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does anyone here know much about mining? I ask because I live close to several volcanoes. I have met two ranchers now that have large piles of volcanic rock, or so they claim, that has gold in it. I was told by one that 1800 an ounce unlocks much of this gold to be profitable and the other guy said 2100 or so.

So my question is basically, is there a way I can test samples cheaply? Like very cheaply actually. I can get this stuff free from many sites if the gold is there. I however know almost nothing about this. Even at free it might not be useful because presumably if gold is worth enough its cost effective the prices to refine it rose. These ranchers were given these numbers MANY years ago, and have been waiting, but those refining costs were based on wages etc from sometime in the early to mid 90s. That was a whole different world. Im betting if something was thought to cost 1800 in 1995 it would cost maybe 2700 today. This is just a guess of course.

any thoughts?

I'm not familiar with the capabilities of metal detectors, but could you possibly rent a higher-end one that allows you to fine-tune to specific metals like gold?

I'm making quite a few assumptions here since I don't have detailed descriptions of what you are doing, but these general steps should get you in the right direction. Basically all you are going to do is mini mine samples, assay results and see how much gold you end up with (milligrams or micrograms), then extrapolate backwards till you see how much material would need processed to get $1 worth of gold, then you need to figure out if you can process that much material for less than $1.

asssuming you don't have to dig down to bedrock because these volcanic rocks are near the surface...


1. collect rocks from a variety of locations on your property, mark their locations and record where sample 1/2/3 came from. depending on the size of the property you may need to take dozens or hundereds of sample locations. measure the weight/volume of said rocks in each sample.

2. Crush the rocks with a hammer into dust... You will have to get it small enough that the rocks are no longer attached to the gold, if the gold is the size of sand, you need to crush till you get the size of sand granules, if the gold is the size of baseballs (lol), you have a much easier job, if its microscopic perhaps running the material through a rock tumbler with a harder stone as your abrasive until you end up with just mud is the way to go.

3. get a sample of say 1 gallon of this dust and weigh it

4. pan the gold alloy out of the rocks... you can buy the pan on ebay, you can learn how to do it via youtube, you will probably end up with some miniscule amount of gold flecks or fine dust mixed with some other materials which are relatively dense and difficult to pan out. Dry your material and weigh it. You will need to be sure you do this right or you will be losing gold and throwing off later calculations. practice practice practice, or hire an expert to help you.

5. you now need to extract the gold from the black sands (at least thats what the gold contaminant around here is called, yours may be different) this will depend on the type of material you have to seperate sometimes it can be done with magnets, sometimes it can be done with panning again, sometimes it takes mercury to extract it (dangerous be careful) whatever. It can even be assayed as is but it will be more expensive... after this process dry your material and weigh it.

6. at this point you have a semi pure sample, it may be 1% gold alloy mixed with contaminents (yes for gold mining 1% is pretty pure) it may be 90% gold alloy. you need to get these samples assayed. obviously the less promising looking samples will be set aside and you will want to save money by assaying only the best samples.

7. you will now have assay results on a known size sample of "processed" rock so you will know in 1 gram of your final mixture you have say 2 mg of gold, work backwards through the steps and figure how much volume/weight of raw rocks you need to process to get 1 oz of gold.

8. repeat with more samples from various locations untill you find a location that you feel is commercially/hobby viable.


If you need help with the assay, I have contacts.

If you need an investor, after the assay reports and some site surveying if it seems reasonable I might be interested, or know people who are.


Alternatively for between a few dollars or a few $K you could probably get an expert to review the reports your friends got years ago and give you a new number, or you could have a professional redo the reports probably by using some variant on the above instructions.


Good luck.

brian0918 wrote:I'm not familiar with the capabilities of metal detectors, but could you possibly rent a higher-end one that allows you to fine-tune to specific metals like gold?

yes you can, for coins, and jewelry and such, but not in this scenario, the gold will be most likely microscopic and on the order of 1/100th of 1 percent of the rock, possibly less, it will be disbursed across hundereds of thousands of cubic feet of other materials some of which will probably be other metals of higher concentration too...

there is a reason gold costs so much

I have used:

Ray Grimmer Lab Services
PO Box 850
Blythe, CA 92226

760-668-7289
Ray@AssayFast.com
http://www.assayfast.com/

He did the spectroanalysis assay quickly and in great detail, for about $65.

