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]

yep ' I know what you mean........ I used to belong to a club of lookie lou's and few doer's ! That club folded !

Yeah, I'm former military, US Air Force, 24 years. Half my career was basically living in a tent so I'm not much of a fan when it comes to camping.
As you know from my thread, I'm definitely not one of those lookie Lulu's. I move a lot of material to get my gold. It doesn't take a lot of gold to make me happy If I can manage 1/10 gram per outing, I feel I had a bonanza day.

 

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[russau]

GDG a SALUTE goes out to you for your service and the good work your doing for everyone's enjoyment ! I also was 2nd. enlistment in the Army and spent my time in RVN . BUT that was 53 years ago and time moves on with these old body's !

 

[desertgolddigger]

I continue fine tuning (tweaking) the new mini recovery sluice setup. The basin is four times the capacity, and does that make a difference on how everything functions. The water is clearer with the water pump now being five inches off the basin bottom. I think the silt getting into and through the pump affected how it all worked.

II also discovered that I can only process 30 soup spoons of material at a time. Otherwise there's too much concentrates, and panning nearly impossible with the 50 scoops I had been doing.

I now can get all the gold, even the stuff I'd never noticed before (smaller than 500 mesh?). The stuff is so tiny, I nearly tossed it, but when I ran the mercury ball through it, it disappeared. This stuff is way smaller than the gold that's been sticking to my pan.

And now, with this new discovery, I know I'm not tossing gold away, as a third panning shows absolutely nothing, even when using a 10X loupe. I guess a shaker table might find something, but don't have one. Anyone want to donate one? LOL!!!!

Oh yeah. I reprocessed some of my pile of slag from the big sluice down to 180 mesh and smaller. I found a nice bit of the super tiny gold that apparently has trouble settling in my first run of material. I got similar results finding that really tiny gold smaller than the sticky kind I thought was the smallest.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I stopped by the club claim this morning, and dug down to the quartz I mentioned earlier. I managed to chip out a couple pieces, and looked through a 30X loupe. Absolutely nothing seen. And no fine gold in the surrounding soil. So another flop, trying to find hard rock gold.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I forgot to mention in my last post that I also stopped by what I call "The Pit". I'd pretty much cleaned up all the waste piles of material I thought would have gold in it.

Yesterday I decided to haul out 20 half buckets of material covering the floor of "The Pit". I then sifted with a 16 mesh screen to capture the smaller stuff. I sluice that yesterday after coming home, but found zilch.

I picked out larger promising rock and put that in a bucket I process later. Everything else that didn't get picked out or had gone through the 16 mesh screen, I saved in two more 2/3rd full 5 gallon buckets. I ran one of those buckets this morning, and was rewarded with one of my best payouts since starting in on hard rock mining. While it is no where what you gents want to see from a bucket of ore, I am totally delighted.

I also processed the half bucket of material that's larger than 80 mesh from my chain mill, and got the typical results. I got good gold from material I thought wouldn't produce anything, and the junk that this area seems to have lots of, brass, lead and copper. I'm assuming this material is from a shotgun.

So today was a really good day for me. It's about five times what I get in a normal day of sluicing

EDITED: Since I went absolutely no place, and didn't need to do work up at the observatory, I decided to run three mini sluice tailing buckets to see if I missed anything. I did, but it was so little in amount and size, it probably isn't needed in the future. I guess I might have gotten 1/100th gram for the effort.

And since my first ball of mercury/gold amalgam is greater than 10 grams, I started a new one, and removed the extra mercury from that. What's left is probably a ball 1/4 gram. My scale doesn't weigh anything heavier than 10 grams, which is the reason for the new ball. When I do a retort, at least I'll know the approximate starting weight.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Hi All, I ran more of "The Pit" gravel this morning. While it wasn't as good as the last time, It was still way better than I've done over the past month or so. I'm hoping for a gram from this ten 5 gallon bucket load. That would pay for my truck's fuel, and put a tiny dent in earning enough to pay for my equipment.

I also finally finished the last cleanup sluice tailing bucket to see if I'd missed anything. I did miss a little.

But now I have a QUESTION: I've been noticing with the finally panning of these cleanup sluice tailings, I'm getting a mixture if super fine gold that has the normal gold color. But I'm also getting a line of whitish material that's just as heavy mixed in with this yellow gold. When I look through a 10X loupe, I can't pick out the individual whitish particles. The mercury is picking up both the yellow gold, and this whitish stuff.

Is this whitish stuff just a whitish gold? Because these individual particles are basically invisible , unless they're a bunch in a line, and if it is gold, why not the yellowish color?

EDITED: I've been reading about gold particles that are so small, they don't react to light as they would if somewhat larger. Apparently they give off a blue color. I'm thinking that my eyes are seeing a white color, which in reality is actually a very pale blue.

The only other reference I could fine about white colored gold was lab created using zinc oxide nano rods to coat tiny gold particles. I haven't found a reference that this occurs in nature.

