Quartz vein

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kjavanb123

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 1, 2009
Messages
1,743
Location
USA
Hi,

I was in a field today and came accross these quartz veins, they look like hydrothermal veins, I am going to mill them to fine powder and run them in blue bowl.

Vein
image.jpg

Closer look at one piece
image.jpg

Keep you posted.

Regards
Kj
 
All,

Thanks for comments. I have not find the time to mill and run them on blue bowl. I will this week.

As far as dimention, the width of quartz vein is about 20-50cm and its length that I could see about 200ft.

I also visited another malachite-quartz mine near by which will run the materials and post my results.

Thanks
Kj
 
See that fold at the far right of your pic, that is where you should be sampling, look for cross faulting or pressure signs like that fold and any Quartz or highly mineralised material associated with folding/cross faulting, that is where your most likely pm deposits will occur.
 
Hi,

Thanks for your tip on sampling. I milled few small samples probably around 100 grams and ran it on my homemade blue bowl, here are some photos;

IMG_9043.JPG

Here are some close up shots of the yellow zone on previous photo,
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I will try to dissolve as much as I can from the concentrate to see if those yellow stuff are indeed gold or fools gold.

Regards
Kj
 
Without being overly optimistic, as I cannot see your sample with my own eye so to speak, gold and pyrite side by side look totally different, looking of course with eyes from experience, what you have there does indeed look like the elusive, pyrite will crumble when milled, some of the pieces in your tail by looking at the grain and form look like the real deal to me but pictures are not a reliable source when looking at fine specks.

You need a loaming dish, and a hand lens, a word of advice about assessing samples by eye, (fine pan tails from dollied samples) down here in Australia its not the best light before 10 AM and after 3 PM for looking at fine gold samples in a dish, so be careful assessing in the field and relying on ambient light.

Your mission after proving your sample is to locate an ore enrichment, gold will and can be sporadically located along a lens but will be concentrated in particular zones as mentioned in my first reply. Gold can also be more concentrated on a contact zone that is not so much on the inner quartz lens but the actual contact with the surrounding country rock(outside of the quartz) you may find high levels of mineralisation along this zone of contact.

Looks promising but you have much work to do, use the dolly pot and loaming dish and find your larger concentration point, after which you will be keen to have an assay done of some samples, sealed, tagged and numbered with a plot of the location where each was taken, including the type of sample and exactly where from. Take pictures of each rock sample, its creates an easy reference when you have your assay report.

When and if you are loaming/panning to locate the enrichment the closer you get to the source, the deeper into the ground the gold will be found when soil sampling, correspondingly the further from the source, the gold will be closer to the surface according to distance. This may be difficult considering the location, you may be stuck with crushing samples. If you do soil sampling, Plotting your loaming samples is a must, noting gold tail amount, gold grain size, What it even looks like(rough, hackly or smooth) and depth the sample was taken from. When at the source you will get consistent samples with depth the gold will be hackly, 20 metres away it will be on the surface and fine in grain.

If you are crushing samples in a dolly pot, each and every time you have a positive sample you must crush a barren sample for accuracy and avoid chasing your tail in frustration of inadvertently salting your own samples.

Best of luck, Play safe. Sample Everything!!!Not just the Quartz.
 
Lightspeed,

Thanks so much for your in depth explaination of how to find and sample gold really amazing stuff.

I forgot that my loupe was equiped with a LED light, so I took few more photos with its light on,
IMG_9063.JPG

But I will follow your great advise and will report back to you.

I have always loved mining, urban mining or e-waste is a fun hobby but all the PMs are known and it can easily be recovered at least what I use which is depopulation, pyrolysis then lead smelting.

But mining and geology are so much more fun and exciting, plus you get to hike and be outdoors.

Thanks again and I am sure lots of members would benefit greatly from your advise.

