there was silvery pieces that had texture like gold does. I'm wondering if this might be either Silver, or Platinum?

Anyway, I figured the material is useless, and threw the whole batch in a waste bucket to take back to the claim for disposal, as I haven't a clue as to what to do with the silvery stuff. It didn't move liken gold does when a film of water moves over it. That film of water does move the pulverized quarts, and other stuff though.

I guess I'll be concentrating on picking up pockmarked tailings to see if my theory is correct about the origin of the gold I got yesterday. As my forays into metal detecting for gold have turned up Zilch, this might be the only way I can get gold from rocks

Now, what to do with all those white quartz rocks? Wonder if people use them in their gardens?

You call the "silvery" stuff metal. See if you can crush by putting your thumb in a spoon and rocking it over the particles. If they shatter, not metal. If it dents or flattens and since it acts like gold it could be natural gold alloy with a high percentage of silver in it's makeup. Otherwise....check with magnet as they may be pieces from the chains.

 

[desertgolddigger]

You call the "silvery" stuff metal. See if you can crush by putting your thumb in a spoon and rocking it over the particles. If they shatter, not metal. If it dents or flattens and since it acts like gold it could be natural gold alloy with a high percentage of silver in it's makeup. Otherwise....check with magnet as they may be pieces from the chains.

Will have to do that the next batch I crush. The stuff is now in a trash bucket, mixes with all kinds of dirt and rocks. Too much trouble to sort through it all.. I know from my first ever crushed batch that the silvery flat pieces weren't magnetic. I used a neodymium magnet on the stuff. But it did move when I panned it, while the gold stayed put. I didn't do the crush test.

 

[RTR]

Actually, that gold in the photo is huge, compared to what I've found. Some of the gold is so small, it's barely visible with a 10X loupe, and all I've found isn't visible to the naked eye. Not saying what you show in the photo isn't small, but it just doesn't look as small as I describe the god I've panned.

When set up correctly, a Miller will catch it all.These specks are magnified 1,200 Times. BUT it would take a Trillion of them to add up to anything

 

[brianc053]

Fun conversation, thanks for sharing desertgolddigger! Good luck in your adventure!
- Brian

 

[russau]

DGD by saving the magnetics for later ,I mean save all your material that you don't think anything is left in it and have it smelted after you have accumulated a large amount at the end of the season (?) or when ever . there's probley some gold left that you can't see anymore ! It will eventually add up ,why throw it away !

 

[desertgolddigger]

DGD by saving the magnetics for later ,I mean save all your material that you don't think anything is left in it and have it smelted after you have accumulated a large amount at the end of the season (?) or when ever . there's probley some gold left that you can't see anymore ! It will eventually add up ,why throw it away !

Gosh! That means I probably will need a furnace, safety equipment, and all the chemicals used in the process.

But you said, save a lot of it, so that's probably quite some time in the future.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I've been doing a lot of property cleanup. One of those was sorting all the rocks, from possible gold bearing rocks. I remember someone telling me to look for rocks the miners tossed that basically look dirty, and ugly. I gave that a try. and came up with two 5 gallon buckets full, out of about 8 of those buckets.

I'll break up a couple of those rocks today, and then let Mr. Crusher cut them down to size. Maybe I'll have better luck than yesterday. If so, at least I should have a better idea of what to pick up, and tote home from the claim.

Will edit this post once I get my test results.

 

[desertgolddigger]

When set up correctly, a Miller will catch it all.These specks are magnified 1,200 Times. BUT it would take a Trillion of them to add up to anything View attachment 2056794View attachment 2056795View attachment 2056796

Those are some pretty specimens. I dream of finding something like that.

 

[RTR]

Those are some pretty specimens. I dream of finding something like that.

Some more to feast your eyes on.....Ranging from 1,000 magnification to 1,500 X Keep at it,you'll find em

 

[desertgolddigger]

This has been a very disappointing day with the rocks. I have been skunked again.