It is really strange that these microscopic white particles that reside alongside 300-400 mesh gold are of similar. density. I may never figure this out. I'll keep reading, as I'm curious why mercury is slurping it up.

 

[russau]

Could this "whiteish " material be of a Platinum group To know for sure ,send a small sample into a State Colledge that has a mineral I.D. capacity to solve this Delima !

 

[desertgolddigger]

Could this "whiteish " material be of a Platinum group To know for sure ,send a small sample into a State Colledge that has a mineral I.D. capacity to solve this Delima !

No, according to what I've read, platinum in this size would have a brownish color.

 

[mikep691]

Couple of possibilities to consider here. It could just be gold that already has mercury on it. It's possible that old timers were using AK in their cleanup process in the past,, or it's naturally occurring mercury. Another possibility is silver. If you noticed any blue clay in the area, you could have a small pocket of silver. I'm not sure if mercury reacts to silver the same way it does with gold though. Just my two cents.

 

[DizzyDigger]

My first thought would be that it's naturally occurring lead, as I see that up here from some of the creeks.

 

[desertgolddigger]

My first thought would be that it's naturally occurring lead, as I see that up here from some of the creeks.

I'd have a huge ball of mercury/lead amalgam, if mercury did pick up lead. As far as I know, the lead in our area doesn't contain any gold. I've read to find out, and found no reference of that combination in our local mining area. So I doubt it's lead.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Couple of possibilities to consider here. It could just be gold that already has mercury on it. It's possible that old timers were using AK in their cleanup process in the past,, or it's naturally occurring mercury. Another possibility is silver. If you noticed any blue clay in the area, you could have a small pocket of silver. I'm not sure if mercury reacts to silver the same way it does with gold though. Just my two cents.

There is silver in our area, in small amounts. It might be possible this little stuff is a gold/silver amalgam. Though the particles are so small, individual ones are invisible to a 10X loupe. Apparently silver can be absorbed by mercury. Dental fillings are made from tin, silver and mercury, and sometimes gold.

 

[BoulderTroll]

After what feels like weeks or reading, I finally finished reading about your last year and a half of adventures. Thanks for sharing all this!! And happy for you that you are able to keep doing this hobby.
That "melted quartz" you were talking about earlier, did you ever find out what it was? Kind of sounds like it could be a rhyolite, but hard to guess without seeing it.

 

[desertgolddigger]

After what feels like weeks or reading, I finally finished reading about your last year and a half of adventures. Thanks for sharing all this!! And happy for you that you are able to keep doing this hobby.
That "melted quartz" you were talking about earlier, did you ever find out what it was? Kind of sounds like it could be a rhyolite, but hard to guess without seeing it.

Yes, I finally was able to chip off some fairly large pieces to examine with a high power loupe. It was solid quartz with no inclusions. The surrounding dirt found no heavies, including no gold.

Thanks for reading this thread. I write a lot. The reason is all the suggestions to my questions posed, and all my commentary about problems and how I solved them. There's lots of info in the thread, and you need to take what you want, and discount what might be a bit iffy, and Im sure there's plenty of that. This whole adventure with placer and hard rock stuff is fun, if not a tad tiring sometimes.

Here's another thing I learned about panning, and trying to get the mercury I use to gather the tiny gold. I first do the typical panning, which includes back panning lighter material out of the pan until there's basically just the heavies left.
I then clear all those heavies covering the gold, and then use mercury to slurp it up. But I'm not finished quite yet. I then add a little more water, and keeping the mercury in the pan, I start firmly tapping the edge of the pan to make all the material move towards one location. I continue rapidly tapping the pan edge, then do a few quick swirls to move the mercury through the remaining material, then remove the mercury to its container, and firmly seal that container that has plenty of water to cover that mercury.

I've found that the rapid agitation caused by tapping the edge of the pan makes all the gold remaining get slurped up by the mercury. I haven't found any gold since discovering this method, left in the pan, and don't need to worry about missing gold like I used to, even the super fine gold.

 

[BoulderTroll]

You're not joking, there was A LOT to read! But it was great, hearing about all your trials and errors. I'm the same as you, I like to do things the hard way and figure out my own process to do things. Yet still reach out for advice and an occasional sanity check. Reading this has inspired me to document more of the things I do.
i.e. recently a friend gave me his blue bowl cause he (is too impatient, and) wasn't able to figure out how to get it to work. So I spent a couple days playing with it and learning.

I had been thinking about picking up a little Hg myself, and reading this has convince me I should. I won't be able to use it as much as you do, but it would be good to go through all my super cons I have been holding onto. I've learned a lot from this thread about it. THANKS!

And I must admit, I'm very jealous of your location, and being able to go out almost any day. I have been wanting to experiment with some hard rock stuff. During the summer its possible, with a lot of effort. But not realistic during the other 9 months of the year. The last ore I got involved 3 hours of driving, and 6 mile hike with some significant elevation gain.

