Placer Claim Mined Out?

[desertgolddigger]

I belong to a local club that owns a claim. This club has had this claim for many years, and acquired it after the old timers had mined it previously, and others after they commercial outfits closed up.
I walked quite a bit of the 160 acre claim, and noted that just about every wash had been worked. Most of the surface nuggets has also been detected by those with gold detectors. In other words, this place has been picked over and over and over.
But I m a stubborn type of person, and I figured, just watching how people ram their puffer and blower drywashers, that some gold was just being blown through them. maybe not much, but some small stuff that never got a chance to settle behind the riffles.
I know many of you would never go to the effort of digging for three to four hours through the tailings in these washes. Again, I'm a bit stubborn, and anyway, I just wanted to have some fun locally, instead of driving 300 miles roundtrip to something that gives a little more for less effort.
I've spent the last three weeks, digging a few times a week along about 30 yards of wash, and have recovered just about a gram of gold. That might not seem like much, but I have only dug up 5 grams, not counting this one gram in almost 20 years out here drywashing in the desert of southern California.
As you would know, things always seem to go wrong. My gas powered blower motor decided it was time for the repair shop, and haven't heard from the shop in two weeks. So I purchased a WORX WG521 corded electric leaf blower to use with my Royal Large drywasher. I'm using a portable generator to provide the power. And it actually is working better than with my old gas powered blower. I have to run the blower on the lowest speed, or I just blow everything through the riffles. Results are very good, as I am getting gold specks so small that I will have to use the Blue bowl in order to recover them.
I'm not only getting a little gold, I'm having some fun, and I am getting a good workout. I've lost 10 pounds since I started. So things are going well.
I'm still digging test holes around the old time hard rock mines in the hope I will find where the gold has drifted downhill below these mines. So far just a couple specks here and there. I figure I just have to move laterally one way or the other before I get something better Of course, I' don't really know if the old timers stripped the hillsides. Even if they have, they apparently aren't as thorough as I am. I hope that I may be lucky and find a larger piece of gold that the old timers, previous placer miners, and detectorists have missed.
Hope everyone is having as much fun as I have been having.

 

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[arizau]

Today I got the two water tubs set up and filled with water. I placed the sluice, hooked up my water pump to the new power converter, and turned things on.

What I didn't realize was that the 3/4 inch pipe couldn't keep up with the flow of water. The catch basin tub filled up, and almost overflowed.

So I've ordered a two inch pipe.

I use the siphon system put forth in a youtube video titled "Recirculating Sluice Box Improvements"....google it. Note the piping size necessary to keep up with his pump.

Good luck.

 

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[desertgolddigger]

arizau, That system shown on YouTube is unreal. I'll never figure out how the water moves up and over without some kind of motive force. I guess, as the water level rises in each tank, it forces the water up and over.

 

[desertgolddigger]

For now, I've gone to a one tub, two bucket setup for sluicing. My pump is in one bucket opposite the sluice, and the other bucket catches everything possible. The super fine stuff just floats too long before settling. Definitely need a three or four unit tub setup like the one arizau pointed me to. Right now I can't afford the two hundred or so dollars for those tubs and the tubing and other parts required for that kind of setup.

But my system is now operational, and I ran some panning tailings I did yesterday. Nothing was visible even to a 10X loupe, but somewhat more magnification showed stuff even finer than the ultra fines I've been getting. So I now know my sluice setup can catch those ultra fines, and smaller particles of gold.

I'm taking a break right now. I think I need to setup my canopy to keep the sun off of me, or I may become a crispy critter. Once that's done, I'll sluice the last bucket of panning tailings to see if anything is there.

EDITED: I spent about 15 minutes picking through the gravel I toted home. About 2/3rds was junk rock in my still learning opinion. I ended up with about one inch of rock in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. As usual, I only panned the 100 mesh and smaller material, ending up with a nice little line of gold, that weighed in at 2/100th gram. Will find out what the other stuff might have in it tomorrow.

It's nice to have positive results, even though most of you would probably not bother, as too time consuming.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I tried something different today. Instead of sluicing my material larger than 100 mesh, i just lumped it all together, and dry washed it.

