Quartz vein

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All

Thanks for your following up and your great comments.

Here is a picture of my homemade blue bowl.
IMG_9272.JPG

I am really excited about the results so far. I will be melting the concentrates tommorow and will be able to show you guys the final buttons and its weight and possibly grade.

My next step as lightspeed has greatly pointed out here, to go back to area, and log and photograph any samples I take. I will also measure each quartz lens plus its coordinates.

Then I will mill those samples and run them again to see what results would I get.

So far, by just looking and estimating there are two very rich quartz ore.

How rich? I will find out tommorow.

Thanks and best regards
Kj
 
You need to get yourself a copy of this book: Loaming for Gold by Sam. J. Cash. This book is invaluable for a true prospector and although it may have terminologies you may have little experience with, by active experience it becomes self explanatory, it also goes into construction of a mineshaft and I have personally used this book for locating a source and construction/sinking of shafts on my own claims. There is a copy on ebay in Australia, the book is small but an excellent addition to your tools. Alternatively you can purchase this book from:
Reeds Prospecting Supplies, here in Australia, its about $22.00 Aud

Regarding the "Blue Bowl", contrary to what some think it is not reliable or the right tool for sampling to locate a source from a gold reef if you cannot recover your flour gold. While this type of sampling/recovery method is fine for alluvial or placer deposits, where you are not looking to pin point a vein or point of shed eg: concentration of values from a gold reef. The simple truth is that fine gold as in flour gold in quantity is a better indicator of the source/enrichment than is coarse gold, it also tells you much about the actual deposit itself, coarse gold only can indicate a source which will not produce a consistent vein and will cut out and not run to depth. The recovery of fine gold by itself or in combination with coarse gold from a reef means much in relation to the deposit type and the depth that the vein will run. Without the ability to recover flour gold in your samples you will be lost, and can sink your shaft in the wrong position, Its all covered in the book.

The ability and freedom of being able to crush and process samples from the reef at the source is by far more convenient and time saving than taking your samples home and then processing, then returning to the field. You may need to do a hundred samples to pinpoint the spot, you may be currently sampling a halo of gold either side of the actual vein, bear in mind a gold bearing reef can carry gold all the way along it, this is where the fine gold is so important. You are on the right path, armed with accurate information and correct advice from experience you will get there.
 
Lightspeed,

Thanks for the respond. I will look for that book on amazon to see if they can ship it outside Australia.

As for black sand I did not see anything at all with processing quartz. However, tonight as I was re running the materials I had picked from a river behind a boulder, that came from ophiolite ranges, and it has black sand that is magnetite.

Before I respond to your last post. Here is some update on gold concentrates I have collected last few days running pulverized sample ores in my blue bowl.

The first concentrate weighed 6 grams containing mostly quartz and visible gold fines and few coarser gold.

My operator first mix that with some borax and tried to melt small quantity of the mix in cruicble, due to amount of quartz, he said the melt is not fluid, but upon turning off the heat, 2 tiny beads were visible.

So he proceeded with lead smelting the 6 grams using lead and silver.

Here is a picture of lead smelting the first concentrate in crucible,
image.jpg

Silver bead produced from smelt,
image.jpg

Dissolving the bead in nitric acid,
image.jpg

Here is the strange part. As you can see in the photo above, silver nitrate solution has no residue, which was shocking, so to just be sure I checked the solution with stannous, first no color change, but after few minutes a mild purple showed on the q-tip as seen below,
image.jpg

My first thought is that gold percipitated but somehow the beaker had a chloride in it from tab water which got mixed with nitric acid created AR and dissolved that trace amount og gold.

Since solution was mostly nitric, I percipitated silver as silver chloride filtered the silver salt, and added a copper wire to the solution. There was no black plating so I have to check back tommorow.

For the rest of concentrates from other run, I tried warm hcl with no reaction, as soon as 2 drops of nitric acid added, fizzing started and all the yellow pieces dissolved,
image.jpg

Check the filtered solution with stannous and got no immidate color, after few minutes very light purple showing on q-tip.

I thought my stannous is bad, so I added small amount of SMB to filtered solution and nothing happened.

So maybe those heavy gold color concentrated from quartz vein were just pyrite. If that is the case then why they were not reacting with warm hcl and as soon as nitric was introduced they started bubbling.

I will try to concentrate maybe 2 kg of sample ore this time and proceed with chemicals.

Thanks and regards
Kj
 
If you are suspicious that its a Sulphide, roast the sample before attempting to digest with HCL, although it is odd it did not react with the warm HCL in the first place. If indeed it is a sulphide you may note the distinct smell of sulphur gas coming off the sample as it is being roasted, after roasting, the possible iron sulphide should have discoloured also and will be golden colour no longer. Using a small sample do this fist to confirm that this may be the case, before going any further.

Use consistent amounts from ore sampling that will help get a reasonable size sample to assess metals but also help you work out your metal rate per ton of ore.

Regarding your melt, too much silica will really play havoc with your melt, start with an unused melt dish if you are trying to do an assay, you may need borax in combination with potassium nitrate to help the reduction, although this I usually use where black sand is a possible issue, but it may help. I do mine in a furnace, not under a torch, but you would think a direct flame should be fine eg oxy/acet. Again this is where a dish would help to reduce some of the silica total in the sample. I would recover the metal beads from the melt without going to the cupellation stage and see what you have, dissolving the borax in dilute acid leaving the metal beads behind(not nitric) sulphuric preferred in 10% dilution eg 10 ml sulphuric, 100ml water and boil. If you cannot get the flux out you may need to put the entire dish in, this will likely be the case due to the amount of silica in the melt. This will be a slow process, one step at a time though. I imagine you have access to a laboratory scale to weigh the result from your sampling and acid refining otherwise this whole process will not give you any numbers to go by. Your stannous solution definitely may be in need of refreshing.

