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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[desertgolddigger]

I sluiced what I believe would be richer ore, and was right. I only had two runs of 25 cups of material instead, the normal three runs. I ended up with twice the gold from today's batch, over my normal batch.

I also broke up, and chain milled the last of that ore that was in buckets, and milled that, along with a third bucket of low grade pea gravel. I'll run some of this on Saturday, and hope it's a good enough line of gold to deserve a picture.

Tomorrow is my placer mining day, as well as a little more access road repair. Hopefully my feet will be even more improved than they are today.

 

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[desertgolddigger]

I went to the club claim this morning, and dug nine full 5 gallon buckets. Results were just over 1/10th of a gram. That gives me 1/4 gram in two days.

Unfortunately I won't be doing any hard rock or placer mining for the foreseeable future, as both of my feet yelled protest this morning, and are suffering badly right now. I'm basically reduce to a slow shuffle for walking.

I need to see a podiatrist, but am lost to how to get an appointment. Supposedly I got a referral from my doctor, but no one has called or sent me a letter about it. I guess I need to walk into a podiatrist's office and see if I can get one directly. My health insurance websites are useless, as I can't figure them out. I have both Tricare and Medicare, and no idea how it all works. Sigh!!!!

 

[desertgolddigger]

Since I'm not able to go out and mine, I can do some experimentation.

This morning I ran 60 cups of the low grade pea gravel to run through my sluice when I get around to it.

I had half a 5 gallon bucket of material larger than 80 mesh left.

I just finished processing the 2 hour ball milled material. I guess my first guess at four hours run time on the ball mill is what I'll have to do, as 90 percent of my material that came out of the ball mill was basically slightly small than 80 mesh, but grainy.

But I ran it all through the sluice, and then through the mini cleanup sluice. I had the typical gold that I've been getting from drywashing the larger than 80 mesh material, then I'd throw that away.

Guess what I found from the rest of that ball milled material? Yup! Only what I can call a super super ultra fine gold. (The gold was nearly impossible to keep from moving down the pan with the larger material) I'm not sure what that half bucket would produce if milled to mush like I had last time, but what I got tells me I would've gotten another two inch thin line of gold.

That basically means I've been throwing away as much gold as I normally get without doing a ball mill run.

I'll be very interested to see what I call my rich ore 80+ mesh material when it's ball milled produces. I've held onto that material, and the heavies that accumulated in the drywasher riffles last run. I doubt I'll be drywashing again. If the rerun of today's material in the ball mill produces anything significant, I won't let anything leave my property without running it through all my gizmos.

I can now understand how a Arrastra would be desirable, as you don't need a chain mill, just a jaw crusher to get it down to pea gravel size or smaller, then dump min the Arrastra, and get it turned to paste.

Anyone have any ideas what kind of electric motor would be able to drive a small Arrastra, say two 50 pound grinding rocks in a, I'm guessing, 4 foot diameter Arrastra. You probably could process 75-100 pounds of material at a time. Yeah! But I probably could never do the masonry work. It's something I'd like to try, but think I'm not skilled enough, and also too old to do.

 

[russau]

I don't believe the motor is the important item right now . I'd be looking into a gear reduction device to take advantage of the motor's torque to full advantage. Then look into the motor that will run it as well as a speed control.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I finished my ball mill grinding that didn't completely get done yesterday. I didn't get a whole lot; absolutely zero super super fine gold, but did get about 15 specks between mesh 100 and 120. Of course, the larger specks probably outweigh what I got yesterday.

Based on the combined results, It looks good to try again, but with extending the grinding to four to five hours. Otherwise there's too much time involved for a small return.

What I'm doing is learning with these experiments. All of you have probably gone through the same learning curve. I find this type of exploration an enjoyable part of my overall mining experience.

