# Interpreting assay results and moving forward



## 1kristin (Apr 27, 2013)

I found what appeared to be a vein of quartz on my property. I did some research and found a company to do an assay for me. I just got the results back and they show 58.208 g/mt and 1.871 OPT for gold. Nothing for Ag, Pt or Pd. Is there information somewhere to help me know what the results actually mean? Can anyone point me in the right direction? I also need to know what I do next....get a shovel and pick and start digging? Is there a place to take it and have them refine it for me? I am in Central California.... Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks
Kristin


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## squarecoinman (Apr 28, 2013)

1kristin said:


> I found what appeared to be a vein of quartz on my property. I did some research and found a company to do an assay for me. I just got the results back and they show 58.208 g/mt and 1.871 OPT for gold. Nothing for Ag, Pt or Pd. Is there information somewhere to help me know what the results actually mean? Can anyone point me in the right direction? I also need to know what I do next....get a shovel and pick and start digging? Is there a place to take it and have them refine it for me? I am in Central California.... Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks
> Kristin



Hi Kristin OPT stands for Ounces Per Tonne, so in theory if you dig up 1 tonne of your quartz it will contain 58 gram of gold. That is a high yield and with current prices it would be around 2600 us dollars per tonne. You ask what to do next , I would suggest to sit down and think about it.
First of how big is your property, what i mean is this. If i would find gold on my property i would not tell anybody and do nothing, but my land is only 30 by 40 meters and if i would dig and process the gold, the week after a company would start digging next door and the neighborhood would be full of small mini mines.
But if your property is big enough that would not be a problem.
The second thing to look in to is legal matters, does the quartz belong to you ? ( in many countries one can be the owner of land, but not the owner of what is in the land, such as oil etc) are you aloud to mine in the area ?
the next one is cost, how much does it cost you to bring out the quartz, transport cost to a processing plant, cost to refine, cost to repair the land after the mining will stop etc. if all these cost are less then 2,5 dollar per Kilo you can make a profit.

regards scm


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## 1kristin (May 1, 2013)

Thanks so much for your reply.  

I am on my own land - rural 5 acres. Do companies buy ore? Can I deliver it to them? I would rather nobody know that I found gold on my property....especially as I am trying to purchase the neighboring parcel. lol. Any idea if I can haul a hauler full of ore to someone and get it refined for like a percent and they keep their percentage and provide me with refined gold? That would be ideal.

Thanks


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## etack (May 2, 2013)

Buy your lang first!!!!!!! If you start digging you may never get to buy it.

Then checkout some small miming forums. Like on any forum there are people with good reputation and not. We have some small miners here but I don't really know who they are.

Eric


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## shaftsinkerawc (May 2, 2013)

You may own the surface rights to the land? But have you looked into who owns the Sub-Surface/Mineral/Oil & Gas rights in your location? Do you have a DNR (Division of Natural Resources) in your area? They should be able to help with these questions.


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## Platdigger (May 2, 2013)

If it is anything like Mexico, you may have to stake a claim. I mean to keep someone else from staking one, on your land.


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## FrugalRefiner (May 2, 2013)

Listen to shaftsinker and Platdigger! Just because you "own the land" doesn't mean you own any mineral rights, or oil, or timber, or water, etc. If you really have something of value, keep a low profile, test, assay, sample, repeat... If the price is right, buy the land. Quietly.

Dave


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## g_axelsson (May 3, 2013)

An important thing when sampling ore is that you take a sample that is representative for the ore and not the best looking piece. If you take a piece that looks like "pure gold" and the rest of the ore is white quartz then you could fool yourself into an expensive adventure. Only ore that is as rich as your tested piece will contain the same amount of gold.

As a cautionary tale from my area, over 100 years ago a number of quartz veins were located and some samples of arsenopyrite were sent in, hoping for cobalt. The result came back with no cobalt but up to 2500g gold per ton.... no one managed to mine that ore profitable because the quartz veins were so thin so to mine them you had to blast a ditch wide enough to work in and the resulting ore were too poor.
You can still follow the ditches across the area today.
http://www.geology.neab.net/photos/krng002.jpg
Twenty years later and 40 km to the east the Boliden ore was found. That mine was really profitable, a lot less gold per ton but copper, zinc and lead in good amounts coupled with a couple of grams of gold per ton made all the difference and it was mined for decades.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Göran


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## solarsmith (May 9, 2013)

if you can find a mill that will take your ore in very smal amounts (under 10 tons per load) and only once in a wile (every month)

let me know... transporting non concentrated ore more than a few hundred miles is usualy a break even deal... you would draw a lot of atention to try and do more than that amount on a small 5 acre lot.
if your 5 acer lot was an old mine claim at on time you probly do own the mineral rights... I own 40 acers and just one small peice belongs to some one with mineral rights that does not own the surface rights.
the county may be able to help you on this. its all covered with the taxing department. 


