# How do i prospect for platinum?



## Roy (Apr 17, 2010)

what should i be looking for when i go gold prospecting this summer there is area that has platinum too what should i be looking for?


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## blueduck (Apr 18, 2010)

research your subject matter, know if the area you intend to prospect in has traditionally held the Pt group metals. Here in North Central Idaho both eh Clearwater basin and the Salmon River have Pt group metals though not in huge obvious amounts, more microscopic than outward nuggets like other places though folks have found a few Pt nuggets over the years on the Salmon river near present day Lucile.

it hangs in the same levels as gold does in the streambeds and was considered a nuisance by the Spanish when they found it in streams they were looking for gold in..... 

The color will vary with area and amalgamation? of other metals but mostly in the dull grey catagory from what ive seen.... in the pan or sluice Pt group will hang with the gold, mercury and lead of similar size. 

Ive heard of folks finding somewhat "pure" veins of Pt and then not being able to find them again in a couple different states..... but from my experience and research they are rare indeed and better left to recovery through refining your materials that are heavy and suspect [easy to test for values if you read this forum, CM Hoke book, and visit Lazersteve's website] 

Get a decent field hand microscope and a few pictures of your target, and/or make a purchase of your target material if possible for reference. the more research you do the closer you will get to finding the material you seek without tossing it out of the box.

William
Idaho


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## Roy (Apr 18, 2010)

I bought a where to find gold in Oregon book a year or so ago and I found a map that shows where AU AG CU CR PT has been found and it shows that most of the PT is in the Rogue river area and gold beach. parts are in southern central and eastern oregon. I knew there was gold in the rogue river and gold beach area but didn't know about PT until I found the map so I figured to ask what color I should watch out for when I pan the area for gold. since that's my original intent anyways PT just a perk. 

thanks for the info too.


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## butcher (Apr 18, 2010)

I live here in Oregon and know a miner who has found Platinum in red round balls, he has been trying to mine it for years, locked up in legal disputes with the government. He knows it there and has the ability to mine it but courts keep his hands tied.

Finding it on a recreation scale and actually mining it is two different ball games.

beside's how will we payoff Japan and china the money we are borrowing to pay for social services (national debt), if we let American citizens mine the minerals set aside as collateral?


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## Anonymous (Apr 18, 2010)

Known Platinum deposits in British Columbia.

Platinum	Canada, BC	Deposit
iBobster(4) Property Google Map
Pioneer Placer Claim
Dragon's Den Property Google Map
Rainbow Creek Property Google Map
Fraser River Platinum Property Google Map
Clinton Property Google Map
Glasgow Property Google Map
Rosch Property Google Map
Lawless Creek Property Google Map
Corn Flakes Property Google Map
Champion Property Google Map
Shirley's Prospect
Dreamcatcher Property Google Map
Summer Solstice Property Google Map
Newton Creek Property Google Map
Euclid Property Google Map
Granite-Coalmont
Cedar Creek


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## Seamus (Apr 19, 2010)

The forty niners were throwing out what they thought was chunks of lead in their pans and sluices. Back in those days prospectors did not know about platinum or the fact that it looked like lead to them. Platinum in it's native state is not pure. It usually has one or sometimes more them one other platinum group metal. Pure platinum would have a silver look to it. Other metals in platinum might make it look like lead or other minerals. 
Study what your finding in your pan and be prepared to save some not so obvious metals.


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## Roy (Apr 19, 2010)

butcher well i hope the guy gets it if he's still going at it.


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## WIZZARD (Apr 19, 2010)

The same way you prospect for gold, almost. Most Pt is in the form of Pt/PGM's and host minerals. Look at http://webmineral.com you will find Pt will link up with a lot of elements, including Fe. The magnetite that most dump could hold the mother load in PGE's. You will know if Pt is in native free form by the silver luster and metal appearance, found with the gold. However most of these metallic shinny Pt native metals are very very small. Under 200 mesh screen. The largest nugget found in California was about the size of dime, found in northern California. Most Pt is locked up in mineral form and you can not distinguish it from host rocks.



If you try to place it in AR good luck as Rh, Ir, Ru, Os and host minerals are very suborn unless you pulverize it to minus 1,000 mesh, yep micron size you will get a very complex solution of a lot stuff. What makes this interesting is once you micron size it, the mineral bonds become open, and NM are sometime soluble in HCL alone, but so are a host of other elements. Once you have a solution of gold and lot of PGM by ratio, your normal reagents are almost useless and complicated drops are co mixed with compounds holding on to other elements. 