What happened. Surprise of all surprises is that the drywasher did much better the way I set up my drywasher, and how I run the material, versus using the large sluice.

Where I barely saw any gold from the sluice, I ended up with a very nice line in the pan. It's nothing to crow about at 1/200th of a gram, but these gold particles are really tiny.

My sluice is set at slightly less than one inch per foot, and I basically have the water flowing just fast enough to cover the sluice bed from side-to-side. Maybe that's a problem, and why I don't catch as much gold in the sluice, as I do in the drywasher.

But for now, I will just pan the 100 mesh and smaller, and run the rest through the drywasher. It's much faster, and for me the best method for me until someone can suggest something with the sluice. Nice thing is it isn't as messy with a drywasher. :-)

 

[desertgolddigger]

If you liked what you tried today you may want to try a simple air tunnel where all of the dry material flows and drops out as it travels down the tunnel. A lot less classification is needed with this as well as the drop out will do much of it for you. Kind of like dry washing on steroids with less classification.

You can process more material per minute as well.

Assembler, I think you mentioned this earlier, and the only reason I didn't do anything was I couldn't find any references on the method.

Is it possible you could point me to a reference online that explains this method, and tells a person how to make it.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Here is a simple test for you to try to give you an idea how this works.
Grind a 20 to 100 lbs of rock as a test batch into powder.

The following will sound silly however this is a test for you to see with your own eyes:
Take two tarps say one around 5' x 8' or 8' x 10' placed over a much larger tarp say 20 x 30' if you can. The small tarp is placed on top of the bigger tarp centered on top of the open ground. Place the powdered rock in the center of the small tarp.

Go get yourself a used gas leaf air blower if you can to keep the cost down. Wear a good dust mask and eye glasses. Gas up and start the leaf blower and use a middle air flow setting as a starting point. Point the air nozzle at the pile of powdered rock dust to blow in a circler pattern to spread out the powder. Take a notice how the heavies and larger rock partials are the last to even move away from the pile as you get near the bottom. Keep the nozzle moving at all times as the pile may only last 1 minute or less. Be ready to stop or move the air nozzle away as you get near the bottom.

The bigger tarp will catch most of the lighter material. The very fine partials may not settle on top of the bigger tarp and that is ok for this test. A long air tunnel will catch most of the very fines.
Sweep up the heavies left on top of the small tarp and pick up the smaller tarp to funnel the heavies into a plastic bucket for wet panning or if you like run through your dry washer if you like then wet pan with a magnet to pull off much of the black sands.

This test will help you learn how the air will go through a lot of material in a minute or two with out much classifying as you can see the drop out of the different materials and different sizes spreading outward.

A air tunnel is easy to make out of plastic and hoops over wood or even the ground to catch most of the material for you to shovel up as you see fit for further processing.

Thanks, but I think I'll pass on your suggestion. My property is 16/100 acre, and 90 percent of it is developed. What I call my back/back yard is just large enough for running my drywasher, or sluice setup. This is where I made my waste water sum, 3 foot deep, 8x8 feet. and filled with rock

Since I live in what is called a one foot flood zone, part of my property perimeter is walled with a planter box berm, or rock/sandbag berms.

I just don't have the room for large mining setups. So I'll have to work with what I already have.

I did discover yesterday that the extra fine gold probably isn't any smaller than 200 mesh. I'm going to research about making a 200 mesh shaking setup, so I can rid myself of this fluff that creates such a mess in the pan, sometimes creating clay balls,

 

[Assembler]

A less scary test for you is to take a plastic cutter and put say a pound of rock powder into it. Then take a leaf blower that is running at idle speed to move the material down the cutter. Take a note of what materials move first and take close attention what material moves last. This is what to look for with your given rock test sample. Make a mental note of the distance of the nozzle and air flow to make the material move.

Second step is to run a magnet over the bottom of the gutter to remove much of the black sands. Then funnel the remaining materials into your dry washer or better yet a wet pan etc.

You can then repeat the test on top of a large tarp with your second test batch of rock powder to repeat the notes you made as you go.

 

[desertgolddigger]

A less scary test for you is to take a plastic cutter and put say a pound of rock powder into it. Then take a leaf blower that is running at idle speed to move the material down the cutter. Take a note of what materials move first and take close attention what material moves last. This is what to look for with your given rock test sample. Make a mental note of the distance of the nozzle and air flow to make the material move.