 

[desertgolddigger]

You're not joking, there was A LOT to read! But it was great, hearing about all your trials and errors. I'm the same as you, I like to do things the hard way and figure out my own process to do things. Yet still reach out for advice and an occasional sanity check. Reading this has inspired me to document more of the things I do.
i.e. recently a friend gave me his blue bowl cause he (is too impatient, and) wasn't able to figure out how to get it to work. So I spent a couple days playing with it and learning.

I had been thinking about picking up a little Hg myself, and reading this has convince me I should. I won't be able to use it as much as you do, but it would be good to go through all my super cons I have been holding onto. I've learned a lot from this thread about it. THANKS!

And I must admit, I'm very jealous of your location, and being able to go out almost any day. I have been wanting to experiment with some hard rock stuff. During the summer its possible, with a lot of effort. But not realistic during the other 9 months of the year. The last ore I got involved 3 hours of driving, and 6 mile hike with some significant elevation gain.

Be careful with the mercury. ALWAYS use it, and store it covered with water. If you have a friend with a mercury retort, you'll be set. Unless you're getting a lot of smaller than 100 mesh gold, don't bother getting mercury. 99 percent of the gold I find is much smaller than 100 mesh.

Although I do live relatively close to where gold is found in our area. It's only 13 miles on paved roads, then between 5 and 25 miles to get to the gold on very rough dirt/rocky/rutted roads. It's basically 10mph once I leave the paved roads.

The hard part of doing hard rock stuff is finding ore good enough to at least pay for the energy of transporting, and processing it. That usually means I need a source that gives me about 10-12 five gallon buckets per trip. You gotta make sure you can at least pay for the gasoline, at the very least.

Hope you find a good source, and that it's a lot easier digging it up than it is for me Placer mining means I need to basically move one ton of material in order to ger 1/10 gram of gold. Hard rock means about those 10 buckets for about 1/2 a gram or so.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I did a weigh on four days of processing "The Pit" material. While It's about twice what I would normally get from the same amount of material, it's going to be way less than I had hoped for. The weigh showed only .063 grams, and I was hoping for closer to 1/4 gram. 1/4 gram probably will be my total for those buckets I hauled last Sunday. At least I'm finding gold, even if it isn't that much.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Today I only managed to sluice my ball mill material (30-79 mesh). While not a lot of the yellow stuff quantity wise, I got a nice couple of larger pieces to make up for things.

Today was an abbreviated day working with the gold processing equipment, as I am finally installing the last thing in my back-backyard, a slab with block retain wall on three sides, so I can just reach into my big bag of ore next to it, and hammer some rock. No more hauling rock to the patio next to my house. Yippie!

I managed the excavation, and form installation this morning. Tomorrow will be the slab pour, and set the blocks on top of the slab border, to set the base row.

I have a very large steel plate I'll set atop the slab so don't destroy the slab.
I'll need to design something to hold the tools I use when breaking rock, and mount it somewhere.

I think it is time I made a photo tour of my hard rock processing setup. So standby for that sometime after I've finished this latest project.

QUESTION: Can someone provide me a link to a mechanical rock crusher, preferably an electric type, if such a thing exists. I'm getting really tire of hand breaking things down to 1/2 inch or smaller. The smaller rock is a lot less stressful on my chain mill, and seems to mill easier.

 

[southfork]

Today I only managed to sluice my ball mill material (30-79 mesh). While not a lot of the yellow stuff quantity wise, I got a nice couple of larger pieces to make up for things.

Today was an abbreviated day working with the gold processing equipment, as I am finally installing the last thing in my back-backyard, a slab with block retain wall on three sides, so I can just reach into my big bag of ore next to it, and hammer some rock. No more hauling rock to the patio next to my house. Yippie!

I managed the excavation, and form installation this morning. Tomorrow will be the slab pour, and set the blocks on top of the slab border, to set the base row.

I have a very large steel plate I'll set atop the slab so don't destroy the slab.
I'll need to design something to hold the tools I use when breaking rock, and mount it somewhere.

I think it is time I made a photo tour of my hard rock processing setup. So standby for that sometime after I've finished this latest project.

QUESTION: Can someone provide me a link to a mechanical rock crusher, preferably an electric type, if such a thing exists. I'm getting really tire of hand breaking things down to 1/2 inch or smaller. The smaller rock is a lot less stressful on my chain mill, and seems to mill easier.

My jaw crusher is electric and works great but likes "1 1/2 rocks the best makes half inch and smaller the chain mill loves. I bought it off amazon with lift gate delivery heavy and most are 220 volt, I think.

 

[desertgolddigger]

My jaw crusher is electric and works great but likes "1 1/2 rocks the best makes half inch and smaller the chain mill loves.

Any price on that? All I found were 220V types, which would require me to install a complete new electrical panel, as mine is full. I'd probably need a building permit, an excavation permit, and hire that electrician, so 220 volts is out.