Gold Ore

[southfork]

A little sample that was found with a metal detector. Crushed by hand then panned to wash away some of the dirt and clay? The photo is macro so real small particles, but the quartz shows and what looks like iron and free gold. I think we need a small smelter to retrieve the values trying to speed up the recovery what's your thoughts ?

 

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[southfork]

If you run the Equinox 800 in Park 2, recovery speed 3-4, sensitivity 21-22, and iron bias second setting at 9, you can detect incredibly small gold. Gold 1 and 2 are extremely noisy- almost like a Whites GMT and it's easy to miss small gold/specimens. With Park 2 you can get a clear signal response and ignore iron giving you way better odds in a trashy mine dump area. This is how Seth has been finding an incredibly large amount of gold in trashy mine dumps and placer workings. This photo shows how small some of the gold is from his recent trip to Nevada.

 

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[southfork]

Today my son is prospecting with a drone and camera sit out on the deck and fly the canyons.

 

[southfork]

Today my son is prospecting with a drone and camera sit out on the deck and fly the canyons.

Found a couple more mine dumps close by able to fly close enough to see quartz.

 

[southfork]

Torch nuggets smelted by torch and a little borax 6.5 grams

 

[southfork]

If you run the Equinox 800 in Park 2, recovery speed 3-4, sensitivity 21-22, and iron bias second setting at 9, you can detect incredibly small gold. Gold 1 and 2 are extremely noisy- almost like a Whites GMT and it's easy to miss small gold/specimens. With Park 2 you can get a clear signal response and ignore iron giving you way better odds in a trashy mine dump area. This is how Seth has been finding an incredibly large amount of gold in trashy mine dumps and placer workings. This photo shows how small some of the gold is from his recent trip to Nevada.

Seth went back to his original mine dump yesterday afternoon and ran the Equinox 800 at the settings shown above. And recovered 15 or more little bits with gold he's crushing it with a mortar and pestle right now loaded with gold. This ore will need to be smelted but loaded with free gold. Metal detector mortar and pestle gold pan bingo we have gold.

 

[desertgolddigger]

WoW! Amazing the prior prospectors missed so much. I think our claim had eagled eye prospectors, as not much got left behind.

 

[southfork]

WoW! Amazing the prior prospectors missed so much. I think our claim had eagled eye prospectors, as not much got left behind.

The Oldtimers didn't have metal detectors and this stuff just looks like dirty rusty rocks. You would need a loupe or small microscope to see the free gold. When you pan the concentrate's, its red mud starting to think the whole pile has micro gold. We have it in the furnace and a nice button starting to form.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

The Oldtimers didn't have metal detectors and this stuff just looks like dirty rusty rocks. You would need a loupe or small microscope to see the free gold. When you pan the concentrate's, its red mud starting to think the whole pile has micro gold. We have it in the furnace and a nice button starting to form.

The consistency of your finds kind of makes me think that the entire dump is commercially economical to haul off and process despite how much material doesn’t sound off with the detector.

 

[Assembler]

The consistency of your finds kind of makes me think that the entire dump is commercially economical to haul off and process despite how much material doesn’t sound off with the detector.

The gold is not in oll of the rock most likely. A lot was dumped for the easy to see ore in the past.

 

[southfork]

The consistency of your finds kind of makes me think that the entire dump is commercially economical to haul off and process despite how much material doesn’t sound off with the detector.

It's not commercially viable or possible to mine it's a hard hike maybe with a donkey. Sometimes it takes a bucket of rocks for a few grams of gold the next trip a baggie full will produce multiple grams of gold. Yesterday's ore samples were really dirty I smelted twice for 6 plus grams and still needs a cleanup, but it was just a pill bottles worth of ore. The rains are back we have a big pile of pay to sluice as soon as the creek starts flowing placer mining is so much easier. No dust no toxic fumes and cleaner gold and I can ride the quads right down to the piles lol.

 

[southfork]

Turned out to be a great day I added the fines and remelted the button most of the impurities are gone. Nice 7 1/2-gram button. I still have a small button with lead as a collector metal to smelt another gram of gold possibly. My son is back out there today with a new plan of attack on the pile good rain yesterday maybe better conductivity.

 

[mikep691]

With all these buttons you're showing us, it might be time for a couple bar molds

 

[southfork]

With all these buttons you're showing us, it might be time for a couple bar molds

We have bar molds I just like making buttons.

 

[southfork]

Yesterday's finds real rich ore and a photo after the crush tonight. I'll take a better picture in natural light in the morning this was hand crushed mortar and pestle. If we run this rich stuff through the mill, it balls the gold up and wraps it around the waste rock and takes longer to smelt. All these bits and pieces sure add up Happy Mining

 

[desertgolddigger]

Unbelievable!! I'd probably faint if some of the rock I found looked like that after the crush. Can't wait to see the button, and hear the weight.

 

[russau]

Probably a good -n- heavy safe would be recommended about now !

 

[southfork]

Probably a good -n- heavy safe would be recommended about now !

The banks safe is plenty heavy and insured maybe lol.

 

[southfork]

A little piece of free gold from yesterday's crush maybe a little platinum or silver mixed in. The rest needs a better crushing this morning to free up the gold.

 

[Clay Diggins]

A little piece of free gold from yesterday's crush maybe a little platinum or silver mixed in. The rest needs a better crushing this morning to free up the gold.

I suspect your "platinum or silver" is more likely to be arsenopyrite. Arsenopyrite actually provides the chemistry to concentrate the gold into veins. Arsenopyrite, in large part, created the motherlode.

I don't know the location of the deposit you are working but here is a paper that will help explain why this silvery metallic compound is so commonly associated with gold in the motherlode and elsewhere.

Researchers discover why gold is concentrated alongside arsenic

Why are gold deposits found at all? Gold is famously unreactive, and there seems to be little reason why gold should be concentrated, rather than uniformly scattered throughout the Earth's crust. Now, an international group of geochemists have discovered why gold is concentrated alongside...

phys.org

Arsenic in your region:

https://escholarship.org/content/qt9m27j495/qt9m27j495_noSplash_ebc27469239943eb1d63482b34028038.pdf

​

Heavy Pans

 

[southfork]

I suspect your "platinum or silver" is more likely to be arsenopyrite. Arsenopyrite actually provides the chemistry to concentrate the gold into veins. Arsenopyrite, in large part, created the motherlode.

I don't know the location of the deposit you are working but here is a paper that will help explain why this silvery metallic compound is so commonly associated with gold in the motherlode and elsewhere.

Researchers discover why gold is concentrated alongside arsenic

Why are gold deposits found at all? Gold is famously unreactive, and there seems to be little reason why gold should be concentrated, rather than uniformly scattered throughout the Earth's crust. Now, an international group of geochemists have discovered why gold is concentrated alongside...

phys.org

Arsenic in your region:

https://escholarship.org/content/qt9m27j495/qt9m27j495_noSplash_ebc27469239943eb1d63482b34028038.pdf

​

Heavy Pans

Thanks for the information there's a lot of pyrites in most of what's being found. Also, after smelting sometimes we find a little spot of bright silver metal on the buttons. The whole area is highly mineralized so no telling I'll leave the assaying to the experts. My son just called he found a fist sized chuck of ore that's making the detector scream another great day in the making. Platinum was found all over California most was recovered as a byproduct of placer mining some large nuggets of platinum were found in Trinity County.