I find it very odd that there are no black sands in your crushed samples on the quartz, you can see the amount of iron staining on the quartz itself, generally speaking iron oxide is also the precipitant in quartz that will pull the gold from solution, but admittedly is not always the case, some of the gold specimens I have found and quartz reef I have sampled iron oxide has been very limited in quantity but present. In any case I can only go by your analysis.

All is not lost, it just means taking baby steps to be concise with your results. After all you have already said you had metal beads in your first melt.
Looking forward to your next post, let me know how you get on with sourcing the book, I will try to help you if I am able.

Best Regards
L.
 
Lightspeed

Today I followed your advise. I pulverized the rest of a sample from yesterday and ran it.

Collected the golden materials and roastes it.
IMG_9379.PNG

After roasting for half an hour, this is what they concentrate looks like, all the shining gold color is gone,
IMG_9380.PNG

And here is roasted concs in a dish, the golden color gave away to grayish color but there was still some pieces that had brownish yellow even after nitric acid digestion.
IMG_9381.JPG

I added nitric acid to above and reaction started, based on the color of solution, nitric must have dissolved all the iron.
IMG_9383.JPG

Thanks
Kj
 
From the roasting the result may not look promising for visible Au, it is however common for sulphide ores to carry Au within their structure due to iron being a natural precipitant of gold. If the result after digestion is in the negative you have actually learned a great deal from the experience and can now quickly and effectively assess your sands concentrates by using this procedure. When you do have physical gold in your concentrates you will note the distinct look that separates the two, this comes by experience, some of which you now have.

Attached is an image which is an example of Iron sulphides ability to precipitate Au from solutions in the course of geological formation. This pic clearly shows the Cubic crystal habit of Iron Sulphide with gold attached to the crystal itself. If this rock was separated(the visible Au) and assayed, the Sulphide would show a definitive Au kick, it would be loaded with microscopic gold. The Iron Sulphide in this pic shows its naturally oxidised state.

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Edited for additional information:
Down here in Western Australia, on rare occasion you may find when on walkabout with your detector a large lump of iron sulphide in a single crystal, some I have found have been an inch long. Among prospectors in Australia they are referred to as the Devils Dice, if you are detecting and find one of these on the ground, it is one of the best indicators for a gold deposit nearby.
 

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Lightspeed

Thanks for the photo of sample pyrite gold. Today I went back to the area and picked samples scientifically.

I recorded coordinates of where I took the samples, got a rough dimension of visible quartz vein. Took photo of samples.

I am in process of pulverizing the samples right now.

Here is the photos of outcrops and lenses Itook samples. I will update this with final results of my smelting.

Sample 1 from the following;
IMG_9396.JPG

Sample 2 from the following; it looks all the quartz and hematite veins were crumbled into small pieces,
image.jpg

Sample 3 from the following veins;
image.jpg

image.jpg

Thanks
Kj
 
Some reading for you, this is a geological survey report from 1974, detailing spectrographic assay, should cover off the areas of interest to you and give a reasonable overview of mineral associations and compositions. You will need to do further study to get a handle on the geology but should be very helpful. You have picked one heck of a starting point for prospecting, very rare geology indeed. The link below I hope is of some use.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1981/0452/report.pdf
 
I suggest you do more practice panning to separate the gold from the waste materials. Look on Youtube for a guy who has videos listed as "Hard Rock University" he has some good videos on panning fine sized hard rock gold.
 
Lightspeed,

Thanks for the book, I will read it with interest.

Reno,
I have already watched that video. Very informative channel.

Regards
Kj
 
Lightspeed,

Indeed that would great. According to "You Can Smelt Too" book which I got from the forum and have been reading it, using systematic tests I can identify 29 elements in any ore or rock.

So I am saving the concentrates and have not milled the other 2 samples I recently took.

As for possible metals associated with the sulphides, based on last smelt that is posted photos in the thread, they did contain gold.

Thanks and regards
Kj
 
Hi,

As I was reading "You Can Smelt Too" I came across these units as they were standard back in early 1900s. I checked the internet but didn't really find a solid confirmation. One unit used in the book is "grain rice" the other is "navy bean", anyone here knows how many grams are in each of those old units?

I am working on the quartz ore project simultaneously as venture burner building, so things have delayed a little bit.

Thanks and regards
Kj
 
kjavanb123 said:
One unit used in the book is "grain rice" the other is "navy bean", anyone here knows how many grams are in each of those old units?

Kj
Click to expand...

1lb of navy beans = 2.5 cups
:arrow: http://www.e-cookbooks.net/ingredeq.htm


1 Gram = 15.4323584 Grains
:arrow: http://www.asknumbers.com/GramsToGrains.aspx
 
I visited an area which has a lot of granite quarries around it and noticed the following quartz veins.

They were 10cm to 50cm in width and seemed parallel together. The host rock is sheets and mica.

This time I am planning to use a dril and dril different spots on veins, collect the powder from drilling and smelt to find out about any PMs.

One thing noticable was the dark sand in the dried river bed beneth the veins, kind of resembling black sand. Did not have a magnet with me so I could not test.

Quartz vein
image.jpg

Vein outcrops,
image.jpg

Possible black sand,
image.jpg

Also I have seen exact same plant as can be seen in second photo in another abandond gold mine not far from this site.

Drill results and smelting coming up next.
 

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