Second step is to run a magnet over the bottom of the gutter to remove much of the black sands. Then funnel the remaining materials into your dry washer or better yet a wet pan etc.

You can then repeat the test on top of a large tarp with your second test batch of rock powder to repeat the notes you made as you go.

Wouldn't be wiser to instead of a gutter pipe, use a round flex pipe that is ribbed, when using the blower on low. My electric blower doesn't idle. if you curve this pipe like curves in a stream, you should get a settling effect on the insides of the curves.

you'd also need to build a box that will funnel the material to be blown through the tunnel, so that it slides down wind from the blower, without any back blast. And you'd still need a basin to catch what comes out of the ribbed tube.

Home Depot sells 25 foot lengths of non-perforated ribbed tubing, but for now I will just continue on until I can spend money on experimental stuff like you suggest.

 

[Assembler]

The use of just a few tarps will handle all that you have been talking about. You will have to funnel off the concentrate material after each batch of rock powder. You will then have concentrates that you can carry back to your camp or take home if you like for further processing. The tailings you just rake back into the earth or the hole that the rocks came out of. Most people will not pack out 500 - 700 pounds or more of rock powder to take home if they want to enjoy their time out in the field.

 

[desertgolddigger]

The ribbed flex pipe will work as a wind tunnel however it is hard to pick up to clean out.
The reason I suggest using an open gutter is so you can see the action as you blow the material down the open gutter for you to make mental notes as to what is happening with different flows / nozzle distance / air speed.

A gas blower has a much wider range of air flow to work with and is a better choice for that reason.

The electric blower will work as well. In fact, I'm thinking of using HF largest electric blower that they sell for dust collection with some collection containers in line with some crushing equipment. You will have to learn to work with your electric blower to see how it goes.

The tarps you likely have for a simple test. The gas leaf blower you may be able to pick up used for less than $35.00 used from secondhand stores / garage sales. The handheld size will work well as you don't need the backpack version to start with. When you go through 100 lbs. at a time you will see a use for the setup out in the field. That is the size of just a few smaller rocks.

You may be able to blow across open bedrock for helping you to clean up for your Dry washer material if you think that is good. This will save you hours of time.

I have two gas leaf blowers. I just purchased a Makita to supplement my Dolmar, because the Dolmar is getting old, and is my vacuum blower. Come to find out the both are the same machine, with different brand names. Dolmar was modified for the Keene vac unit.

Anyway, I'm probably not going to try your wind tunnel thing, as I've some up with a shaker mechanism that will classify things very quickly. That means I can run an 80 mesh then classify the smaller than 80 mesh with a 180 classifier. I doubt there's much finer gold in the smaller than 180 mesh, but will save the stuff for when I finally can afford the three to four tub siphon system for the cleanup sluice.

The sluice will be OK for the 80-179 mesh without making too much of a mess like the finer material does.

 

[desertgolddigger]

The use of just a few tarps will handle all that you have been talking about. You will have to funnel off the concentrate material after each batch of rock powder. You will then have concentrates that you can carry back to your camp or take home if you like for further processing. The tailings you just rake back into the earth or the hole that the rocks came out of. Most people will not pack out 500 - 700 pounds or more of rock powder to take home if they want to enjoy their time out in the field.

Right now I'm still picking over that waste pile. Every time I go out there, I find more low grade ore, and occasionally a few small pieces of higher grade ore. I only carry back home 10 buckets. I also classify things to 16 mesh and smaller, so I run the dirt and sand in that waste pile. Each time, I've gotten a few hundredths of a gram of the fine and super fine gold that gets thrown away by the miners who dug the hard rock mine.

As this is mostly low grade ore, I'm guesstimating those 10 buckets and drywasher finds are only 1/4 gram at most. So this isn't something that is even paying for the fuel. It's more of a learning experience, as I can run various types of rocks to find out which produces the most gold. So far it's the ugly dark brown stuff that looks like lava, that is the best producer. But most is very fine, to ultra fine in size, regardless of the ore type. Like I said, this location was given to me, and I think the reason is to see if I will learn something, to prepare me for the next step, finding my own hard rock location. Hopefully that will happen before I run out of this material.

