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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[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

Guys, not sure I'll ever get the shaker table done. The reason is that I watched a video from Hard Rock University, and saw something so simple, I wish I'd seen this video a few years ago, before investing in a retort, mercury, and a lot of other things.

What did I see that had me almost banging my head against a wall? It was a lab beaker with stopper, with two metal tubes inserted into holes in the stopper. Clear plastic tubing is attached to each tube. One tube I attached to a round wooden plug with tube connected to another metal tube in that wooden plug. The wooden plug is inserted in the wet/dry vac port instead of the normal vacuum hose. The other tube is cut at an angle like on a snuffer bottle.

Since I've learned to be fairly apt at panning 500 minus gold into the corner of a pan. I can now use the vac snuffer to suck up that gold, which gets deposited into the beaker. Of course, my panning isn't perfect, and I do get a little black sand along with the gold, but who cares? I've eliminated the need for the retort and mercury.

If anyone is interested, please PM me concerning the retort, and mercury. I'm retiring them as soon as I get the courage to run the retort one time to recover the gold I slurped up with that mercury. Oh, yes, I also have a mask rated for mercury vapors I won't need anymore.

Do you have a link to this beaker vid? Everything I find looks like a bong !

 

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[desertgolddigger]

Do you have a link to this beaker vid? Everything I find looks like a bong !

I can't find that video. I can't remember how I found it, but the system consists of a small wet/dry shop vac, a

Corning Pyrex #4980-500, 500ml Erlenmeyer Flask with Rubber Stopper ,​

which I found on Amazon, as well as the plastic tubing., and three lengths of aluminum tubing of various lengths.

There wasn't a plan for this system. I just watched the video, made a list, and fabricated the parts. You need to drill two holes in the rubber stopper that are a tiny fraction small than the aluminum tubing. Make sure you keep one tube an inch or more from the bottom of the beaker, and the other tube an inch higher than the intake tube.

I measured the hole in my shop vac, and then got one of my round hole saws, and cut out a plug from a 2x4 piece of wood. I drilled the central hole to match the third aluminum tube, and epoxied it in the drilled hole. You may need to do some sanding to get your wood plug to fit in the vac hose hole. I got lucky, and happened to have the correct size hole saw. It fits snuggly.

This is a no brainer to make. If I can make it, anyone can.

 

[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

Please explain the principle of operation?

 

[desertgolddigger]

Please explain the principle of operation?

If you know how to use a snuffer tube, then this just eliminates you having to squeeze a tube.

One tube leads to the shop vac inlet, which provides the suction. The Pyrex flask is the catch basin. The other tube with the angled end like on the snuffer bottle, is used just like on a snuffer bottle. Just turn on the shop vac, apply the angled end tubing to the area where the gold is, and it gets sucked into the flask.

Remember I mentioned before having suction tube (snuffer)lower than the shop vac tube in the flask. This prevents you sucking the gold to the shop vac. Just watch the water level in the flask, so it doesn't fill up enough to suck water into the shop vac. You might lose gold into the shop vac otherwise.

Enough. It's super simple. Like I said, If I can watch a video, and gather the necessary information for building, and using it, anyone can.

 

[southfork]

I know there's more than one way to skin a cat I like to keep it simple also. A snuffer bottle with a small amount of mercury and water works for me for picking up micro gold out of the pan.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I know there's more than one way to skin a cat I like to keep it simple also. A snuffer bottle with a small amount of mercury and water works for me for picking up micro gold out of the pan.

Yeah, but I really want to get away from using mercury. I'd rather have a little black sand (iron oxide?). I don't know if you can melt gold with a little black sand in it, and have it separated.

 

[southfork]

Yeah, but I really want to get away from using mercury. I'd rather have a little black sand (iron oxide?). I don't know if you can melt gold with a little black sand in it, and have it separated.

