Tailing Pile Mineralization?

[auminesweeper]

Steve, Can you explain why Tailing piles are lower in mineralization compare to other areas, And would the Tailings at place's like Moore's Creek be Hotter than The Tailings Ganes Creek,

 

What Cause's them to be Lower than the general Detecting Areas is it Because they are made up of disturbed Ground??

 

Thanks,,, John

[Steve Herschbach]

Tailing piles are not necessarily lower mineralization than other areas per se. They are as hot as the ground they came from. It is just that most stories about tailing piles are about Alaska, where ground as a rule is fairly mild. But even that is a generalization, as Alaska is a big place.

The tailing piles at Moore Creek are hotter than the one at Ganes Creek because the surrounding soil and geology at Moore Creek is hotter than that at Ganes Creek. There is a lot of magnetic volcanic basalts at Moore Creek that do not exist at Ganes Creek.

Tailing piles made of cobbles are different because all the fine material has been removed. In some places the cobbles have a different nature than the overall mixed material. For instance, some very mineralized locations in California are full of quartz cobbles. The cobble piles can end up being quartz cobbles nearly devoid of mineralization although the surrounding mixed virgin ground can be very mineralized.

[auminesweeper]

Thanks for That Steve,

 

So The Mineralization of Tailing Piles  will always be relative To The Ground from where they came from, Unless they are made up of Quartz, I was and No doubt others Too, Were under the impression That the Tailings were more of A Free Ride,

 

Thanks for Clearing that up For me,

 

John

[Steve Herschbach]

Stripping piles are comprised of overburden and share the exact same composition as the overburden except it has been moved around. This could change the alignment of the magnetic particles from undisturbed ground resulting in some variation in ground balance. Sometimes lots of organics get mixed in and this can also change things.

Once washed the silt, clays and heavies are usually gone, and that can make the resulting tailing pile easier to deal with. And cobble piles as I have noted are further sorted. The end result is tailing piles can differ somewhat from the surrounding ground mineralization but still derive their overall nature from the ground that produced the tailings.

Cobble piles made up of larger rocks can also be very problematic for VLF detectors. Sometimes you get a pile where all the cobbles are quite different rocks. There really is not much to ground balance to as all the rocks are different. Balance to one, the next rock is different. The best you can shoot for is a kind of average. Ground tracking can be very helpful on these sorts of piles as it tends to take the edge off the rock responses. Higher frequency VLFs are not as smooth as lower frequency VLF detectors on these types of cobble piles, and a PI generally eliminates the issue.

As always, tailing piles tend to differ also from having high trash content and trash to great depth as compared to virgin ground.

[LipCa]

reread Steve's last paragraph again. Quartz is only one instance where cobbles can have a different nature than the overall mixture.

[auminesweeper]

So They can be more complex than I thought Then, So you have to decide with whether they are high or low mineralized and High or Low Trash and everything in between and A Combination of all the Above, So it would be best to check them out with A VLF and if they are High Reach for the PI right Away,

Thanks for the Great Info, There is A few thing that I had not taken in to Account,

John

[auminesweeper]

reread Steve's last paragraph again. Quartz is only one instance where cobbles can have a different nature than the overall mixture.

Yeah, I can well imagine, The more I look in to this the more there is to know.

 

john

[robby_h]

Tailing piles usually have a lower magnetic material content because it is removed in the washing process with other heavy material.

 

Rob.