If it was me... I would work with a few hundred lbs at a time ( a trash can full) reduce (concentrate) this to a few lbs ( not more than 20) and assay. There are many ways to concentrate.. Then,
get it up to 20 oz per ton and see if you can sell that...why 20 oz per ton
this is a general cut off point for direct smelt.(melting the ore and pouring it directly into a bar) then this dore bar would be very easy to sell. Good luck Bryan In Denver Colorado


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## 1kristin (May 10, 2013)

Everyone has been so helpful - thanks for all the suggestions. I will contact the places suggested for land owner information. Just to clarify, the quartz "vein" I found, runs across my property. I am pretty sure there are no claims to anything on my property - I would not have purchased it if I thought someone would have any access to anything here ever.....lol My community maintains a minimum parcel requirement of 4.6 acres. My immediate neighbors were unable to get their property to perc(?) for septic stuff, so they have never done anything with that land. It is beautiful with or without any mineral content and I'd like to buy it either way. 
After some research, I learned a tertiary(?) river ran through here and they did hydraulic mining quite successfully during the gold rush days on 160 acres which included my land. The neighboring parcels natural spring is partially fed by an underground river. I learned more than I ever thought I would want to know about the land around here...lol
Unfortunately, the gold here is super fine, like talc. I don't have the patience to deal with it - I know my limits. The visible gold in the quartz is virtually identical across all of it - the sample sent to the assayer was/is an ideal indicator or what is truly there across that section of my land. It actually looks as if an old river or stream got pushed out of the earth sideways. Sediment/hardpan/bedrock stuff still attached to the quartz like concrete.
Additionally, I was clearing the area around a greenhouse that sits at the lowest point on my property...maybe lowest point on mine and surrounding properties...and found the old cement entryway I dug out was cracked. When I picked up
a part of it, the ground below held about a 2 inch layer of blonde sparkly sandy stuff. That is going out to be assayed in the morning.
Can anyone tell me what a assay report usually shows for gold per ton? Is 1.871oz per ton (58.something per metric ton) much in comparison? Should I send samples to more than one assayer to make sure my results stay the same? 
I don't have the money to sample "seams" or to have a consultant come out...I am gonna be lucky to pay my mortgage so if there is a way to do this small and fund any mining gradually for those profits, I would really appreciate any thoughts.

I always thought finding it would be the hard part.... :roll: 

Thanks, Kristin


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## shaftsinkerawc (May 10, 2013)

If you're caught extracting from the sub-surface without sub-surface mineral rights you could lose everything. Check surrounding properties as well for sub-surface mineral rights as a hardrock vein discovery/claim may have along strike rights.
What does the "blonde sparkly sandy stuff" pan like? 
Does it look golden from all angles?


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## solarsmith (May 10, 2013)

if you think all of your gold is very fine you may want to look into a floatation set up for processing... with a gravity proces just after the ball mill to catch the biger particals. . if you gold is in the quartz and did not wash into the area your truly on a vein (load). see if you can determin the width of the vein and the strike and dip.
see how much of the posible vein stays in side the bounds of your lot.
If any oficial asks what your doing your Prospecting and not mineing.
keep your surface disturbed as smal as you can. and rake a bit of grass seed in at the end of each day.. also use as much of your waste digings as you can as back fill for a drive way or trail or some other worthy project.. and dont let any thing wet or dry wash off of your lot from your diging. friends have learned this one the hard way. good luck Bryan in denver colorado... Ps ask the state dept of minerals if your state has a recreational mining or prospecting catagory. hear in colorado we have it and it restricts recreational mining to 1600 sq ft of disturbed surface area. No more that 2 in a 5 acer lot.
thats a big area for hand diging.. but my new area is over that and I shrink it down every time i dig by reclaming what the guys from 1879 left torn up..


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## rabbit (Jun 13, 2013)

Assay results are only as accurate as your sampleing methods. What type of and assay are you getting? (fire, XRF, spectrometer, etc...) Are you sending in a single source sample, or mixing material from the whole area? Don't even think about sending truck loads of ORE to a refinery until you know what is in it. You don't have money to hire a consultant or geologist? then you'll have to study and prossess on your own until you are broke or verify the assay you posted. 1.87 opt for gold is way higher than the .005 opt most of us find in hard rock mining.
8)


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## 1kristin (Jun 29, 2013)

Sorry it took so long to reply to recent posts....In response to Rabbit and sampling....I took a random chunk of quartz, bashed it to fit into the box - they wanted 60 grams- and sent it on its way. It looked the same as any other chunk of quartz in the app 10 foot wide area. See the pictures below I sent the sample to a company that used standard fire assay.
I am wondering if this looks like calaverite to anyone....and if it is calaverite, would that explain not seeing gold in the bottom of a pan?

Also, I did find someone to purchase the ore for spot price... I was thrilled. 

Thanks,
K


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## Cygos (Jan 17, 2020)

I have parcel of land which located out side in rural areas it have gold, my test result indicate that but I didn’t know economical for extraction, the test result as followed 
Ag silver 11.90
Au Gold 47.03
Cu copper 1905.43
ZN Zinc 2445.06
Pb lead 20023.79
Co Cobalt 111.51
NI Nickel 101.65
Fe iron 241769.64

Any body have idea and suggestions


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## giom (Jan 24, 2020)

i think you placed your add in wrong place may be you should replace it in proper place so every body can see it so you can get help . my opinion its look good analyeses for gold and silver if you got it from a place that you own try to see how you can make a claim on it the proper way and then find some one to sell it to dont invest any mony till you sure


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## Lino1406 (Jan 27, 2020)

If considering ratio gold to iron, that is 1:5000, meaning 1kg per 5 tons, or 1kg per 20 tons ore, seems on the limit for exploitation.


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## galenrog (Jan 27, 2020)

If you believe the numbers, then it is time to hire a mining consultant. They are worth every penny, even on small mines such as yours could be.

Time for more coffee.


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## g_axelsson (Jan 28, 2020)

As always in mining, the amount of ore is just as important as the grade.

If you have a ton of ore at 100 ppm Au you have a hobby project.

If you have 10.000.000 tons of 5 ppm Au you have a fortune, but it will cost half a fortune to set it up before it starts to pay.

Göran


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