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Best Way To Recover Diamonds And Sapphires In Dry Gravel?


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22 minutes ago, jasong said:

Working wet is not an option to me. 

Since you are taking a 4 wheeler to get where you are going, why don't you make a cart to pull for some water.

Carry a blow-up pool to capture and recirculate it for a small sluice. Then use a pan to get the better gems.

Just a thought, but with the right 4 wheeler you should be able to carry 100 gallons with you.

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I went out in the spring time on an intermittent stream below known diamond bearing structures.  Hence the ability to use a highbanker.  The structures themselves were all claimed.  I also had a 55 gallon stock barrel, that my dad and grandpa made a mount for in the bed of my truck, for various prospecting adventures.

The areas I worked had a lot of stones being close to the source. 

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9 hours ago, jasong said:

Working lamproites or kimberlites? For diamonds, my intention was to explore all those lamproites since they appear underexplored (also hence the total lack of water out there). Working wet is not an option to me. 

I hadn't, though Dan Hurd is one of the few prospecting channels I do occasionally watch. But he is on a river here. Working with water and gems is much easier. He's using a saruca basically, or in other words doing a sort of hand jigging similar to the process Off Grid posted, except with no machine. Also, in his case the sand is already filled with garnets in every handful. Some places I want to explore will be like 1/4 to 1/2 yard of dirt to maybe 1 gem, it's quite a bit harder to recover the latter vs the former, the lack of water makes it more so.

Processing the amount of dirt I need to process would just require a crazy amount of water hauling if I did that in a tub, and the remoteness makes hauling water infeasible in any quantity. Wyoming is similar to Nevada in terms of remoteness of some areas, except often the roads are rougher/rockier since there is less "basin", and a lot of "range" (or rocky hills), comparitively. 

Few people realize how dry Wyoming is. It's mostly an enormous desert, with few non-seasonal watercourses. I can't imagine trying to haul 100 gallons on a 4-wheeler, for instance. That's nearly a half-ton of water. And even that much water doesn't go far with all the clay, etc. Best method I used last summer was to classify down to two sizes, and to get rid of everything smaller than #16, and then haul the remainder to a stream and run it through my portable Pleitz jig. But, I had to drive 15 miles to water, on gravel roads for every batch. Did recover garnets and chrome diopside, though.

Jim

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8 hours ago, Valens Legacy said:

Since you are taking a 4 wheeler to get where you are going, why don't you make a cart to pull for some water.

Carry a blow-up pool to capture and recirculate it for a small sluice. Then use a pan to get the better gems.

Just a thought, but with the right 4 wheeler you should be able to carry 100 gallons with you.

Could it be done in theory? Yes. Is it feasible for exploration? No. :smile: I want to cover a lot of ground and process a lot of dirt exploring, if I find a place where there is a good concentration of gems eventually, I'd probably try hauling water. 

I was using about 300 gallons per cubic yard when I hauled water into a pond in AZ for a gold operation before silting up. I've heard figures of 100 gallons per cubic yard recirculating, but that must be for clean gravel. That was a place I already knew where gold was and didn't have to set up/break down/move around, and I hauled 5000 gallons in at once. I'd never do that for exploration. 

2 minutes ago, Jim in Idaho said:

Few people realize how dry Wyoming is. It's mostly an enormous desert, with few non-seasonal watercourses. I can't imagine trying to haul 100 gallons on a 4-wheeler, for instance. That's nearly a half-ton of water. And even that much water doesn't go far with all the clay, etc. Best method I used last summer was to classify down to two sizes, and to get rid of everything smaller than #16, and then haul the remainder to a stream and run it through my portable Pleitz jig. But, I had to drive 15 miles to water, on gravel roads for every batch. Did recover garnets and chrome diopside, though.

Jim

Yep, actually it was easier/closer to get water in to places I was working in Arizona than it is to the places I want to explore in Wyoming.

I agree, I think the classify method is the best bet/quickest/easiest now. I might just classify into labelled buckets and bags, and bring everything home with me. 

Of course last night and today we are getting rain and cold weather now...haha oh well. Not enough to make washes run, but enough to dampen all the dirt. 

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2 hours ago, jasong said:

Could it be done in theory? Yes. Is it feasible for exploration? No. :smile: I want to cover a lot of ground and process a lot of dirt exploring, if I find a place where there is a good concentration of gems eventually, I'd probably try hauling water. 

I was using about 300 gallons per cubic yard when I hauled water into a pond in AZ for a gold operation before silting up. I've heard figures of 100 gallons per cubic yard recirculating, but that must be for clean gravel. That was a place I already knew where gold was and didn't have to set up/break down/move around, and I hauled 5000 gallons in at once. I'd never do that for exploration. 

Yep, actually it was easier/closer to get water in to places I was working in Arizona than it is to the places I want to explore in Wyoming.

I agree, I think the classify method is the best bet/quickest/easiest now. I might just classify into labelled buckets and bags, and bring everything home with me. 

Of course last night and today we are getting rain and cold weather now...haha oh well. Not enough to make washes run, but enough to dampen all the dirt. 

Aah man...just a little dampness, and the classifying is about over. I love Wyoming, but you guys, like us, have a short season...LOL. I'm looking forward to heading over next spring. Keeps me alive having things to look forward to...Ha!

Jim

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