How much color in samples before really digging?

[G-bone]

Yodels all...

So my question to every one is....
when you go out sampling a new area - how much color do you personally need to see from any given spot to make the decision to really work that area another day?


Went out again yesterday to the place I sampled last week.
I got about 5 specks from an area that looked promising so went back yesterday and gave that area some time.
Cleaned up the bedrock real good and moved approx. 8 unclassified buckets worth.
Actually ended up with less than my sample from the week before.
No skunk, but was kind of expecting more than than that.
Not complaining as it was an awesome day, but got me thinking about future testing.

Cheers

G

 

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[arizau]

If the cracks are narrow I sometimes use a chisel with a hand guard and a geologist hammer; does a pretty good job of splitting open many cracks to get to the good stuff
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&ke...two=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_sr5qw8r48_b_p9

Wear eye protection while doing this.

 

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[Hamfist]

0.02 grams per 3.5 gallon bucket is the minimum that I generally like to see in the area I'm working. That equates to about 1.1 grams per yard and I can dig and process 1/2 yard in a 4-5 hour solo trip without pushing myself too hard if the weather is nice. There is no running water in this particular location and there is hiking involved so I find it easier to sample with a backpackable drywasher than with a pan. If I'm sampling a more accessible spot, I'd be willing to dig ground that was less rich.

 

[mikep691]

If the cracks are narrow I sometimes use a chisel with a hand guard and a geologist hammer; does a pretty good job of splitting open many cracks to get to the good stuff
Amazon.com: chisel guard: Tools & Home Improvement

Wear eye protection while doing this.

Our OSHA/MSHA Rep is in da house.

 

[mikep691]

I work an area that has been pounded over the years. We really don't know if the gold we get is leftover from the hydro days, or has moved in over the years. First thing we did was find the exposed bedrock, and sample. We decided that in this case, SIZE MATTERS!! If we get a few sugar dots, then it's likely been worked recently, or the bigger gold hasn't made it down stream. Over three years, we worked an area of creek bed that was about 100 feet long, and we moved every piece of gravel on that bedrock. We've found lots of "little" gold, some pickers, and a few small nuggets. Just working some weekends, and running ALL the gravels through the sluices or highbanker, And I mean ALL the gravels. We've found there is just as much gold in this overburden as there is on the bedrock. The gravels are anywhere from a few inches to a few feet thick on this bedrock, and up to 10 feet wide. While I'm in Northern Cal, your So Cal area will be quite different. Your mining methods will also be different. The quantity and quality of gold will be different as well. So I guess there is no safe, pat answer to your question.

 

[gold tramp]

If the cracks are narrow I sometimes use a chisel with a hand guard and a geologist hammer; does a pretty good job of splitting open many cracks to get to the good stuff
Amazon.com: chisel guard: Tools & Home Improvement

Wear eye protection while doing this.

I love the chisel gaurd, i wish i new about them years back as my hands a destroyed from missing the chisel hittin my hand.
Good tool miner approved.
GT.......

 

[arizau]

Our OSHA/MSHA Rep is in da house.

30 plus years on the mining side and 17 years retired (9 year early retirement) ....I still remember some things.

 

[johnnysau]

Nice statement, but i think you meant 1/5 of a yard for 8 buckets ( not a 1/8 of a yard ).

My gold calculator says 1 grain per 20 pounds material .208 Oz per ton.
or .2917 Oz per cubic yard.

johnnysau

 

[GrizzlyGremlin]

Nice statement, but i think you meant 1/5 of a yard for 8 buckets ( not a 1/8 of a yard ).

My gold calculator says 1 grain per 20 pounds material .208 Oz per ton.
or .164 Oz per cubic yard.

johnnysau

That would be some ridiculously good material! I'm not sure those calcs are perfect though. A yard of gravels goes like this. ~168#s per cubic foot. 27 cubic feet per yard. =4536#s per yard.

 

[johnnysau]

I have checked a rechecked the calculations, i believe they are pretty close. Heres some info on the pounds per cubic yard
i have found on a couple of sites, though what i used for my calculation was 2800 pounds not the 2835 this particular site quotes.

Multiply the weight of the gravel, in this case 105 pounds, by 27 to determine cubic yards because there are 27 cubic feet in 1 cubic yard. The result is 2,835 pounds per cubic yard of gravel.

THE ABOVE IS ONE QUOTE I FOUND. Im probaly not exact but should be very usable. I can put in any amount of gold found
in any poundage of ore for basic calculations, its nothing but a fun spreadsheet to mess around with, but interesting at the same time. Take care
johnnysau

 

[goldog]

Some buckets are heavier than others so you guys are probably in the ballpark. In our area a dollar a bucket or a gram per yard (+\_ $40) would be great. Maybe we can call it a pennyweight per yard just to simplify things. (3000#).

Obviously these are not "paying" amounts using a shovel and sluice but you may cover gas.

For G-bone I hope this helps. Now that we've done the math I'll say 25-50 cents a bucket might be a reasonable goal in our area. Your eight buckets might pay 1-2 grains ($2-5). The East Fork should yield that as well as your recent area of op. My home turf, not so much but I'll keep trying.

 

[goldog]

Got asked today "Does your gut say keep digging or move on?" Very relevant to this thread since it came from G-bone.
The claim is bone dry again since ElNino didn't visit SoCal. We always considered it too wet to work dry but after years of drought it's pretty dry.
One bonus of working dry is really getting a look at the creek bed. A while back I noticed bedrock in an area of interest. After much work pulling boulders we managed to bank some dirt and line up a friend with a drywasher to run it. Thanks G-bone.


