Hard rock sampling tips?

[IDAu]

It appears I’m in a place with high grade pockets and little to none in between. Does anyone have tips they can share or how to go about this?

If I had the equipment to process tons I’d just chug away at the whole vein keeping notes as I went along. But right now it’s a small PITA grinder and a pan.

Here’s what I did. On this hydrothermal breccia vein I trenched from top to bottom and bagged 3 separate samples. Top, bottom, and a solid quartz vein in the middle (circled).

They all seem to be about the same. Averaging 1 tiny color per pan. I’m guessing this is nowhere near worth mining so I’m going to have to hope I hit random high grade pockets that I can later ID. Paying for an assay seems kind of pointless in this situation.

 

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[Assembler]

It appears I’m in a place with high grade pockets and little to none in between. Does anyone have tips they can share or how to go about this?

If I had the equipment to process tons I’d just chug away at the whole vein keeping notes as I went along. But right now it’s a small PITA grinder and a pan.

Here’s what I did. On this hydrothermal breccia vein I trenched from top to bottom and bagged 3 separate samples. Top, bottom, and a solid quartz vein in the middle (circled).

They all seem to be about the same. Averaging 1 tiny color per pan. I’m guessing this is nowhere near worth mining so I’m going to have to hope I hit random high grade pockets that I can later ID. Paying for an assay seems kind of pointless in this situation.

I'm guessing that you can't take a look at the location where the producing ore rock was processed or even just crushed ?

Looking for metamorphic rock is likely a place to start for crushing and panning.
Any out of place rock also could be a place to start along a contact zone area.

 

[IDAu]

I'm guessing that you can't take a look at the location where the producing ore rock was processed or even just crushed ?

Looking for metamorphic rock is likely a place to start for crushing and panning.
Any out of place rock also could be a place to start along a contact zone area.

I cannot access the old location.

So far from another sample, I got about a color in each pan from the top half and nothing from the lower half.

I'm going to fire assay a sample from the top soon. Not really sure if I should invest the money just to process something like this without knowing if and when a hot spot may be located in it.