Tom T

 Mountain lions…I had a confrontational encounter with one back in 1992… actually thought it was gonna escalate to a fight and it scared the crap out of me. A few years ago, I was down a local creek and casually glanced up the hill, only to see a large cat head poking up out of the grass beneath a big oak tree… we stared at each other for a few minutes until it snuck off up the hill… prior to that first encounter I wandered up and down the canyons of Northern Ca. unarmed and unconcerned about wildlife…from then on, I won’t head out unless I’m either armed or with others who are…

 Tweakers and cats

Low cost maps are available through the USGS and other governmental agencies…

You’d be surprised at what’s available…

14 hours ago, jasong said:

What kind of mill, impact mill? If so then the mill itself will turn anything malleable into tiny bb-sized balls as a result of the chain/flail rotating everything around inside. Seem like lead from your description.

Great information… I’m new to the hard rock thing and have saved everything I’ve run through it. That little tidbit is gonna shorten the learning curve substantially…thanks

I’m pretty sure it’s lead…gonna torch it later this afternoon.

The mill is a “Mighty Mill”, I only run it a couple seconds to pulverize just about anything to powder, because it’s powered by a cheap angle grinder from Harbor Freight that spins at about 7,000 rpm. Looking at the balls, they look like they were fairly spherical before they were released from the rock because they all have small indentations which I would expect. The rocks were found (I was told) in woods creek in Jamestown Ca. Just west of Sonora…. The graphite photos are interesting… 

4 hours ago, Redz said:

Are they attracted to magnet? Also when they split open are they silvery or copper colored?

If you hit them with a propane torch do they melt?

Non magnetic the inside when split is gray. I’m not gonna torch them just yet… I do have a smelter though.

FWIW, these balls could easily be mistaken for birdshot…

My buddy brought by some small rocks that he found with his goldbug and we ran them in front of a Falcon which indicated they were non ferrous so we ran them through my sample mill and were really surprised when we found these little balls of ore inside…. They’re soft and when pounded with a hand sledge they start to flatten until they start to split open… they seems lighter than lead… any ideas??? The big rock on the right is a similar rock of the ones crushed but doesn’t indicate metal with the detector.

I’m going the route of building SOME of my own recovery equipment. Right now I have two 12 volt current controllers coming my way. One will be for my bilge pump to control water flow for the Blue Bowl that I’ve had since about the time Frank Robinson bought the patent and the mini type sluice I’ll be starting on this afternoon. The other will be used to control the voltage to a 12 volt vibratory motor I’ll be attaching to the sluice.  Sort of a hodge podge of concepts rolling around in my head… the idea for the sluice is to classify everything down to 20 mesh before it gets run through the sluice then classifying the concentrates from the sluice to 40 & 80 and running all three through the blue bowl… the sluice will have no riffles other than the rubber v matt…with a thin wool blanket over the lower half of the v matt being held down with the expanded mesh out of an old sluice.  Gonna bottle up all the free gold and run the tailings in a smelter…The whole purpose of this setup is to catch all the fine gold I get from my hardrock mill. 

At this point, it’s just a very addictive hobby.

Well, my OCD is starting to kick in… now that I have my mill “Mighty Mill” (it works great) and I have some concentrates does anybody have a “general” recipe for fluxes?

 A book recommendation? It looks like I’m at the bottom of a huge learning curve. 
TIA…

On 1/19/2023 at 12:03 PM, flakmagnet said:

I did not realize the extent of the catastrophic flooding that has befallen Australia.
Here in California we can identify with some of your problems, but like most everything else in the country, yours is bigger.

Hang in there folks.

 

For those who aren’t aware… https://ia601605.us.archive.org/35/items/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier.pdf

HAARP

17 hours ago, Aureous said:

As mentioned above, copper mineralization. Malachite and/or Chrysocolla and a few specks of Azurite. As GC says, the iron oxide associated with Copper is often an indicator for associated gold mineralization. Take a few kilo samples and have it assayed. 

Would a XRF gun work?

I see I got a laugh out of my comments 😁

Not to change the subject, but have you seen the numbers of people living along the creeks and rivers?  Where do you think a lot of their bodily waste and trash ends up? Think there aren’t laws being ignored/broken? The laws, rules, regulations put in place to regulate dredging, highbanking, sluicing, weren’t written with regards to environmental concerns. They were put in place as a control tool.

