Southfork
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The gold from the other day is from a mine dump pile all shattered small rock mucked and dumped. Thank you, old timers, for leaving us a pile of ore we can drive to.
Back yard Prospecting
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Hey Heavy, sounds like you have had an interesting career, very cool. I have run a jack leg, and just about every other type of pneumatic and hydraulic drilling for the last 50 years. I am a blasting contractor, and have done some interesting jobs. One that sticks out, is an 8' diameter boulder that rolled off the mountain about 600 vertical feet, rolled through a nice house, eventually coming to rest in his hot tub. I had to blast it into 1' and smaller chunks, so it could be hauled off with a hand truck. I have also blasted 10' diameter granite boulders out of finished houses, where the owner wants additional room where a crawl space used to be. Still love blowing stuff up after all these years. If anybody needs advice on how to blow anything up (legally) Mike or myself, would be happy to answer any and all questions.
Can’t wait to see some pictures and results from that outing.
Southfork
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My son is down the hill shoveling in the rain he just called he's finding gold. I'll wait until tomorrow when the sun's out the gold not going anywhere soon. He came up looking like a drowned rat but there's gold waiting
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As a teenager knew nothing about dynamite when I came across half a dozen sticks left behind in a railway tunnel.
Took off my short, wrapped the sticks inside then tossed the lot over my shoulder.
Soon after walking along the railway tracks, I started seeing spots, the sticks discarded I began to feel better.
If your playing with old fuse and decide to light an end, make sure it's not cordite. Scary stuff and I'm very fortunate to still have my left hand fully intact.
Took off my short, wrapped the sticks inside then tossed the lot over my shoulder.
Soon after walking along the railway tracks, I started seeing spots, the sticks discarded I began to feel better.
If your playing with old fuse and decide to light an end, make sure it's not cordite. Scary stuff and I'm very fortunate to still have my left hand fully intact.
Heavy Diver
Member
Yes sir
Southfork
Well-known member
Never put dynamite in your shorts
At my age I can use all the help I can get.
Southfork
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We have this seasonal drainage on our property that has some tailing piles left from the gold rush. After the big New Year's storm, I set a sluice box up and started shoveling hard digging into a pile of rocks and dirt and trying to classify. But I did find a little gold my son came down and helped to speed things up. We did a clean up after about five full buckets 'worth of classified material a few pickers and black sands with micro gold. We need a better way of working these piles but a good day in the sun.
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Southfork
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Awhile back I made a post about burning brush and picking up some float. I crushed the float and used gravity recovery to concentrate ended up with 4 grams of concentrated material. I took the 4 grams and melted twice to clean it up ended up with 2 grams of gold. This was from a few yards behind the house now if I can just find the source.
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Southfork
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None stop rains our chain mill is outside because of dust we have it covered until better weather. A little hand crushing with a mortar and pestle on small samples from the new claim. We melted the panned gold in a graphite crucible without any flux in our propane furnace it resulted in a nice clean button 26 grams. So far most of the samples are metal detector finds quartz with free gold little to no pyrites. Break in the weather tomorrow four of us are going out and hit it hard raking a few piles to see what the Oldtimers left us. I'm waiting on a small jaw crusher to be delivered it should help the processing breaking the ore down for the chain mill .
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Southfork
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Break in the storms so I ran some samples from different areas of the new claim. Just a handful from four different spots first through the jaw crusher then the chain mill. The ground concentrations were run on the ribbed sluice then panned all four samples have flour gold. one sample was loaded that's where my son is today filling some bags and buckets with ore. None of the samples run today had any visible gold and totally different type of ore? less quartz more black shale and some pyrites. They did make a soft tone on the detectors will need to take a slow easy approach to clean the concentrates. I save all the tailings for future concentrating and maybe a regrind.
With a soft tone, your metal detector is telling you it's indecisive. That, along with the shale, would indicate to me that you're out of your "pay streak".
Shale makes an excellent riffle system. I have never heard of native gold intruding on shale as it does with quartz.
Mush on!
James
Shale makes an excellent riffle system. I have never heard of native gold intruding on shale as it does with quartz.
Mush on!
James
Southfork
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Well, there is small amounts of quartz. but more black nonmagnetic material I'm calling it shale it looks layered and compressed with fine gold. My son brought me another sack full I'll run in the morning. We also find what looks like black sand but solid and it's loaded with gold. Shale doesn't make a riffle system when it's in a pile. Look up gold in slate. Whatever it is there's gold in it. Quartz, granite, basalt, schist. slate are some of the rocks that carried gold. It may be deposited by volcanic hydrothermal activity solutions containing minerals and heavy metals like gold drop out of solution and are deposited in cracks and fissures.
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Some of the finest crystalline Gold I have ever seen, has come from stringers in shale. Instead of Quartz, the host gangue is Calcium. Google "Tom's Baby", from Breckenridge, Colorado , Farncomb Hill geology, and some of the Au from Liberty, Washington. Just a couple better known deposits, a lot more then you would think. Don't discount shale.
Southfork
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I crushed some black shale / slate maybe five pounds then ran it through the ribbed sluice. I was surprised at the amount of micro gold / flour that showed but real messy to work. The slurry reminds me of what they seal parking lots with lol my hands looked like I cleaned a wood stove. Water was black and hard to see anything until clean up ultra-fine gold in the pan. I used mercury to clean up got nice little amalgam ball. I now have my own retort to reclaim the mercury and keep this environmentally clean.
Southfork
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Sunny day so I'm cleaning ore these were small bits that toned out the detector. Hand crushed in the steel mortar and then panned the blue pan has a few pickers in it. The fines I made a nice amalgam ball with. As soon as I figure out what to seal the pipe cap with, I'll try the retort. Some of the pickers have a bit of quartz on them this is from the old, flooded mines tailing pile. This ore was real dirty made red mud when washing and panning
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Southfork
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Ran a few samples through the jaw crusher today nice and warm 67 degrees. And I put new chains on the mill then ran the crushed quartz it started making noise shut down . Opened the mill and found a broken bolt and missing nut on the screen cover. But all is not lost there was 6 grams of gold under the cover and a little quartz with gold. Parts ordered.
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Seal the threads with potters clay. Use it like you would use pipe dope, or brush on Teflon thread sealant. Tighten fairly well, sorry, don't have a torque spec, other then tight. If you have the small retort, like the one available from Keene, don't forget to put a little clay or bone ash in the bottom, to keep Au from sticking to pipe cap. Probably shouldn't have told you that. I purchased a used retort at a garage sale for $5. Didn't open it till I got home. Turned out there was 3/4 oz. stuck to the bottom, previous owner couldn't figure out how to get it out. I keep looking for those kind of deals.
Three time as much as I've found tinkering in 'no gold creek' for two years on and off. Very iron rich stuff, if you can find it at all.... and most likely brought up to creek by nomadic tribes long ago rather than originating from area. Probably a head band or bracelet back in 1450 BC.....