My sample had these decimal/fraction of ounces, per ton of ore:
Au - .004
Ag - .001
Pt - .001
Pd - .008
Os - trace
Ru - .000
Rh - .001
Ir - .000

My sample from my silver claim apparently has more gold and palladium than silver, lol.

take a look at some of the investor presentations of mining companies. one i like is Seabridge Gold.

they have a huge deposit in northern British Columbia. its located up in some mountains. where the gold actually is located, is about .5 grams per ton. Some day they'll dig up the rocks, pulverize them, and ship the resulting dore to a smelter. but the interesting thing is how the numbers change as you change the assumptions. for example, if you assume that concentrations of .3 grams per ton and above are economic to mine, then they have one amount of gold, but if you change the cutoff to .5 grams per ton then you get a different number.

if that rock has 1 gram per ton, its fairly rich rock. but that means the gold is 1 part per million (1 million grams in a ton). something that diluted is economic if you are mining on a large scale, but probably not for amateurs.

sounds like your right lemon thrower. oh well.

Is there much quartz bearing ore near this spot? As I understand with rear exception, most gold is found in quartz or in the erroded sediments of quartz.

quartz is EVERYWHERE on these sites. My yard is covered in it. Eventually Id like to try some gold panning in the seasonal stream at the edge of my yard. and a few others spots I have access to if that proves fruitful. there is a LOT of gold around here, I know that, its just all of it I know about isnt going to be useful for me.

the stream beds might work out though.

You give no indication of where the deposits are you want to work. If you are anywhere near me, I can bring out some of my smaller equipment and we can see just what you have.

Im in new mexico. based on the responses above, I could never work the deposits I was first asking about. Id need way to much material for it to work. I have access to a few tons, that by the sounds of it might not yield even an ounce among them...

I could try my luck in a few stream beds though. Its my understanding, the seasonal streams in places like this werent mined in a meaningful way because of a lack of water most of the year. there isnt a ton of stream bed I have access to anyway. Basically just the edge of my land here. It might prove a fun project one day though! even just a few specks of gold found on my land here would be neat to have!

Streams move over the millenia. Look for rounded rocks anywhere to locate ancient streambeds. Best plan is to read up on locating gold-bearing gravels.

btw, at grades of half a gram or less the big miners heap leach the ore with cyanide. the gold sticks to the cyanide liquid and they catch the runoff and then process they cyanide to get the gold. its sounds dangerous and it is!

otoh, gold is not usaually present in a consistent grade, and things like streams can wash it to where it collects in an area in a higher concentration or nuggets.

Do an online search for gold testing kits. I bought small one for $35.00. It came in a handy tote bag. If your deposits are too small to be detected by a gold test kit, they will not be productive enough to make it pay using common gold extraction methods.

On the other hand, there are some exciting new technologies for extracting very fine "flower" gold out now. You can even use special filters to remove fine gold suspended in water that normally flows to the ocean.

You may be sitting on a lot of $$$ treetop!

Sheikh_yer_Bu'Tay wrote:. You can even use special filters to remove fine gold suspended in water that normally flows to the ocean.

You may be sitting on a lot of $$$ treetop!

Do you have a link to this info? If wsw (wave/solar/wind) pumps can be used with these filters gold can be extracted from seawater ecconomically.

If gold can be extracted economically from seawater we are all screwed. There is an essentially infinite amount of seawater. As technology becomes more efficient, the cost will go down. There are probably millions of tons of gold in the ocean at the very least...

IdahoCopper wrote:

Sheikh_yer_Bu'Tay wrote:. You can even use special filters to remove fine gold suspended in water that normally flows to the ocean.

You may be sitting on a lot of $$$ treetop!

Do you have a link to this info? If wsw (wave/solar/wind) pumps can be used with these filters gold can be extracted from seawater ecconomically.

You need higher concentrations of gold to filter than what you will find in seawater. The water running off a trommell wash plant, water draining from an existing mine, water coming off a sluice plant, or highbanker is what you need. The main filtering media is activated charcoal made from coconut fiber.

I just tried to go to the site I was buying from 1.5 yrs ago, and they are no longer there (on the 'net).

Here is a site I have never been to before, but it talks about activated carbon filtration. You can get the general idea. http://www.ehow.com/how_7161007_do-micr ... ters_.html

Search the 'net. It's out there.