# Quartz vein



## kjavanb123 (Aug 9, 2017)

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



Closer look at one piece



Keep you posted.

Regards
Kj


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## archeonist (Aug 11, 2017)

Looks promising!


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## Platdigger (Aug 11, 2017)

Is the picture deceptive? Or is the vein several feet thick?


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## Eu_citzen (Aug 11, 2017)

Let us know how it goes!


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 11, 2017)

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


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## Lightspeed (Aug 15, 2017)

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.


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 15, 2017)

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;




Here are some close up shots of the yellow zone on previous photo,






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


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## Lightspeed (Aug 15, 2017)

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.


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 15, 2017)

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,



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


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## Lightspeed (Aug 15, 2017)

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.


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 16, 2017)

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


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 18, 2017)

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.




A few pieces from sample above milled and sieved,



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



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.



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.



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


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 18, 2017)

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,



Again, bad lighting in these photos, but they are real gold color,



And here are few more shots,






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


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## Lightspeed (Aug 18, 2017)

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.


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 18, 2017)

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,



Here is the fine gold which is before this baige sand,



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,



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

Thanks
Kj


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## Lightspeed (Aug 21, 2017)

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






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






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.


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## Lightspeed (Aug 21, 2017)

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.










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.


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 21, 2017)

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.


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## eaglewings35 (Aug 21, 2017)

That is indeed some good looking gold fines.
Good Luck !!!
Yoy may start a gold rush in the UAE !!


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## Eu_citzen (Aug 21, 2017)

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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## kjavanb123 (Aug 21, 2017)

All

Thanks for your following up and your great comments.

Here is a picture of my homemade blue bowl.



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


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## Lightspeed (Aug 21, 2017)

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.


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 22, 2017)

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,



Silver bead produced from smelt,



Dissolving the bead in nitric acid,



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,



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, 



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


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## 4metals (Aug 22, 2017)

The yellow color of your parting acid isn 't a good sign. It could be saying iron!


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## Lightspeed (Aug 22, 2017)

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.


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## kjavanb123 (Aug 23, 2017)

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.



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



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.



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



Thanks
Kj


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## Lightspeed (Aug 23, 2017)

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.





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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## kjavanb123 (Aug 24, 2017)

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;



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



Sample 3 from the following veins; 






Thanks
Kj


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## Aeon13 (Aug 30, 2017)

Great topic here.

Following this thread.


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## Lightspeed (Sep 1, 2017)

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


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## Reno Chris (Sep 1, 2017)

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.


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## kjavanb123 (Sep 1, 2017)

Lightspeed,

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

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

Regards
Kj


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## Lightspeed (Sep 2, 2017)

KJ, it would be very interesting to know what metals those sulphides were carrying.


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## kjavanb123 (Sep 2, 2017)

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


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## kjavanb123 (Sep 3, 2017)

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


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## Topher_osAUrus (Sep 3, 2017)

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



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


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## Platdigger (Sep 3, 2017)

Come on Topher , they are talking about the size of a grain of rice or bean.


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## kjavanb123 (Jan 12, 2018)

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



Vein outcrops,



Possible black sand,



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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## andy3124fish (Jan 27, 2018)

how do you take a good photo of your gold in pan. thanks


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## kjavanb123 (Jan 28, 2018)

You can use a magnifier then take a photo of the magnifier lens.


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## rickbb (Jan 29, 2018)

You can also take the lens out of an old CD-ROM drive, tape it to a piece of cardboard and then tape it over your cell phone lens. Makes a decent microscope camera.


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## UncleBenBen (Jan 29, 2018)

rickbb said:


> You can also take the lens out of an old CD-ROM drive, tape it to a piece of cardboard and then tape it over your cell phone lens. Makes a decent microscope camera.



That's right clever. I'm going to have to try that. Sounds a lot easier than trying to hold the loupe just right.


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## galenrog (Jan 29, 2018)

As long as the device you are using to take pics is handheld, the likelihood of poor images is high. I always use a tripod or other stand to make the camera or smartphone immobile. Even something as mundane as the human heartbeat can ruin a closeup image. 

I give this same advice on several coin forums, typically a few times a week.

Time for more coffee.


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