It depends on a lot of different things… 

California has rules, regulations and even REAL laws to ensure the state and local agencies can shut down any mining activity they choose to.  I’m gonna assume you’re on public land and you’ll need to find out which agency is managing your particular parcel to find out what they are going to require… if you’re drawing water from or discharging into a creek, check with the local water agency… believe it or not, state law is not always enforced by some rural counties…

Just a word of caution ⚠️ Use eye protection!

 I tried doing this back in the 90s and had some literally explode after putting the torch to it and before dunking it.  I don’t know if it was moisture or just air pockets but it was like a miniature grenade going off. 
 I even lost some gold doing this.

Thanks Art… that’s the one that caught my eye. I already have a corded harbor freight grinder but will probably be adding a Makita fairly soon because I’ve started replacing all my battery tools with the Makita 18/36 volt system…I already have 6 batteries…. Here’s a pic of what I found on the property… there’s tons of mineralized float quartz here and an abandoned mine at one end. The gold is about the size of a grain of rice.

 I’ve been eyeballing videos of the portable mills that are powered by battery operated hand grinders and was wondering if anybody here has used one, which might be best and what their life span might be.

TIA

On 12/3/2022 at 11:12 AM, phrunt said:

Here is a short poll to get a feel of how people are going to deal with all these new detectors on the market, and get an idea of how many people intend to jump in and get one.

I’m good to go for now…kinda wish I’d held out for a more waterproof version of the nox 800 but so far I haven’t killed it. When/if that happens, I’ll look and see how the other waterproof detectors are doing.

18 hours ago, deathray said:

Businesses are there to make profit. No matter how much people want to change that fact nowadays. 

Of course they are, but take the Chevy small block as a good example of changing some of the internals and leaving the basic block pretty much in the original configuration… I still have to buy parts to keep it running but nobody has to retool to make spare/consumable parts, thus keeping the costs down… the HEI distributor that sits in it now wasn’t available till later years, same as the Edelbrock carb… both of which would probably work in ANY old Chevy/GMC small block…that’s why the SBC is such a popular choice for people building old hotrods.

Good business decisions??? That’s debatable. 😎

Sniping is all I do anymore.

I “DO” run either a NOX or a Monster across crevices and shallow bedrock but even if I don’t get a signal, crevices that have oversized gravels that been “hammered” into the cracks by larger rocks get thoroughly cleaned. You can keep it simple or go all out. I’ve been known to use a vacuum along with a hammer drill with feathers and wedges to open up the deeper cracks. 😎

Glad I checked in, doc told me I need two new knees and hips gave me an injection in one knee it felt like new for a few months, my little JRT died, and life in general has been keeping me busy… hopefully by spring, I’ll have some semblance of order restored.

3 hours ago, phrunt said:

I'm just frustrated GB, and I'm frustrated some try and make out like these problems are not a problem.  To someone who's paid the hyper inflated price for a GPX 6000 it is a big problem when they get a range of faults with it.  It's not cheap, I've had $100 detectors that are flawless, why is it I get one of the most expensive ever made and it's riddled with problems, not just mine, hearing of the many others with problems too, it's a real mixed bag.  Fortunately my dealers on my side 100%, none of it is his fault.

I'm still waiting on Minelab to come back with what they want to do, my dealers contacted them, it's just a waiting game for their decision.   Minelab need to understand NZ has a consumer guarantees act much like Australia does, if it all doesn't go down how I want it I can just give it back to my dealer and get my money back so their decision means absolutely nothing.

You’ve got me confused now…. I thought you got all your problems sorted out?

3 hours ago, George Kinsey said:

Nothing like my Explorer se to properly ID trash and find silver coins in a very trashy area. Don't have to dig it all to find out what you've found. Long live FBS Technology with a small Sunray coil. Nice.

I agree that the Explorer SE is a very good detector. The one I had sported the sunray probe….BUT my personal all time favorite detector for coins and rings was Whites Eagle II SL…. Believe it or not, if there were two quarters underneath the coil, the screen would display 50 cents….😃

Thought I had about a half oz. Gnarly nugget in my scoop until I went to pluck it out and it squished like a sponge. 😂

3 hours ago, Reno Chris said:
This is the gold I dug last time - 5 grams. I'll be returning soon because success breeds more success.

 

Nice little poke you pulled out.

I’ve always said confidence breeds success but I guess success gives you confidence🙄

nicely done and if you ever need help cleaning up the trash give me a holler…😇