It's starting to get hot again. so prospecting will only be the first few hours after dawn, and by late June, not at all.

 

[Assembler]

I have two gas leaf blowers. I just purchased a Makita to supplement my Dolmar, because the Dolmar is getting old, and is my vacuum blower. Come to find out the both are the same machine, with different brand names. Dolmar was modified for the Keene vac unit.

Anyway, I'm probably not going to try your wind tunnel thing, as I've some up with a shaker mechanism that will classify things very quickly. That means I can run an 80 mesh then classify the smaller than 80 mesh with a 180 classifier. I doubt there's much finer gold in the smaller than 180 mesh, but will save the stuff for when I finally can afford the three to four tub siphon system for the cleanup sluice.

The sluice will be OK for the 80-179 mesh without making too much of a mess like the finer material does.

Great.
Try the blower on the fine messy stuff that most can't sluice. When you finish spreading out the fine material over the tarp use a magnet such as HF rolling magnet for cleaning up shop floors / driveways to remove much of the black sands. Then pick up the tarp to funnel into a bucket / container for you to run through your pan / sluice.

You may want to test the material that is between 80 - 180 mesh with the blower method if it is dry to help remove the finer light material that is often mixed with it.

 

[Assembler]

Right now I'm still picking over that waste pile. Every time I go out there, I find more low grade ore, and occasionally a few small pieces of higher grade ore. I only carry back home 10 buckets. I also classify things to 16 mesh and smaller, so I run the dirt and sand in that waste pile. Each time, I've gotten a few hundredths of a gram of the fine and super fine gold that gets thrown away by the miners who dug the hard rock mine.

As this is mostly low grade ore, I'm guesstimating those 10 buckets and drywasher finds are only 1/4 gram at most. So this isn't something that is even paying for the fuel. It's more of a learning experience, as I can run various types of rocks to find out which produces the most gold. So far it's the ugly dark brown stuff that looks like lava, that is the best producer. But most is very fine, to ultra fine in size, regardless of the ore type. Like I said, this location was given to me, and I think the reason is to see if I will learn something, to prepare me for the next step, finding my own hard rock location. Hopefully that will happen before I run out of this material.

It's starting to get hot again. so prospecting will only be the first few hours after dawn, and by late June, not at all.

If you are spotting the higher grade with your eyes you can spend more time looking for it if your handling time of the materials is a lot less out in the field.

You could get a lot better return on your time out in the field if the leaf blower is used especially on the low grade rock and maybe not even screen it. You may not need to for about the same results in just a few minutes of blowing time. Don't forget you can also use the leaf blower to clean off the rest of the tarp that you think is not worth the time or has little values in it. A magnifier glass will show you what is there in the material.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Great.
Try the blower on the fine messy stuff that most can't sluice. When you finish spreading out the fine material over the tarp use a magnet such as HF rolling magnet for cleaning up shop floors / driveways to remove much of the black sands. Then pick up the tarp to funnel into a bucket / container for you to run through your pan / sluice.

You may want to test the material that is between 80 - 180 mesh with the blower method if it is dry to help remove the finer light material that is often mixed with it.

I don't have a way to crush ore in the field. That's why I take it home. My crusher is too heavy and bulky for me to lift anyway. I don't have the strength you guys have. My max lift is 100 pounds to knee level, and I'm straining at that. Remember I'm female, and age 73. I've got a few more years of experiencing gold mining, then I'll have to quit.

 

[JohnWhite]

I just got a new toy in the mail and I would recommend it to anyone who would like to carry a portable microscope into the field…It is much smaller than my old one and I can see the little silver in my ore so much better…Here is a screen shot off of eBay…

I forgot to mention it came from China pretty darned fast but there might be sellers here in the USA…

Ed T

 

[desertgolddigger]

Assembler, Please end the blower thing. I know you're trying to help, but I don't have unlimited resources to take tons of equipment out to some location, and set up a hard rock mining thing. I do mining on a shoestring budget. I also do it for fun, which I'm having right now.