One thing I've discovered is the paint on the inside of the cement mixer is shedding. I'm finding it in the sluice. I'm also finding a lot of shotgun lead and other types of metals that someone apparently loaded into their shotgun shells. I've identified copper, lead, brass, and a few I can't figure out. I guess gun guys like to shoot at anything, including holes in the ground.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I decided to go out to the hard rock pit, and got swarmed by bees. I ended up loading the equipment in the truck, and left, with these bees chasing my truck for nearly half a mile before they gave up. I'll wait for summer to end before I go out again. Never seen bees so aggressive.

I just came home, and decided to slow down my big sluice so the water was basically ripple free, like you need on a Miller's Table.

I'd saved quite a few buckets of material I'd run through the sluice using my bucket pour into the sluice method. I ran one bucket back through the chain mill, and resifted in my electric sifter.

I think I ran 1/3rd bucket through my big sluice, and then the concentrates through my mini cleanup sluice.

I didn't expect much of anything, but was floored when the results came in. I actually got more gold using the super slow, calm water in the big sluice method, adding the material one spoonful at a time, than my pour the material in the sluice method.

I guess I need to just process less more slowly.

I may end up digging up sluice tailings I deposited on the streetside berm just to see if it still contains that super ultra fine gold, like I got today. Of course the gold weighed very little, coming in at .014 grams, but that's about three times what I've gotten each of the previous five sluicings.

 

[southfork]

Are they those ornery? meat bees they seem they get meaner the dryer it gets.

 

[SHAWANIDetecter77]

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.

good luck

 

[desertgolddigger]

Are they those ornery? meat bees they seem they get meaner the dryer it gets.

Don't know what meat bees are. Never heard such a name.

I'd forgotten that this time of the year the bees are out in force in our neck of the desert. When I drywashed during the day, I always had a tub of water out for panning my concentrates. The bees went to that tub of water, instead of pestering me.

I hadn't brought out a tub and water in over a year, as I usually just take my drywasher concentrates home to pan, as I felt I was wasting time panning, instead of digging. I'll start taking those with me again when My feet are better. I think that my squatting while classifying material may be what has caused my foot problems. I think I encouraged tendonitis to get a foothold. :-)

 

[desertgolddigger]

I'm still running all those sluice tailings I had kept in my backyard, and keep getting the super super fine gold that my old method of sluicing blew out. While it isn't a lot, since discovering my sluicing problems, I've accumulated 1/20th of a gram. That's probably thousands of those tiny gold particles. I wonder how many of those smaller than 400 mesh particles makes a gram?

 

[southfork]

Don't know what meat bees are. Never heard such a name.

I'd forgotten that this time of the year the bees are out in force in our neck of the desert. When I drywashed during the day, I always had a tub of water out for panning my concentrates. The bees went to that tub of water, instead of pestering me.

I hadn't brought out a tub and water in over a year, as I usually just take my drywasher concentrates home to pan, as I felt I was wasting time panning, instead of digging. I'll start taking those with me again when My feet are better. I think that my squatting while classifying material may be what has caused my foot problems. I think I encouraged tendonitis to get a foothold. :-)

Meat bees, also known as yellowjackets or yellow jackets, are a type of predatory social wasps common in North America. They’re so named due to their high preference for meat. Yellowjackets feed by foraging for meat in trash cans or preying on live insects. Live in the ground hate them when your eating outdoors they like to land on your fingers.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I've finally figured things out after trying to run freshly milled material through my sluice set like a Miller's Table water flow. It basically could barely move the material due to it having the consistency of glue. It took me several hours doing it, which I consider a waste of time.

So I will sluice new material in two stages. First run will be using the bucket method where I mix it with a stick into solution, then run it through the sluice at about twice the water flow as used on a Miller's Table. I was originally setting the water flow to about three time a Miller's Table flow rate. That gets me the larger gold particles, while depositing the smaller particles in the catch bucket, and that glue type material broken up by stirring, ends up floating into the troughs.

No, there's no visible gold deposited in the troughs. I've resluiced that material without finding any visible gold. There might be very small micron gold that needs a microscope to see, but nothing I can work without a shaker table.

