Moneybox said:
MG,
I'm just curious about the size of your crushed stone. Did you crush it far enough to ensure that you got all the gold? I thought you'd have to pulverise it to a much smaller size.
Phil
Hi Phil,
thanks for your reply - because the material is so far alluvial deposits within the calcrete sediment and not within quartz, trying to crush the calcrete to a fine powder and anything that is classified out is placed in a separate pile majority of this was little pieces of quartz - I will again crush the classified material to see if at all there are traces of missed gold in some of the sediments that didnt crush due to the quartz not allowing - majority of the crush sample is a fine powder and the classification size for this batch was 4mm size - reasonably large for the test when the other material that dries out from panning off I will further crush to see again if these contain gold.
1. I would say that the dry classified 4mm plus still contains a small amount of gold - I will post up any findings on this
2. Any material run through panning which is under 4.0mm, I will also crush again to see if any of the sediment pieces still contain gold after the initial panning.
I am hoping to trace the source if there is a potential reef in close proximity I will take some samples from 2mtrs, 5mtrs 10mtrs in each direction and see if I can source a larger concentration. If the samples keep coming back positive in a certain direction I will just keep following - If the samples bring back some positive results of larger than these sample gold sizes that is - then I will simply crush to a certain classified size to ensure that all gold recovery is 100% accurate - if all goes well I will bring out the bigger tools from the arsenal. All manual hand tools
If I find a primary source and the gold is within quartz/ironstone or rock hosted - then it will definitely be crushed and screened with anything from 0.8mm to 1.5mm depending on concentration. The only issue is being regulated under miners rights, dig hole fill hole, dig hole fill hole, sample size per day etc etc - if all goes to plan then this will change.
If the samples bring back negative results over a small area then I would be safe to assume this concentration was simply deposited into a dip and doesnt mean a close proximity of primary gold - it may have traveled KM's to get there and simply deposited pockets along its way. On to find the next piece or pocket
But in saying this I have good feelings only because of the coarse gold within this area it is very reefy and not at all traveled over millions of years tumbling around and getting excessive water worn appearance. Many things to take into account - is this a younger deposit from a reef and there is an ancient deposit meters below this from the same reef but deposited millions of years before this lot - so many things to take into account - that's why documenting every little detail can provide exceptional results when laid out on the table. And studying the gold pulled out at the levels
Hope this answers your question - apologies for the longer than usual reply
And also thanks Reynard - it would be good to have the MIDAS Touch - hopefully showing my findings and sharing it with you all can bring many inspirations to all prospectors and also provide them with the overview of sometimes we hit it easy and yeah it takes some work, walking, exploring, digging - work hard and never expect anything to be handed to you on a silver platter - or in our case it should be a gold platter.
Just be thorough and I can tell you the old timers left more than you know - and the early days of the release of the SD Machines all the stories of the guys getting all the gold in the 70's and 80's - only where they walked is what they got if they felt like digging it, they had the same problems we all face digging rubbish. Today we are still pulling out big nuggets - another in Ballarat the other day 600grams
The other day I walked around a white mullock heap with 7 or so previous detectorist dig holes - I wanted to prove that I could be more thorough on this big mullock and I walked around it and hit every little angle and then boom a beautiful deep soft faintly noticeable target - was only rust but It was my rust and I found it.
Lets see - "The joys of our Gold journey"