Mineralized Quartz Cut From Quartz Vein

Hi everyone

Today I hiked a new valley and mountain side I had never gone before. I found some rather interesting mineralized quarts spiceman and veins.

What I gathered from limited knowledge of geology, it seems most of rocks there were magmatics and shales, quartzs veins inside the shales and sometimes between dolomites.

Here are some photos for your viewing;

First this vein which was actually dug as there were quartz around it, ran along the shale vein visible on the right side of photo. The vein is roughly 40 cm thick.
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This is the pile of quartz that seems like at some point in the past was dug from the vein above. There were some of them that have colors which in my previous assay showed positive for gold.
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Here is a long shot of what I guess is dolomite vein that had quartz vein in it. Its color is rust iron.
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This is a close shot of quartz vein and dolomite vein. My 0.5 liter bottle of water is there as a reference for the size.
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I broke some of the rocks from quartz vein and it looks like the following.
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The following photos are some interesting rocks found in the dry river bed as I hiked up.
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And
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And
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Here is a rare find for me, there were these yellow to pink stains in this magmatic rock, anyone knows what minerals can have such stains?
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I will first try to do an aqua regia assay on these samples for gold silver.

Thanks
Kj
 

Your best clue is the iron in that second to last pic. Also seeing sulfide ores on that dump. Crush and pan any?
 

Streamline

Thanks for your comment. I haven't done any panning or assaying yet. My procedure is always to do an aqua regia assaying to confirm gold then doing any panning or cyanide leach.


Thanks
 

One trick i learned from the old timers i have worked with is to take a sample of dirt from the base of the quartz vein and pan it.
If no gold is found its highly likely there is no gold in the quartz vein as weathering would have freed it over time.

This cuts down on the number of samples you have to process
 

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One trick i learned from the old timers i have worked with is to take a sample of dirt from the base of the quartz vein and pan it.
If no gold is found its highly likely there is no gold in the quartz vein as weathering would have freed it over time.

This cuts down on the number of samples you have to process

Excellent advice. I will check it out as there is a dried stream underneath both veins.
 

The term ORE or ORE BODY should be reserved for discoveries actually containing valuable minerals.
Mineralized veins and quartz filled faults are common all across the world.

Similiar to how every creek bed does not contain PAY GRAVEL.

Crushing and panning might someday lead you to good ore body.
 

Thanks for your clearification on those terms.
 

This is another quartz vein in close proximity of an old gold mine. I put my foot next to it for size reference. There are a lot of veinlets like this around.

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This is another quartz vein in close proximity of an old gold mine. I put my foot next to it for size reference. There are a lot of veinlets like this around.

View attachment 1647712
Well have you crushed and panned any out?

Remember the gold is not necessarily in the quartz. It can be found in the quartz, along the edges of the quartz, in the gaunge material, along the edges of the country rock, or all of the above in varying concentrations.
 

Hi

Thanks for your message. I haven't done panning yet, I am waiting for a new electromotor to run samples in my hammer mill, then will do aqua regia test.

Once a sample from the quartz vein turns out positive for gold, then I sample the host rock and contact zone.
 

Hi

Today I found a lot of thick quartz veins close to old working area. Very similar samples with dark brown stains showed positive for gold. I have to wait to setup my mill again.

IMG_3593.PNG
 

Hi

I went back to the area, and found this thick quartz vein with iron oxide stain all over it. To give you measurements, it was 1.5 meters thick and 40-50 meters length.

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Here is a shot with a different angle,
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And another close shot
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A few km west of this vein similar vein had been worked for gold.
 

so very true ! sample and sample .core drill if you can too
 

Elkguy

I am back to the basics. I will have my handheld mill using black steel pipe with a cap on end and a rod that fit through that pipe as the hammer and mill a few small chunks of samples to superfine powder and do aqua regia assay on them and check the result with stannous chloride testing solution.
 

All

I finally have my pipe mill ready. This simple and very effective milling for assay sample, was by Deano from Australia. Its a black pipe 48 mm interior diameter, with a cap on, and I use a shaft 35 mm diameter and 600 mm length. The pipe length is 30 cm.

It is very fast in pulverizing rocks into fine powder, here are some photos;

Sample 10
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Here are the small pieces in pipe mill after 22 minutes bashing,
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At this phase, I will be pulverizing my quartzs samples first then aqua regia assaying, again shared by Deano from Australia.

Best regards
KJ
 

Hi

I can't make out what this mineral is, please advise. The vein runs in ophiolite host rock and are always has this brown stain but when it is cut there are green inside.

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Here is a closer shot
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Thanks in advance
KJ
 

Hello and happy new year

I can't get to prospector paradise site which was the most informative gold prospecting site any ideas why is not working?
 

In continuing quartz ore sampling and panning here are some mineralized quartz ores I had spotted before I built my chain mill, and brought with me some rocks.

Sample rocks, mostly iron minerals in quartz imbeded in mica shell,
View attachment 1560943

Smaller rocks which were dropped off the main quartz ore body were collected and can be seen here,
View attachment 1560946

I put all these rocks into my chain mill except the big quartz with black stain on it, here is the output which I sifted for panning,
View attachment 1560947

Starting to pan, lots of light white quartz were washed off,
View attachment 1560951

Here is what I think is blacksand since it was heavy and upon looking at it using loup very fine gold powder were visible but not a lot, hard to take photo, but I will pan the rest and smelt the concentrates to see if there is gold for sure or not,
View attachment 1560961

Best regards
KJ

If the gold specks you saw through your loupe were on top of the "black sand" then it is highly unlikely to be gold. Gold is three or more times heavier than most equivalent sized material so it would most likely be buried in the pile. If the specks were mostly separate from other materials then there is a a good chance they are gold. One thing to know and always my first GOTO to identify gold.....gold retains a yellow color even when not in direct light unlike most of if not all other materials. Just shade by using your hand.

Good luck.
 

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