I am having fun just finding a smidgen of gold. If, in my last few years, I find something significant, I may be open to getting things to work it. For now, I'm just in this mining for the fun, and slowly learning.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I went placer mining at the club claim this morning. I only dug 10 buckets of 1/4 inch classified material, but did quite well getting 0.18 grams, not including oodles of mesh 75 and smaller gold, that the mercury slurped up. It did me in though. So I need a few days to recover.

It looks like this weekend will be very nice, so I think I'll hook up boxy trailer and make a three day excursion. Hopefully three days might net me 1/2 a gram, but won't know until I process it all the day after I get back.

I'm going to experiment with drywashing all the material I crush with the chain mill. I'm taking a piece of plexiglass, maybe wood would be less staticy, and covering the top five riffles. I'll be running the material very slowly, and on a low blower setting. What I'm trying to accomplish is preventing the super fine gold from being blown over the sides at the top of the washer, adjacent to where the fan/counterweight are.

I've rerun this fluff blown over the sides to find very fine gold. Maybe a partial drywasher riffle box cover will improve things. Kind of a vibrating wind tunnel. I'll let you know how it works.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Results are in for my covered drywasher tray body. While it wanted to work, the fluffy material didn't want to slide down the hopper, through the feed hole. I'm not going to try this again. I'll run the material, and then run it two more times. I'll have to have a 10x15 tarp to catch what material sprays over the sides.

Results were just about 3/100ths of a gram, mostly that ultra fine gold, but I got half a dozen larger specks between mesh 50 and 100.

My drywasher seems to do a very good job of catching the ultra fines, but I need some way of capturing in a small space, all the stuff that gets blown over the sides.

What's nice is all I had were three pans of material to pan, instead of 50 when I was panning everything.

 

[desertgolddigger]

As usual, I've purchased lots of things I eventually will never use. Some are all the sieves, the 4 inch diameter ones specifically. Of course these purchases were based on what little knowledge I had at the time.

This new purchase (Amazon product ASIN B07K2ZVKF5) will get loads of use, as long as it lasts. But it really works well. I milled nearly a bucket of material, then used this to classify using a 100 mesh screen from my mining operation. While not a perfect fit, my 100 mesh sieve did its job, and I now have two buckets of well sifted material, 100- and 100+.. I'll also be purchasing the 120, 150 and 180 mesh screens.

I have also, finally figured out how to properly mill most of my rock to a fine powder, where over 3/4ths is smaller than 100 mesh. I found I wasn't running the machine long enough between scoops. I now put in about 5 cups of no larger than 1.5 inch rock, then let run at least a minute between another 5 cups. At the end I let the machine run two to three minutes. While not putting in rock, I leave the cap off, like southfork mentioned in his "Gold Ore" thread. All of this is helping a lot, as I am no longer having to rerun material the size of pea gravel before I figured this method out.

EDITED: To let you Gents know, this sifting machine wants to dance like the K&M Krusher, With the Krusher, I anchored it with three fence post clamps. This shaker only needed an 18x 36x3/4 inch piece of plywood to pretty much hold it in place, but I added 35 pound bricks on each end of the plywood board to make sure it couldn't dance.

 

[desertgolddigger]

My plan to be out this weekend are off until sometime in the future. Why? My doctor is referring me to a Podiatrist because of problems with my left foot. My mobility is not as good as I need. So My excursions will be limited to once or twice a week, at best. One for placer mining, and the other for picking the hard rock tailing piles.

Maybe sampling a rock as someone suggested by hand crushing, and panning. Who knows. Maybe I'll get lucky. The area in and around the area I've been working apparently is covered with small patches of highly mineralized pockets that contain gold. It's just a matter of finding one, one not on anyone's claim. Apparently two people I know got lucky finding several places. Some were very small finds, but a few are big enough to keep them busy for a while.

If the Humbug Mountain on which we have our Placer claim, and also there's another big mine, the Imperial, is any example, around many of the mines in the Dale Mining District, there are hundreds of very small to fairly large small (4 to 8 feet) places that didn't attract the old time miner's attention. All this is based on observation of the Humbug and Gold Crown area. According to Gold Tramp, there are hundreds of middle to larger mines.

Now, if only I can find one of those small ones..