I say keep going.

 

[goldog]

The return at this point is pretty awful. A lot of man hours went into that lil piece. One grain isn't much.

But, 1.we just got to the bottom. 2.Didn't clean it up very well. 3.And haven't really expanded the bottom bedrock footprint or gone left or right.

It's a chunky piece for the area so at least another trip is warranted in my opinion.

 

[johnh]

I have checked a rechecked the calculations, i believe they are pretty close. Heres some info on the pounds per cubic yard
i have found on a couple of sites, though what i used for my calculation was 2800 pounds not the 2835 this particular site quotes.

Multiply the weight of the gravel, in this case 105 pounds, by 27 to determine cubic yards because there are 27 cubic feet in 1 cubic yard. The result is 2,835 pounds per cubic yard of gravel.

THE ABOVE IS ONE QUOTE I FOUND. Im probaly not exact but should be very usable. I can put in any amount of gold found
in any poundage of ore for basic calculations, its nothing but a fun spreadsheet to mess around with, but interesting at the same time. Take care
johnnysau

how are you determining the 105 pounds per cubic foot here? I work in construction doing material testing and quality control so I am very familiar with weight of soils and 105 lbs per cubic foot is a very lightweight material think around that of bagged sand from home depot. keep in mind that a 5 gallon bucket is approx. 0.8 cubic feet. so if your using a 5 gallon bucket worth of material to weight off of you'll want to calc. it by doing (105/.8) x 27 = pounds per cubic yard and that 5 gallon bucket will be filled to the very top. if you have a high amount of rock in the area you are working the weight depending on the type of rock will increase dramatically. its not uncommon for me to see soils with a 135ish pounds/cubic feet density when it is compacted and water acts as a heck of a natural compactor they even have a term for it in the industry called water settling works great if you have the time to let it dry back. with the amount of variance I see in creek beds (large boulders to fine black sand) I have almost given up trying to classify the material to a weight simply because depending on where you are working the material can change from layer to layer as you dig down into it. hope this helps a little

 

[Clay Diggins]

how are you determining the 105 pounds per cubic foot here? I work in construction doing material testing and quality control so I am very familiar with weight of soils and 105 lbs per cubic foot is a very lightweight material think around that of bagged sand from home depot. keep in mind that a 5 gallon bucket is approx. 0.8 cubic feet. so if your using a 5 gallon bucket worth of material to weight off of you'll want to calc. it by doing (105/.8) x 27 = pounds per cubic yard and that 5 gallon bucket will be filled to the very top. if you have a high amount of rock in the area you are working the weight depending on the type of rock will increase dramatically. its not uncommon for me to see soils with a 135ish pounds/cubic feet density when it is compacted and water acts as a heck of a natural compactor they even have a term for it in the industry called water settling works great if you have the time to let it dry back. with the amount of variance I see in creek beds (large boulders to fine black sand) I have almost given up trying to classify the material to a weight simply because depending on where you are working the material can change from layer to layer as you dig down into it. hope this helps a little

Welcome to Tnet johnh!

Thanks for sharing your expertise. This is good information for anyone trying to figure equipment and transportation loading.

In placer mining material is calculated by volume not weight. Typically volume is calculated by cubic yards. Hard rock (lode) mining uses weight calculation but placer doesn't.

How much gold per yard is only part of the consideration. The type of material dictates the mining and processing requirements and that is where you will get a big variation in effort and expense.

When you calculate gold per yard you need to factor in ALL the material. That means all the boulders and rock you remove before processing. It takes time, effort and money to move the material and you are just fooling yourself if you only count yield per classified bucket processed. It doesn't take much effort to process a classified bucket compared to all the digging and classifying to get there.

For a small hand operation in easy ground with easy access about 3 grams per ALL yards moved is a borderline return in my book. When I get involved in a mining operation I expect to make money above and beyond my expenses. That's why I have a minimum break point of 3 grams/yard before I will consider a prospect. For more difficult projects with limited access more overburden or large rock those yards per gram numbers have to be a lot higher.

Big commercial operations (think Carlin Trend) can look at much smaller grams per yard as long as they are working massive deposits. For the weekender just finding a few small flakes over a weekend might be enough. Sometimes a "paying" deposit is more about what your goals are than about how much gold you get for your effort. There is a certain joy in discovering gold in dirt no matter whether you make a "profit" or not.

Heavy Pans

 

[gold tramp]

You wouldn’t pass up a dime lying on the ground would you?

so it doesn’t matter how small the gold is unless you just hunt trophy gold then you throw back the little ones, I have heard some gold clubs even have a slot limit on quarzt gold specimen.

For me any color is good, at the end of the day its values that make a bead, we always hope for lots but most times its just a small amount less than a gram, by months end when its time to mill if we did our job right picked up enough, sampled for values no matter how small the mineralizations and cleaned up what we could dig we get a decent bead.

Theres not a lot of good hardrock grounds for us, and we only work in our own district so I take what I can get,

its no longer about getting rich.

For me its just being able to mine the last that I can, whether I like it or not, my days of working like I do are dwindling fast,

Some folks do it for money,

some for trophys,

I do it for the love of the hard rock dig,

Ramblings Of A Desert Gold Tramp……………