Best regards
Kj
 
I forgot to mention a good metal detector is also a great tool when you have positively identified an ore shoot. Depending on the incline you may end up working quite a distance from the source(eg hundreds of metres) regardless after you have positively identified gold in your sample, you must detect the area for shed gold, not all ore shoots produce nuggets, but this is a facet of prospecting you cannot overlook, if you own or have access to a detector (any minelab Pulse induction preferred) this Quartz strike must be covered, and not just where you have found your sample, search along the entire Quartz strike. After this keep walking along the angle of strike and see if you can find other places where the Quartz lens is shedding. If your sample is positive, you will also need to cover the area and I am talking kilometres for other possible sources and detect those too, you may be pleasantly surprised.

My next sentence I cannot emphasise enough. Tell No one, not even your best friend, or before you know it the strike of country will have people crawling all over it, and your opportunity will be lost along with your hard work. Sounds harsh?? Trust my words, they will not lead you astray when it comes to the elusive metal and prospecting.
 
Lightspeed,

Thanks again for your infornative post. I also got stung by sharing some info in the past and people took what could have been mine, for themselves and got rich so I know first hand experience in what you emphasized at the ebe of your post.

I will follow your advise and post related here.

Thanks and regards
Kj
 
All,

Today I took another sample and grabbed a chunk of it, crushed and milled it manually, follow by sieving it into "coarse" and "fine" partions.

IMG_9173.JPG

A few pieces from sample above milled and sieved,
IMG_9159.JPG

Running the coarse materials which can be seen in the left plate in photo above, in my home made blue bowl,
IMG_9161.JPG

By looking through a loupe two coarse yellow pieces were visible, I tried to crush them using the end of a spoon but they did not crush, good sign, so I ran the coarse material until all junk was gone and only coarse gold pieces remained.
IMG_9172.JPG

Here is a shot of those coarse gold nuggets under a 40x loupe, lighting doesnt do a justice here, but with my own eyes, I could see the lovely yellow color.
IMG_9177.JPG

Judging from the amount of gold nugget recovered from small coarse sample, tells me that I am dealing with a rich quartz vein.

Your comments are welcome.

Thanks and regards
Kj
 
I ran the fine materials seen in previous photos in right plate. After washing the clay from it, I ran it in blue bowl concentrator setup with low flowrate.

Fine materials after being ran in the blue bowl concentrator,
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Again, bad lighting in these photos, but they are real gold color,
image.jpg

And here are few more shots,
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Processing the fine materials require more attention and low flow rate of water in the concentrator.

Again, these gold pieces all from just a chunk of a sample quartz, this could mean ore body is very rich.

Keep you posted

Regards
Kj
 
I don't know about this blue bowl thing, I know there are various types of hydraulic concentrator devices but for primary sampling, I would not be relying on one. That being said I have used the dish and dolly all my prospecting life, I can keep the finest of mustard gold in the dish, looking at what's left in the "Blue Bowl' concentrator there is a very distinct lack of heavy black mineral sands in the tailings versus coarse quartz grit. I use a nearly 30 year old Garrett gravity trap pan(when I have to only) and I hate it, I will take my loaming dish over that any day, and I never use the Garrett pan for a final cleanup......ever.

Wish I could be there to give you some first hand help, long story short I am not a fan of mod tech when it comes to gold concentrators when sampling, I have used a gold wheel when processing amalgam from a ball mill run, that's quite different, even they need to be well tuned for correct recovery.

Are you able to control the water output to decrease the inertial centrifugal force?
Do you test the discarded gangue for values? If so with what?

In view of the mineralisation in the quartz I would have thought there should be more black sands in your tail, granted I have zero experience with one of these but it does not seem right to me.

I also have no idea of your level of experience in hard rock mining and prospecting and do not want to seem ignorant of your techniques if they have been developed by experience, so apologies in advance if I may have stepped over the line. When I have some time I will upload some pics of my dish with a crushed sample washed and the tail.