I'll do a second run of the material from the catch bucket. This is where I've found the majority of the 400 mesh and smaller gold. After a few trials of second runs, if nothing found, I'll go to the one run.

Learning how to set up a sluice properly is a real pain. I sure hope this new water flow rate works, and I don't need that second run .

 

[Assembler]

I've finally figured things out after trying to run freshly milled material through my sluice set like a Miller's Table water flow. It basically could barely move the material due to it having the consistency of glue. It took me several hours doing it, which I consider a waste of time.

So I will sluice new material in two stages. First run will be using the bucket method where I mix it with a stick into solution, then run it through the sluice at about twice the water flow as used on a Miller's Table. I was originally setting the water flow to about three time a Miller's Table flow rate. That gets me the larger gold particles, while depositing the smaller particles in the catch bucket, and that glue type material broken up by stirring, ends up floating into the troughs.

No, there's no visible gold deposited in the troughs. I've resluiced that material without finding any visible gold. There might be very small micron gold that needs a microscope to see, but nothing I can work without a shaker table.

I'll do a second run of the material from the catch bucket. This is where I've found the majority of the 400 mesh and smaller gold. After a few trials of second runs, if nothing found, I'll go to the one run.

Learning how to set up a sluice properly is a real pain. I sure hope this new water flow rate works, and I don't need that second run .

If you remove 50 or more percent of the iron first will help out and cut down the process time. You also may be able to blow away some of the lighter material first when it is dry to speed up the process time in your sluice. Something to try out.

 

[desertgolddigger]

If you remove 50 or more percent of the iron first will help out and cut down the process time. You also may be able to blow away some of the lighter material first when it is dry to speed up the process time in your sluice. Something to try out.

I tried that with magnetic riffles, and found that half my gold got trapped there, probably because 99 percent of the gold I get from local hard rock is smaller than 100 mesh.

If I tried blowing away the lighter material, half my gold would probably be blown away also because of how small the gold particles are.

I did the double run this morning. Results of the second run were very small, with what I predicted, 400 mesh and smaller. I got good gold from the first run because I cranked down the water flow by 1/3rd. I think I've pretty much found the sweet spot for water flow/sluice angle. I probably will still run the material a second time, using my small cleanup sluice to reduce it even more, then save this until I have a half buckets worth. I'll then run it again in the big sluice, then the cleanup sluice for final processing

I'm happy with this mornings results. Not a lot of gold, but a few 100ths of a gram is better than nothing.

 

[Assembler]

I tried that with magnetic riffles, and found that half my gold got trapped there, probably because 99 percent of the gold I get from local hard rock is smaller than 100 mesh.

If I tried blowing away the lighter material, half my gold would probably be blown away also because of how small the gold particles are.

I did the double run this morning. Results of the second run were very small, with what I predicted, 400 mesh and smaller. I got good gold from the first run because I cranked down the water flow by 1/3rd. I think I've pretty much found the sweet spot for water flow/sluice angle. I probably will still run the material a second time, using my small cleanup sluice to reduce it even more, then save this until I have a half buckets worth. I'll then run it again in the big sluice, then the cleanup sluice for final processing

I'm happy with this mornings results. Not a lot of gold, but a few 100ths of a gram is better than nothing.

Remove at least 50 percent or more of the iron so that you don't have as much covering the gold in the sluice box.
Try air blowing straight down so that the heavies stay put and most everything else moves away. Try different air flows to see what works for you this way you have far less light materials in what you run through your sluice, etc.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Hey Guys, Hope all is well with all of you, and the nice yellow stuff is flowing your way.

I've kind of slowed things here due to the heat. But I did rerun the equivalent of two five gallon buckets via a tablespoon at a time, and just finished. Results of what I thought was material with very little gold ended up producing close to 1/10th gram. All of it was that sub 400 mesh kind.