We melt dirty gold all the time it release's gold encapsulated in the sands. Pouring the melt into water Corn flaking will drop the free gold to the bottom for easy recovery and remelt. The slag is also reground to release any gold locked up in the slag for reprocessing. There's a number of recipes for smelting gold depending on the impurities. But just melting small batches of concentrates I add clean silica sand to make the melt more fluid. When we remelt the gold to make buttons, they sometimes have a coating/deposit on the surface that needs cleaning to uncover the pure gold. Nitric or muriatic acid makes quick work of cleaning the buttons.

 

[N-Lionberger]

I use a small glassblowing (my winter job) graphite marble mold as a crucible and mix the fines/black sands with borax and melt it down with an oxy-propane torch. After it vitrifies I bash up the resulting mass in a mortar and pan out the blob of gold.

 

[southfork]

Yeah, but I really want to get away from using mercury. I'd rather have a little black sand (iron oxide?). I don't know if you can melt gold with a little black sand in it, and have it separated.

Smelting or melting can produce some nasty off gassing be careful just like using mercury.

 

[Assembler]

Smelting or melting can produce some nasty off gassing be careful just like using mercury.

When you compare this to what nature produces there is no comparison

 

[desertgolddigger]

Just to let Everyone know, my retort was adopted. So it's no longer available.

On the local front, I was out at the club claim so early, I had to use my two battery powered flood lights. My main goal was digging 16 pails of rock to continue repairing the areas done in by flooding. While laying the rock in a really sandy area, a fellow club member showed up, and helped me spread the rock, and then cover it with a thin layer of sand. I think a few more layers of each, and that area will be good enough for 2 wheel drive vehicles.

My side benefits, placer gold didn't do well. Only ten 30 mesh and smaller pieces, but everything helps.

The other thing I did was gather more of the white splatter that the thermal vents spewed. I found they contain some gold, though it's probably 300 mesh minus, but there were hundreds of them from just a dozen of these thin pieces.

While I was at it, I dug in a steep wash and got about three cups of 80 minus material to take home to sluice. Results were hundreds of the same 300 minus gold. I'll try searching for the source. But I'm guessing this gold is spread all over the place from when Mother Nature spewed material out through the tiny cracks in the Earths crust. My sampling from dozens of locations almost always produces some gold. There is a lot of the whitish splatter in many areas, also producing the same micro gold. I'm not sure actually finding the crack this stuff spewed from will produce anything, if it is locatable at all. It's probably covered by a good layer of dirt.

It's just fun doing this looking around. I still think there are buried cracks that contain good gold. The problem is locating them.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I received my gold sponge back today. I was curious as to what amount of gold was in the amalgam ball weighing almost 19 grams. This ball was squeezed until I couldn't remove any more liquid mercury from it. It was to the point of starting to crumble.

Weight of the gold sponge was a smidgen over 6.6 grams.

Apparently it takes about three times the weight of mercury when picking up these 120 minus mesh grains of gold. So, for those who are picking up micron sized gold like I've been doing for nearly 2.5 years, you now know about how much gold to mercury ratio there is in your amalgam ball.

I am disappointed, but it is, as everything of gold mining and processing, a learning experience.

I'll continue to gather this micron fine gold, but only the placer kind, not the hard rock containing gold. Of course, if I ever find a good lode, then I'll work the rock. But it's too expensive equipment wise to do hard rock, unless it's loaded.

I'm going back to recreational placer mining. I'm also ending my road repair job, unless it benefits myself. Guess that's selfish, but at age 75, I'm not in good enough shape to do the road repair in addition to trying to find enough placer gold to make things worthwhile each outing. My goal is 1/10th gram per outing, and that only pays about 1/2 the cost of gas to drive to the claim.

So I'm back to placer mining for the most part. No more picking up 40 pound buckets to spread on roads.

 

[N-Lionberger]

Hey there glad you got it safely in the mail. It’s been a long time since I played with the stuff. I really thought that thing was going to weigh out more. I’m going to try to weigh the mercury when I get a chance. I tried going up to the mine today to dismantle things and winterize the toilet but 14 miles from home I blew a radiator hose and had to have it towed back to the house.