If you want to make a dolly pot you will need:
1 x 2.5-3 inch steel ball from a ball mill
1 x medical steel oxygen bottle or similar with an internal dimension of approx 4 inches, you will need to cut a section approx 11-12 inches long keeping the bottom section of 11-12 inches.
1 x 8-10 inch circumference 1/4 inch steel plate for the base, weld the bottom of the O2 bottle centrally located to this.
1 x 1 inch thick steel rod approx 18inches long, weld the ball mill steel ball to one end, find yourself a soft rubber handle similar to motorcycle handlebar grip for the other end.

Edited for clarification.
Good loaming dishes a very hard to come by, I had one gifted by an old timer who showed me the ropes of loaming for gold deposits, it ended up fracturing so I made a mold and cast a few with gel coat and f/glass resin.
I have just modified my post as you have re posted as I was writing and the separation on the second lot looks by far better than the previous run, looks like the elusive to me.
 
Lightspeed,

Once again thanks for your informative reply. I have no field experience in gold placer and panning prior to this.

The concentrator I have built recycle the water and has a control valve that adjust the flow of water.

Is there any photo of your pan that you instructed here?

As for black sand, I did not see any "black" sanda forming around the outter edge of the concentrates, however a very fine baige color heavy sand forms at the last layer when I try to pan the gold in the bowl, here is a photo of it,
IMG_9184.JPG

Here is the fine gold which is before this baige sand,
IMG_9185.JPG

Here is a close up shot of that baige color sand which also has some fine gold in it, its color leans toward milky white though,
IMG_9186.JPG

I am going to look at them under a 100x lens and try to take clearer photos.

Thanks
Kj
 
sorry about the late reply, here are the pics I promised.

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The Dolly pot referred to with rough build instructions in my last post.

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And a small sample crushed and in later stages of washing, pics should be able to be zoomed on as they are HD source, the internal LED lighting is not a good light colour temperature for assessing samples as you can see.

DSC_1232.JPG
 
The rest of the pics from the dish, you can see clearly that there is nothing but black sands and gold left at the end, which is why I question the lack of black sand in your samples, if you have no black sands I feel you are also washing out some of the gold.

DSC_1233.JPG
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DSC_1235.JPG
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you can see that little larger piece in the last pic, behind in the very bottom behind the black sand is ultra fine gold, every single speck is needed to be assessed as an indicator when you are trying to locate the exact point of where in the quartz or other rock it is weathering from. Regarding locating your source I can offer more help, you are already doing quite well. Take into the field to your location your dish, dollypot, 50 litres of water and a very small amount of detergent to act as a surfactant so your fine gold stays in the dish without floating out, be warned the smallest amount is needed, too much and the fine gold will stick to the bubbles and float out, if you have bubbles you have used too much. The rest of what is to come for you revolves around drilling and eventually shotfiring. I cant offer you any help there, it is unethical for me to offer advice over the internet regarding explosives and the correct use. I advise you to do a shotfiring course as soon as possible, you are going to need your shotfirers license in the very near future. As well as research on how to correctly construct a mine shaft, these two latter items are a massive responsibility, the likes of which are utterly lethal if your approach is not one of the utmost respect for yourself and your life. The samples you have shown so far indicate a source that warrants much further investigation, the gold is showing coarse and fine gold(excellent prospect) your success will be determined by your patience and soundness of mind and respect for your own life. Hard rock mining is by no means easy, but your reward awaits you.
 
Lightspeed,

Thanks for your pictures. I am busy with concentrating and now melting these.

Here is a snap shot of coarse gold concentrated from coarse material. I crushed and mill an quartz ore weighing 290 grams then screen the powder into coarse and fine powders.

Ran the coarse and fine spearately, concentrated as much as I could without losing any visible gold.

I will be melting to find out how much gold is in that 290 gram ore.

IMG_9349.PNG
 
Nice indeed! A blue bowl is good enough to check for free-mill gold. Well done!

What fineness is the 'fine' sieved material?
I'd crush several sizes; 30, 50, 100 mesh to see how fine the free milling gold goes.
 
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