Lousy pics of some gold, and mercury recovered from the Snake

[Jim in Idaho]

I took my new wet/dry device down to Bonanza Bar a couple of weeks ago. I got around to panning the cons today, and thought I'd show the mercury "dust" I recovered. This was all -100 mesh, and the mercury is probably -300 or -400, or smaller. I think there is gold in all the mercury as it doesn't move anywhere near as much as the flour gold. I tried a couple of pics through the 50X microscope, but they didn't turn out very well. The big pile is about dime-sized, or a little smaller. I ended up with about 500 flakes of gold + whatever is in the mercury. I had tried a new location, and it wasn't near as productive as the spot I tried a month ago, where I picked up about 4,000 flakes in a couple of hours.

 

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[HappySwede]

How does the gold look further up the river in Montana?

The best placers for flour gold are usually high benches along inner curves after long rapids. Does this apply to Snake River aswell?

 

[Jim in Idaho]

They did find flour on the benches in the canyon between Jackson Hole, and the Idaho border, but not much downstream of there. From the Idaho border to Lewiston it's mostly just found on the gravel bars. Bonanza Bar had the highest concentration of the entire river. It also had heavy mining activity. That's why the mercury is there...they used copper sheeting in their sluices, coated with a layer of mercury. The flour is very difficult to capture. Anything above 70% is doing very well. I'm heading back down there this week. I have a couple of old claim locations to try.
jim

 

[johnedoe]

How about a little more info on your sluice/wet/dry device.
That is some pretty nice recovery.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

How about a little more info on your sluice/wet/dry device.
That is some pretty nice recovery.

John, this thing is the nuts, but I'm going to try and patent it, so can't talk about it much, for awhile. I dried the cons from the last run, and ran them dry mixed with a bunch of 3/4 minus sand/gravel, and got better than 80% recovery. That's actually a bit better than the wet recovery, which isn't surprising on flour. Water slows the sink rate. The wet recovery ran about 70% when feeding 2" minus material. That would improve considerably if the material was classified tighter, especially on this flour in the Snake, but I wanted to give it harsh test just to see what it could do.
On gems, running dry, I'm getting over 90% recovery when I classify to 1/2" minus,, and remove all the material smaller than the smallest gems I want to recover. The rig works so well, I'm somewhat surprised myself. The prototype is too heavy to pack very far, but I'm going to build a small one this winter. I want one that can be easily backpacked into remote, waterless areas, and still recover the micron gold. I plan on getting the Provisional Application done by February. After that, I can publicize what I'm doing. I appreciate your interest.
Jim

 

[et1955]

Could you please explain the type of mercury dust you found, the merc that I have found does not act that way in your picture.

 

[johnedoe]

John, this thing is the nuts, but I'm going to try and patent it, so can't talk about it much, for awhile. I dried the cons from the last run, and ran them dry mixed with a bunch of 3/4 minus sand/gravel, and got better than 80% recovery. That's actually a bit better than the wet recovery, which isn't surprising on flour. Water slows the sink rate. The wet recovery ran about 70% when feeding 2" minus material. That would improve considerably if the material was classified tighter, especially on this flour in the Snake, but I wanted to give it harsh test just to see what it could do.
On gems, running dry, I'm getting over 90% recovery when I classify to 1/2" minus,, and remove all the material smaller than the smallest gems I want to recover. The rig works so well, I'm somewhat surprised myself. The prototype is too heavy to pack very far, but I'm going to build a small one this winter. I want one that can be easily backpacked into remote, waterless areas, and still recover the micron gold. I plan on getting the Provisional Application done by February. After that, I can publicize what I'm doing. I appreciate your interest.
Jim

Looking forward to the info release.... Good luck and heavy pans...

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Could you please explain the type of mercury dust you found, the merc that I have found does not act that way in your picture.

Well, I first thought it was platinum, but looking at it through the 50X pocket microscope, it was obvious it was mercury. Most of it was globular...tiny bright silver balls. Some of it was clumpy....just like amalgam. In the pic, it looks like a pile, but what looks like a pile is actually pretty flat.....more like a layer of paint, or dust. It really hugs the bottom of the pan.
Jim