WIZZARD


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## Irons (Apr 20, 2010)

WIZZARD said:


> The same way you prospect for gold, almost. Most Pt is in the form of Pt/PGM's and host minerals. Look at http://webmineral.com you will find Pt will link up with a lot of elements, including Fe. The magnetite that most dump could hold the mother load in PGE's. You will know if Pt is in native free form by the silver luster and metal appearance, found with the gold. However most of these metallic shinny Pt native metals are very very small. Under 200 mesh screen. The largest nugget found in California was about the size of dime, found in northern California. Most Pt is locked up in mineral form and you can not distinguish it from host rocks.
> 
> 
> If you try to place it in AR good luck as Rh, Ir, Ru, Os and host minerals are very suborn unless you pulverize it to minus 1,000 mesh, yep micron size you will get a very complex solution of a lot stuff. What makes this interesting is once you micron size it, the mineral bonds become open, and NM are sometime soluble in HCL alone, but so are a host of other elements. Once you have a solution of gold and lot of PGM by ratio, your normal reagents are almost useless and complicated drops are co mixed with compounds holding on to other elements.
> ...



Even silica and aluminum Oxide go into solution. When you try to reduce it, the whole thing turns into a gel.


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## WIZZARD (Apr 20, 2010)

Yep, jello like, you bet.
You need a good microscope, set up for metal and mineral. I use a AO duel eye, with 6 powers. The unit came from surplus chip manufacture. When i isolate the gel, it looks like jelly fish full of pepper. The pepper particles carry a lot of goodies. The host grain of Fe, Cr, Ti, ect and soluble NM are now salts in the gel and the pepper are insoluble metals, still alloyed with other NM or still mineral metals. When the ore sized minus 1,000 mesh and boiled in DH2O, filtered and a few drops are vaporized on a stainless steel spoon you see a residue of stuff. If salts, white, the spoon test needs to start out with low heat to drive off the liquid, the dry residue is viewed, next red hot heat. The residue is sometimes metal. DH2O can be as aggressive as mild acid. My point is the mineralized NM can be very soluble and the pre-acid process of eliminating base metals with weak acids will take some goodies. The geological stuff has not be fluxed and not reduced to pure metal..........yet! 

It is suggested to use sodium hydroxide and boil the minus 1,000 mesh ore to remove the silica and other oxides that form the gel first. My concern was the very soluble NM will go into solution and I'll lose goodies. However high pH will also drop values under the right conditions, so I would rater get the soluble silica and get ride of the gel to expose the pepper. When NM are suspected to be in the solution of sodium hydroxide I use some sodium borohydride to drop to a black powder and treat them as a crock pot thing. 

I'm including a photo of a spoon with high PGM's present in the solution that will leave NM residue and not chemistry residue. This spoon is not simple DH2O but a solution of chemistry that flashed off the volatile leaving only metals. All the metals must be stabilized or they flash as PGE have catalyst properties as salts, too. 





Close up.........of spoon residue. The solution was pH adjusted so what you see is not spoon surface, but metal on the surface. 
No matter what you do, you will get goodies to go both ways.........the trick is get more to go the way want them tooooooo.

WIZZARD


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## Irons (Apr 20, 2010)

Don't waste too big of a sample. The silicates may be more soluble but almost impossible to get rid of. When you add acid, it will turn to silica gel.

My pain is your gain. :mrgreen:


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## WIZZARD (Apr 22, 2010)

Warning Will Robson! Do not do this at home or any place else.
However!
Back when the old timers did not worry about being placed in the hoosegow, Hg was used to gather up native gold particles, even micron size stuff. Platinum will not amalgam unless you know how. Gabby Hayes knows what a Hoosegow is. 

WIZZARD


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## Richard36 (Jun 15, 2010)

Dunite, Peridotite, and Serpentinite are the associated rock types in which most PT ore veins develop. 
Propect those regions for outcrops showing mineralization, as well as pan sediments from natural traps in stream beds within regions with the aforementioned underlying rock types.

If I remember correctly, I covered this in more detail under "Washington State Gold Ore".

I hope that this helps.

Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## Richard36 (Jun 19, 2010)

It helps to be prospecting a region where rivers have a dendritic drainage pattern as well.
Dendritic Drainage Patterns indicate areas that have underwent the process of hydrothermal alteration, 
and is necessary in order to concentrate minerals close to the surface.

Once you have found an area within a Dendritic Drainage, and located any of the above rock types, Start looking for high temperature indicator minerals, such as Chromite, Pentlandite, Garnerite, and Nickeline. There are others, 
get a rock book and look up the minerals that have the same formation temperature as the minerals I just listed.

This will be of great help, 
and will put you right in the middle of the zones in which Native Platinum, and ores of Platinum Group Metals will form.