I guess I might as well settle on a two runs for each bucket. The first which I stir into suspension gets about 90 percent, all bigger than 400 mesh. The second I run a tablespoon at a time with the water basically running flat, with only a little rippling over the aluminum grizzlies.

If there's any other gold, I can't see it.

I do maintenance on the chain mill tomorrow to prep for another 5 gallon bucket of 80 mesh and smaller material. I'll run the larger than 80 mesh that comes out of the mill through my cement mixer ball mill. Doing it like this seems to maximize my gold take from the low grade material I have.

I'm still working on getting 10 grams of mercury/gold amalgam before I use my retort for the first time. Probably another month at the rate this small sized gold accumulates. Once I get that done, I'll need advice on how to melt this super fine gold without it blowing all over the place.

 

[Assembler]

Hey Guys, Hope all is well with all of you, and the nice yellow stuff is flowing your way.

I've kind of slowed things here due to the heat. But I did rerun the equivalent of two five gallon buckets via a tablespoon at a time, and just finished. Results of what I thought was material with very little gold ended up producing close to 1/10th gram. All of it was that sub 400 mesh kind.

I guess I might as well settle on a two runs for each bucket. The first which I stir into suspension gets about 90 percent, all bigger than 400 mesh. The second I run a tablespoon at a time with the water basically running flat, with only a little rippling over the aluminum grizzlies.

If there's any other gold, I can't see it.

I do maintenance on the chain mill tomorrow to prep for another 5 gallon bucket of 80 mesh and smaller material. I'll run the larger than 80 mesh that comes out of the mill through my cement mixer ball mill. Doing it like this seems to maximize my gold take from the low grade material I have.

I'm still working on getting 10 grams of mercury/gold amalgam before I use my retort for the first time. Probably another month at the rate this small sized gold accumulates. Once I get that done, I'll need advice on how to melt this super fine gold without it blowing all over the place.

You get about 90 percent on the first run process. Are you satisficed with this 90 percent if you don't run the second process by tablespoon?
Could you just bump pan the second run materials to get most of the ultra fines too the bottom and then process just that material by removing most of the top material?

You may want to run the waste water through cotton sheets or better thin canvas material for some extra recovery of the 400 mesh minus that is in suspension.

 

[desertgolddigger]

You get about 90 percent on the first run process. Are you satisficed with this 90 percent if you don't run the second process by tablespoon?
Could you just bump pan the second run materials to get most of the ultra fines too the bottom and then process just that material by removing most of the top material?

You may want to run the waste water through cotton sheets or better thin canvas material for some extra recovery of the 400 mesh minus that is in suspension.

This is like a game to me. I'm just having fun trying different things to see what happens.

I'm happy with what I can squeeze out with my equipment. I'd need a shaker table to get the micron sized gold, and I've been told by two equipment sellers that my type of operation doesn't warrant such a costly expense. Both said sluicing was my best bet, which is what I'm learning to do.

But I don't want to spend all day doing this, so I just do about two hours on days I'm processing material; hand breaking ore, chain milling, sluicing. etc.

It's just not worth more effort for such small returns. Like I said, it's a game to me, to see if I can make maybe an ounce out of what I have on hand. I'll probably be around age 75 when I finish with the ore I have, and then I will retire from the mining game.

 

[desertgolddigger]

OK Gents, I need more help on properly locating my smelting furnace, and 30 gallon propane tank. I plan on leaving them in place once properly placed, and cover them up once I finish using them, and letting them cool.

I was wondering if I could pour a cement slab. Would that take the heat of the furnace? Or would laying red bricks as a foundation work?

I'd appreciate your suggestions, and if you have them, pictures of your setup. Since this won't be moved, I would prefer those with permanent setups to respond.

This is my last piece to finish before I finally start cooking stuff.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Consider two things for your safety.

Your furnace and all your tools must be kept dry.

Things spill. Spilling hot metal on concrete will result in splashing. (Splashing BAD) Many consider packed dry clay to be a better surface to avoid splashing. Packed clay can be shaped and reshaped to contain and direct spills.