chrisski

Would like to see a thread with pics on getting silver. locally, native silver doesn’t exist, although historical production is more silver produced, but the silver is from chemical extraction.

How much material did you run? Was this pay dirt or concentrates?

As a drone user of a lower end 4k 3 axis gimbal with electronic image stabilization, ( the HS720 drone), it is wholly unsuited for any prospecting work. I can’t see any value added to a good google map survey or actually walking the few hundred extra feet from where your flying would bring to you. Higher end drones with better cameras and surveying/mapping, maybe. I’ve attached a photo from a jasper and obsidian bearing area and the time would be better spent walking around boots on the ground.

IMO; what you have has no commercial value. I suspect it may be a type of chert, a jasper like pastelite or perhaps something opalized. I would chop it up until it fits in a couple of ziploc bags and run it through the vibratory tumbler through four cycles and a couple weeks later I’d have a few polished stones. IMO, at best you may be able to swap it at a rock show for something else interesting. I’ve found a couple of rocks I think would make a good sculpture material, but not much of a demand for that.

What is the second and third from the bottom showing? Looks like a rusty spoon and rusty dish. Other than the rocks that look good wet, will look better tumbled, I can’t help you.

I’d like to hear what you recover, but am a bit skeptical. There were a few vendors at a GPAA show over 10 years ago that were selling to remove gold chemically from circuit boards. Seemed like a lot of work. He said he removed pieces from the board and tossed them in the solution while watching TV. He also showed me a hunk of grey metal a couple inches big he was sending off to be refined, but would not guess at how much it would be worth. I’ve also plated nickel, zinc and copper, and the amount that goes on is insignificant. Also, when I can pay a few extra cents and get a gold plated contact for projects, I don’t expect much gold recovered. Apologize for the off topic rant, but removing precious metals is a road I almost went down.

After two and a half weeks in the vibratory tumbler

Does “Not Open to Entry” also mean no metal detecting? Or is it like the Lynx Creek Mineral Withdrawal area where limited panning and metal detecting is allowed, but no sluices or powered tools? Thanks Clay.

These are the “placer” agates picked off the ground, cleaned, and soaked in diluted Murcia acid. Nothing left to do with these except perhaps tumble, make a couple better ones to jewelry or both. The hard rock I agates I got were not so good. Not sure what I’ll do with those.

I’m trying to figure which rocks to bust. I think I also need a sledge. These are the tools I’m using I found these lying in the flats away from the mountain on the desert pavement. Did much better on the flats and saw nothing worth busting up today in the different area along the mountain I went to. No visible quartz veins and in a mile walk only about four pieces of chalcedony or quartz in the pediment along the mountain. Was nice views though.

Just taking up hard rock gem mining. I got a small sample of fire agate. The fire agate is the smaller red bulb in the picture. Chalcedony is the main matrix. Before After

The BLM is doing what they are required by law to do. In there eyes they are simply a place that keeps a record and bear no responsibility for actual location. Of the hundreds of thousands of claims, I’ll bet there are over 100,00 claim owners. Of all those claims and all those people, only a handful are worth the yearly fees paid to the BLM for actual minerals extracted, the rest are speculation or just someone wanting to have a claim. I don’t think many would support any real change to any real effort. What is your plan to lobby these agencies? The AMRA on their Facebook page seems like they are active.

This topic comes up every once in a while. I think building an app is futile with claim location to the states allowing Mining claims with location within a 100’ is futile. If you are interested in starting a claim app, volunteering for Clay and Land Matters. There is somewhere around 350,000 active claims in a dozen or so mining states that allow claims. At the federal level, At best the BLM locates them to within a mile. At worst, its in an unsurveyed area, or the guy just did not file the right paperwork. I think I am camped on top of a claim filed with the county, but since the filer did not include the map, I have no idea where it is because of the non-existent markers. Guy has two claims he pays mining claim fees for every year. At the county level, there’s dozens of ways counties files which involve you going through paper books, or claims located to the mile, and every way in between. In Yavapai county, I can sort by the mile (actually called township) and find claims filed in that area. Has nothing to do if they are active or not. THat is the BLM. In Maricopa, they do not have that, so I go back a couple of months looking for new claims in the county open EACH one individually to see if its located in where I want to look. To open find a claim, all 350,000 of those maps have to be entered manually. But of course it’s nto that easy. A few of those claims will be adjusted over time, with paperwork filed with the BLM and no exact location map. An example, I ran into is the claim was 160 acres with a map with the county, but was adjusted much smaller about 40 acres. Of course the paperwork at the BLM said 40 acres, but the claim map at the county is blank, so it’s anywhere in this 1 mile by 1 mile sector with no markers visible. The BLM has a new way to file claims where you put int the exact Quarter quarter section etc. Last time I filed a claim, I called the state office up and was told not fuse that and send a copy of the claim paperwork I sent to the county. There was a company that did what you’re saying, Perhaps miner diggins. The software was called footprints. For a dozen or so gold claim areas, they would produce exact maps with an awesome geological overlay for the maps. These areas were several square miles, and might have covered a town size area, and certainly not a county or state. This involved a lot of manual entry on there part and pulling claims maps, and then plotting. They might have updated every six months. The county updated there database daily. So, I still had to search for recent claims at the county and federal level prior to going out. If you want to start an app, choosing an area like Little San Domingo and getting good data could be the way to go. I have not seen footprints in a while, biut that database nd platform may be available.

Here’s some recent fluorescent finds shown in long wave, short wave, and natural light. The pictures only show a fraction of the real colors. Location is Morristown AZ.

I thought you were joking, but looks correct https://bugguide.net/node/view/303316