Gold in Sand and Gravel pits

[GoldReport]

Hi everyone!

Novice prospector here. I work for an aggregates mining company and have talked with the company geologist about gold in our s&g deposits. At my last site visits in Southern NY + NW PA I took my gold pan. I grabbed about a gallon of material from the sand screws and panned them. I would have done more material but was time limited. I did indeed find some glacial gold, really small stuff. What I am having a tough time figuring out is what processing this would look like. In my head I would set up a sluice box where the chute that feeds the sand screw is located. It would need to be something as low cost as possible and would not need to be cleaned out very often. Anyone have any pics of their setup they would be willing to share?

Still trying to determine the concentration in these deposits. If they could recover at least 0.01g per ton of sand, I think it could be profitable as an additional revenue stream.

 

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[Back-of-the-boat]

Do you know what their setup looks like? Curious what people use... is it just a couple of parallel sluice boxes in between the wash screen and sand plant?

I was meaning to run my material last night but my pump decided it wanted to die. What I get for buying a 15 dollar bilge on Amazon. The main reason for using my homemade sluice at all is just to test out its functionality. I'll definitely save all the material and pan out material one bucket at a time if I don't feel like the sluice is catching all the cons.

No one gets to see it I heard about it from an ex worker who runs a concrete plant now. I am sure they just run it all down some sluices. That is what everyone upstream does. High bankers.

 

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[Back-of-the-boat]

Fine could be good though in a large source like a gravel pit.
Probably not so good for a recreational miner but sometimes is ok for a commercial venture.

They actually named a cove in the lake, fine gold cove I think it is directly across from the old submerged fine gold, gold mine and just up the road is the town of Coarsegold so that tells you what kind of gold you get up there. LOL On the river I always just get fine no matter which spots I go to. But gold is gold just need to keep your eyes open for rattlesnakes I almost stepped on a coiled 6 footer while not paying attention luckily his head was under the rock and he didn't sense me.

 

[russau]

Years back the GPAA had a video for sale of "Ralph " talking about his finds and there was a sand & gravel plant in the back ground of the show and it was "'apparent " and hinted that this was where he had gone to get his material from. I have that video somewhere . that video was my hint to do just what Ralph was showing . It's just sitting there waiting on us !

 

[Gold Maven]

 

[Gold Maven]

not sure why i couldn't add text to that pic, but here is some gravel pit gold from Ohio.
It's there, but so is ALOT of black sand,

 

[Ohiogoldfever]

not sure why i couldn't add text to that pic, but here is some gravel pit gold from Ohio.
It's there, but so is ALOT of black sand,

What part of Ohio did you work this out of?

 

[Gold Maven]

What part of Ohio did you work this out of?

holmes county

 

[GoldReport]

not sure why i couldn't add text to that pic, but here is some gravel pit gold from Ohio.
It's there, but so is ALOT of black sand,

I ran a bucket of concrete sand I got from my local place here in Jersey. Found a bunch! of black sand but no visible gold yet. At least was a good test on my homemade (kinda shoddy) recirculating sluice. The 1100 gph pump I bought wasn't working for some reason so I hooked up my 600gph pump. I measured how long to fill a 5 gallon bucket and came up with 350 gph of actual flow. Is this normal? Maybe I need to rethink my setup a bit.


In any case I'm not surprised I found a lot of black sand, Jersey was once a major iron source for the US back in the 1800s and I live in the heart of that industry.

 

[GoldReport]

I ran a bucket of concrete sand I got from my local place here in Jersey. Found a bunch! of black sand but no visible gold yet. At least was a good test on my homemade (kinda shoddy) recirculating sluice. The 1100 gph pump I bought wasn't working for some reason so I hooked up my 600gph pump. I measured how long to fill a 5 gallon bucket and came up with 350 gph of actual flow. Is this normal? Maybe I need to rethink my setup a bit.


In any case I'm not surprised I found a lot of black sand, Jersey was once a major iron source for the US back in the 1800s and I live in the heart of that industry.

Loaded to the gills with black sand maybe I should empty out more regularly? Or need a new setup altogether

 

[arizau]

I ran a bucket of concrete sand I got from my local place here in Jersey. Found a bunch! of black sand but no visible gold yet. At least was a good test on my homemade (kinda shoddy) recirculating sluice. The 1100 gph pump I bought wasn't working for some reason so I hooked up my 600gph pump. I measured how long to fill a 5 gallon bucket and came up with 350 gph of actual flow. Is this normal? Maybe I need to rethink my setup a bit.


In any case I'm not surprised I found a lot of black sand, Jersey was once a major iron source for the US back in the 1800s and I live in the heart of that industry.

Actual GPH pumped will vary depending on how high the water is pumped. The rating may be based on a lesser lift than you set up for your test.

 

[russau]

View attachment 2174560
Loaded to the gills with black sand maybe I should empty out more regularly? Or need a new setup altogether

Well you gotta start somewhere !

 

[Johnnybravo300]

It's strange that a sandpit would sell the sand with the gold still in it.
Ive never even heard of that before.
That would never fly in Colorado.

