Advice on seperating very fine gold in dry dirt.

[graybeard77]

Hi gang, I've got 2nd hand GPX5000. I've recently found a patch of soil with a quartz reef running through it. My detector did not find anything and I was going to give up and walk away from it. But as karma has it, I showed a new bloke from our club to have a swing around with his SDC (I believe). He immediately found a very very small nugget, then another and another and just kept on digging them up. My wizzbang 5000 with the new 14x9 evolution coil just remained mute even though I put the coil on a spot his machine could detect a tiny speck of gold.
He gave me a piece of quartz that was giving off signals and I picked off a tiny piece of gold, then under a 100x power magnification I could see that the piece of quartz had literally hundreds of specks of gold on it. This could only mean that the dirt around this reef is loaded with flour gold, but nowhere near water. Any suggestions how to get the gold out? I've seen areas where old timers removed soil down to depths up to 3 metres to take it somewhere to process. Is this is what I have to do as well? I don't think the greenies would like it.
I've scraped up a coles plastic bag of a few kilos of the dirt and pan it at home to see just how good it is.

 

[dam it]

Use a Dry Blower :Y:

 

[graybeard77]

Thanks "Dam it".. The soil is a bit wet after the rain. Do you think I should take some of the soil home and using my dam water and my mate's sluicer I could make it work? I panned some of the dirt I bought back and it had NO colour. Damn it. Do you think the rangers would miss a few tons of dirt? hahah

I think I'll wait till summer and air blow it on site, that way everyone's happy. Thanks for your suggestion on using a blower, mate.

 

[dam it]

Hey Dude :Y:
Yer I would do some more testing in the area at different depths .
Myself and another member have came across the odd mullock heap that has had up 15 nuggys still there
I have been back to a couple of the better mollock,s with the Dry Blower :Y: and had some luck and in others not so good .
The SDC will sniff out very small Gold thats shallow . My smallest piece is 0.011 gram
I suppose what I trying to say is Give it a go :Y: :Y:

 

[graybeard77]

hi dam it. I'll be back alright.... I'm going there on Thursday or Friday if the rain clears up. I'm going to take the new evolution coil off and putting on the 8" minelab mono.
I'll also play around with the settings. I know the gold is there. The bloke who went with me gave me some of the nuggets albeit small ones. I just weighed one of them and it weighs 0.09 gram. My detector will only pick that small if it's on the surface. I hope to do better with the 8" mono, I'd be happy at 3" depth.
You say that you found a .011gram? do your scales measure to milligrams? You sure it wasn't 0.11gram.?
I've just about given up on mullock heaps, I only find brass buttons, rusty hand forged nails and other junk. I dug down about 700mm to find an old horseshoe in a mullock heap. The blower you mention.... is it just a common leaf blower? I got one of them.

 

[Occasional_panner]

I'm not asking for gps references mate, but what general area is it?

Dryblower is like a sluice but it runs dry dirt, like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEoEaaICwPQ

 

[graybeard77]

Hi occasional panner, south of Creswick, forest area, dirt rd. Drive along just about any dirt track and you'll find a solid quartz reef running thru it. Look at both sides of the track and if you don't see any diggings you'll have a virgin reef all to yourself. Some of these reefs have gold in it, like the one I found. However the gold is so fine in the one I found it will blow away with a dry blower I believe. Thanks for showing me a proper dry blower, I had no idea they existed. I'll attach a photo to show you just how small the gold is. It's stuck onto a grain of sand (quartz). there are about 12 pieces that I could see with my 100x hand microscope. The sand particle is about 1mm in size to give you an idea of proportions

 

[Chewy]

Wow! That is small. 8)

 

[Occasional_panner]

When I finished building my dryblower https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=20521
I took it to creswick but it wasn't quite dry enough to run through the machine.
The dirt needs to be bone dry.
I have found that area is pretty worked out, it's had a lot of attention/work done lately.

 

[ballarat_gold]

Anything out that way be to damp to run through the dry blower now. You'll have to wait till mid spring/summer.

If its south of white swan, just get water from nuggety dam and take a recirc' system out or take buckets of pay to nuggety.

 

[dam it]

hi dam it. I'll be back alright.... I'm going there on Thursday or Friday if the rain clears up. I'm going to take the new evolution coil off and putting on the 8" minelab mono.
I'll also play around with the settings. I know the gold is there. The bloke who went with me gave me some of the nuggets albeit small ones. I just weighed one of them and it weighs 0.09 gram. My detector will only pick that small if it's on the surface. I hope to do better with the 8" mono, I'd be happy at 3" depth.
You say that you found a .011gram? do your scales measure to milligrams? You sure it wasn't 0.11gram.?
I've just about given up on mullock heaps, I only find brass buttons, rusty hand forged nails and other junk. I dug down about 700mm to find an old horseshoe in a mullock heap. The blower you mention.... is it just a common leaf blower? I got one of them.

Yer Im sure it is 0.011gram .
And yes my scales measure Milligrams . Maximum weight is 20 grams .