I hope that this helps.

Comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## Roy (Jun 21, 2010)

hey rick thanks. it's been a nightmare really haven't been able to go prospecting at all. I went to the coast friend needed help since he has his right foot removed and stopped by Usrey's Rock Bin there on 101 in lakeside bought a nice chunk of oregon opal and two amethysts for about 12 bucks i'll post some picks tomorrow when it's light. I have some plans for the amethysts now just gotta cut the opal since my little 6" saw won't cut it lol. They had a nice Opal chunk but didn't have the 40.00 they wanted for it, there's a piece in there that would make a great spot to carve a fish in and make it look like it was swimming in the reefs.


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## Richard36 (Jun 21, 2010)

Cool. I look forward to the photos.

I have heard about Opal being found around Opal lake in Detroit. 
I have no idea what grade of material it is, as I have never searched for any there.
Supposedly there is a 7lb limit on what you can legally remove, so it must be fairly abundant.

I would go so far as to speculate that it is all white with little if any fire in it for it to come from that region, 
though I have saw opal from some dig site up close to the Portland area that is super high grade fire and jelly opal.

South Eastern Oregon has some super high grade fire opal as well. 
I held a chunk of it half the size of a 5 gallon bucket with a price tag of $60,000 that came from there, 
and was clean enough to read newsprint through it. 
It was a beautiful shade of amber orange.

Anyway, thanks for the post, and I do look forward to the photos.

Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## Roy (Jun 21, 2010)

here's some cheap rose quartz






here are the amethysts





here's the opal


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## dtectr (Jun 22, 2010)

http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg153/dragon_26/opal2.jpg
isn't that chalcedony?


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## Irons (Jun 22, 2010)

Richard36 said:


> Cool. I look forward to the photos.
> 
> I have heard about Opal being found around Opal lake in Detroit.
> I have no idea what grade of material it is, as I have never searched for any there.
> ...



We have some nice Fire Opal here in Maine. One of these days I plan to Cab some.


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## Roy (Jun 22, 2010)

Irons said:


> Richard36 said:
> 
> 
> > Cool. I look forward to the photos.
> ...



Ya there a fire opal mine here in juniper ridge it's a pay to dig and its 250 per person per day but i guess they have some really nice big pieces. back in 07 I think it was the owner dug up a 12lbs opal boulder.


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## Shecker (Dec 24, 2010)

Ever hear of a a "step over" deposit? That is what the Merensky Reef in Africa is. A dike only a few inches in thickness but it can be traced for hundreds of miles. Untold people stepped over it for years, then someone fell over one of the few outcrops and recognized the host rock for platinum. The Merensky Reef has produced more platinum than anywhere else, but the ore itself averages less than .1 ounces per ton.

The Merensky Reef is an ultra basic complex becomes of feldspathoids (feldspar) minerals. So is the Stillwater Complex in Montana. The platinum group metals favor basic and ultra basic rock types, so the first step in any plan to search for pt/pd/rh must begin with a working knowledge of these rock types. Don't look for pgm's in quartz. While there are examples of pgm's occurring in quarts, they are as secondary minerals and occur generally in trace amounts only.

Also keep in mind that pgm ores are measured in parts per billion and rarely in parts per million (and extremely rarely in parts per thousand but they do exist).

And that reminds me of how and why I was thrown out of Los Alamos National Labs. I had found a ultra basic dike that vertically pushed its way up through several hundred feet of sedimentary rock. The host rock was serpentine. Work up by a chemical engineer indicated some high values in platinum and iridium. I knew that Los Alamos was involved in the K-T Boundary studies and the target they were looking for was Iridium.

So I tracked down the chef scientist involved in the neutron activation analysis of the samples. I called him and explained that I was looking for an analysis for Iridium from a possible K-T Boundary source. The Federal government was paying for it so they were happy to take my samples. To make a long story short about two weeks later I got a call back from the Lab. They were not happy. While they were measuring parts were billion and even parts per trillions, my samples had all return values of parts per thousands -- and in one sample parts per hundred.
My samples had completely blown the calibration of every instrument they had and they were NOT happy. I didn't know that nuclear physicists could pronounce cuss words like that.

Anyway, my point is this. The search for new mineral deposits always begins with personal research. Keep your mind open and keep the scientists cussing. And above all have fun. What is the search if it isn't fun.

Randy in Gunnison


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## Barren Realms 007 (Dec 24, 2010)

ROFLMAO :lol:  :twisted: . I wonder what it cost them to recalibrate thier equipment?


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## Shecker (Dec 24, 2010)

I was simply told "Be glad your not paying for this."

Randy in Gunnison


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