 

[GoldReport]

It's strange that a sandpit would sell the sand with the gold still in it.
Ive never even heard of that before.
That would never fly in Colorado.

The amount of gold is quite small. There used to be a company in NY that went around looking for gold in sand and gravel pits, I don't know how successful it was but they don't do that kind of work anymore.

Do you know what sort of equipment is used in Colorado to process the gold? Trying to determine how expensive the install + upkeep would be for a small to medium sized sand & gravel operation

 

[Crow]

At the end of the day the cost of extraction has to less than what gold your recovering. to make it worth while. And have a profit margin worth the effort.

For example if you sand and gravel company are handling 200 thousand tons of black sand per year and retrieving 1 gram per ton. I gram is 86.66 dollars in processing is a one site processing 200000 tons. you could in theory before costs recover 173320.00 dollars of gold.

Add cost of processing at multiple sites it just not worth your while. if your getting below I gram Per ton forget it.

Gold ore density is measured by grams per tonne or g/t. Higher-grade mines have densities of 8.0 to 10.0 g/t, while lower-grade mines have densities of 1.0 to 4.0 g/t

The weighted-average mean profit margin of analyzed gold miners was 30.2%so to meet those bench marks. out of that theoretical at I gram per ton recovering 173320.00. Your recovery cost should not exceed 68 percent of 173320.00 dollars in gold recovered.

Crow

 

[GoldReport]

At the end of the day the cost of extraction has to less than what gold your recovering. to make it worth while. And have a profit margin worth the effort.

For example if you sand and gravel company are handling 200 thousand tons of black sand per year and retrieving 1 gram per ton. I gram is 86.66 dollars in processing is a one site processing 200000 tons. you could in theory before costs recover 173320.00 dollars of gold.

Add cost of processing at multiple sites it just not worth your while. if your getting below I gram Per ton forget it.

Gold ore density is measured by grams per tonne or g/t. Higher-grade mines have densities of 8.0 to 10.0 g/t, while lower-grade mines have densities of 1.0 to 4.0 g/t

The weighted-average mean profit margin of analyzed gold miners was 30.2%so to meet those bench marks. out of that theoretical at I gram per ton recovering 173320.00. Your recovery cost should not exceed 68 percent of 173320.00 dollars in gold recovered.

Crow

I appreciate the thoughtful response. For this project I'm only considering the additional cost of running some gold equipment on the plant. I won't take into consideration the cost of running the rest of the plant + pit since that already makes money. I doubt running the operation for gold alone would make money anyways. I've been trying to determine what a setup would look like at an existing sand and gravel operation.

From there I can compare that to the concentration of gold that we are able to recover. I am betting we would recover less than 1g/t more like 0.1g/t or less. And that's fine as long as it makes more money than what it costs. If we can profit a buck or two per ton that is great.

So again I ask, what sort of setup do people use on their existing sand and gravel plants? Is it just an appropriately sized sluice box that gets occasionally cleaned out? I've got ideas but would like to consult someone who has done this before.

 

[Johnnybravo300]

I don't work at a pit but I do asphalt work all over Colorado and have been to alot of different pits and the ones here in Gunnison of course.
I always ask about their gold recoveries and it always seemed that getting anything of value out of the material was one of the first priorities.

I don't think most pits get very much but it helps with costs and it's all washed and classified into piles anyway.
I never asked about how they recover it but I'd imagine by sluice or trommel somewhere at the beginning of the process so the gold is taken out before it's lost.
I'll ask about that next time but we are about done with work for winter now.

We have some pits that come up as placer mines so they already know there is some gold there, maybe selling aggregate on the side.

 

[russau]

Most operations that I've been to around Missouri and in Illinois don't want to be hindered by production of their operation by dealing with recovering the small amounts of gold they "may" find in their sands! They know there is small gold their BUT they are making good money in their sands ! Our club was able to go in there when they were down and ONLY then! QAnd we were told about mixing the different sands from different piles or DON'T come back ! our club had a lot of fun while we were permitted to be there and the gold & black sands were ours to keep !

 

[russau]

If my old brain works right ,I remember that there is /was a S&G plant in Nebraska that had a fine gold set up installed and cleaned up when the plant was down. I think NebraskDad (a member here) reported this on a yahoo groups web site . All of their S&G ran across a large sluice if I remember correctly.............. Maye he could chime in and clear this up ??

 

[southfork]

At one time I had access to some river front property that was drag lined for gold and rock products. Basically, hands and pans only when I tried panning if I could have slipped a suction dredge there was money to be made. The bottom was granite and decomposed granite sands loaded with small gold and more black sands than I could work. I seen photos of pans full of nuggets from a trommel working at a sand and gravel plant near by that was on an old channel deposit. May have been shut down from all the muddy water clouding up the local creek.

 

[russau]

Southfork , that land would be worth looking into for possible purchase ?? But dredging now-a-days in California is kaput ! But if it was that rich , there could be another way!