What I'm thinking is that one rock I crushed the first day I did some crushing was the only one with gold in it. In other words, beginner's luck.

I set up my metal detector, and beeped all those rocks I thought might be promising. Not a peep from any of them, even when I used the headset. Except one that screamed. The thing was about twice the weight of a normal piece of quartz the same size.

I broke it with a sledge hammer. It actually shattered on the first blow.

Inside red, brown, green, yellow, and black colors. Also a lot of silvery color I'm assuming is Pyrite. It also had three balls of mud type material that were totally enveloped by the quartz.

I think the black color is magnetite or iron type stuff, though there's not a lot of it.

I just cannot figure why this very rounded piece of quartz weighs so much. I used 10X loupe, and couldn't see any gold. If there is gold, it's so small, it might take a microscope to see it.

And yes, this wasn't found on out claim, but in the flood channel (river?) that meanders down from the mountains.

I do plan to beep this river. I'd planned this excursion long before I found this rock.

 

[N-Lionberger]

If you’re dealing with really fine stuff you can make a sluice like Reed described using a piece of magnetic sign material as the the capture media, you can buy the stuff with a sticky backing in rolls at craft stores online, it’s for making fridge or car magnets. The way the material is magnetized there are little rows that when covered with black sands forms what looks like corduroy fabric. The magnetic material needs to be oriented correctly in the box you can get a card that shows it online or you can test a spot with some black sand. You can make a plastic or aluminum water table and line it with this stuff. The little riffles are formed by black sand on the magnetic strips. You need a supply of screened magnetic sand to pre charge the riffles before the crush is added. You can experiment with different size screen sizes of ore vs the magnetic material used to form the riffles to really tune it in. I use a doodad I bought at a gold show called a Spin It Off magnet, it mounts on a drill it’s a great product but you can use a regular gold magnet. You need the magnet to remove the magnetic material before and after tabling it. Before especially if you are experimenting with different magnetic vs crush sizes. Dry separation works best for the magnetic separation. After you are done with the table you just squeegee it out and get the magnetics out. From there you can mix it up with borax and torch up a bead. When you have a concentrate of fines with non magnetic heavies you can get rid of a lot of them by crushing your fines, I’ve done it in a mortar/pestle but it’s way easier with a rock tumbler and chunks of steel rod. The gold is flattened out and the sands are reduced to dust, makes classifying easier.

 

[desertgolddigger]

N-Lionberger, for now I'm not investing any more money until I can figure out how to identify gold ore that might have gold in it, even when a metal detector can't detect it.

Right now I'm a bit frustrated that everything I've crushed and panned after the first day success, has been a skunk.

There must be pictures of gold bearing ore from the 29Palms area that I can reference to help me know what to look for. I know the geology of your area, or say Southfork's area, will not be the same, so seeing pictures of ore from outside my area probably won't even match my areas geology.

What is frustrating is my new metal detector just hasn't hit on anything but manmade junk, and there is plenty of that, from old beer can pull tabs, to lead bullet fragments, to buckshot, rusted metal, and on and on. So I need to be able to do visual prospecting that matches my area.

I'll pick up some more rock that showed it had gold at one time, and hope there might be some fine gold still inside the old timers just missed. That's all I can do for now. And maybe if I run enough of that material, I might get lucky.

 

[hollARDog]

Don't get frustrated buddy🤘
Keep on keeping on! I've been enjoying reading through your foray.
If it was easy we would all quit our day jobs🤠

 

[N-Lionberger]

All the places I hit the ore looks different. I keep a little mortar and pestle in my truck with a piece of canvas, I lay out the canvas and bash the hell out of the sample I can funnel my flown shards back in my mortar with the canvas. If a given rock shows color I might collect more. Research is important. One of my locations has a ton of arsenopyrite associated with the gold. Treating such ore wrong could be dangerous.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I've come to the conclusion that picking up ore at our claim is a useless pastime. I believe that most of the claim has been metal detected. Also, the benches of material pulled out of the mine have not yielded any noise from my detector. I do wonder if the surface trenches where the old timers dug might have anything in the walls? Of course, these have also been metal detected to death.

I can only think that most of the accessible mines have been picked over just the same.

I am wondering if I should go through areas the look untouched by humans, and detect those. Yes, the Old Timers didn't mine for gold in those areas, and supposedly, a new source is a very rare occurrence. But I wonder if Mother nature has eroded some sources, and the material moved downhill.

I need to try some other angle at finding gold ore, other than at the mines. One reason is there is so much manmade metallic waste, trying to detect there is discouraging. You can go for hours, and about every step you take brings up another bullet or casing, or buckshot, or rusted metal, or hardware, and the list could go on.

I know that if that if this trend continues, Mr. Crusher is getting sold, as well as my metal detector.

My foray into the riverbed yesterday gave me two pieces of rusted metal, a bullet, a cartridge, and two inch single fixed blade box cutter (rusted), as well as two bb's. I can use a detector, but get tired of just finding Human metallic waste.

Tomorrow I'll wander around metal detecting in hopefully more pristine ground, though I'm beginning to think there isn't such a thing in the mining district out there.

Oh, I did crush 40 more rocks over the past two days, and basically got skunked. I think there might have been four sub 200 specks of gold, though it was too difficult to tell. I save those in a plastic container for the possibility I just might luck out, and get another rock with gold in it.

Any suggestions on where I should look, other than established old timer mines?

 

[arizau]

I've come to the conclusion that picking up ore at our claim is a useless pastime. I believe that most of the claim has been metal detected. Also, the benches of material pulled out of the mine have not yielded any noise from my detector. I do wonder if the surface trenches where the old timers dug might have anything in the walls? Of course, these have also been metal detected to death.

I can only think that most of the accessible mines have been picked over just the same.

I am wondering if I should go through areas the look untouched by humans, and detect those. Yes, the Old Timers didn't mine for gold in those areas, and supposedly, a new source is a very rare occurrence. But I wonder if Mother nature has eroded some sources, and the material moved downhill.

I need to try some other angle at finding gold ore, other than at the mines. One reason is there is so much manmade metallic waste, trying to detect there is discouraging. You can go for hours, and about every step you take brings up another bullet or casing, or buckshot, or rusted metal, or hardware, and the list could go on.

I know that if that if this trend continues, Mr. Crusher is getting sold, as well as my metal detector.

My foray into the riverbed yesterday gave me two pieces of rusted metal, a bullet, a cartridge, and two inch single fixed blade box cutter (rusted), as well as two bb's. I can use a detector, but get tired of just finding Human metallic waste.

Tomorrow I'll wander around metal detecting in hopefully more pristine ground, though I'm beginning to think there isn't such a thing in the mining district out there.

Oh, I did crush 40 more rocks over the past two days, and basically got skunked. I think there might have been four sub 200 specks of gold, though it was too difficult to tell. I save those in a plastic container for the possibility I just might luck out, and get another rock with gold in it.

Any suggestions on where I should look, other than established old timer mines?

Many ore deposits were found by following float(naturally eroded pieces of the ore depost) uphill and/or upstream......so. Maybe you can just reverse that order for possible rocks to crush.
Good luck.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Many ore deposits were found by following float(naturally eroded pieces of the ore depost) uphill and/or upstream......so. Maybe you can just reverse that order for possible rocks to crush.
Good luck.

Are yo saying that I should down wash, and dig to see if any ore made it down the wash? I've been digging down to bedrock when I dry wash, and occasionally find some quartz, but they didn't contain gold. Of course, I've only worked the middle to upper sections of the wash, not the lower portion.

I'll give the extreme lower parts a try tomorrow when I do dry washing. Maybe I might get lucky.

The little bit of gold II got on my first crush must have been from a single rock, or at least that is what I'm guessing. And I don't know where that rock came from. It is possible it was the one I picked up years ago.