I've seen some of your videos. Glad I can help. If you are ever down this way we might get together. Keith

Cool. I have one major rule of thumb- there are no rules. Test everything starting with the most likely first and don't stop until you have PROVEN what you need to know. Keith

Thank you.

Only you can make a miner out of you. I can but assist.

You are most welcome. Good luck!

Thank you. I should get to the emails later today after an imaging appointment.

I appreciate the feedback.

That was a funny thing about my pinkie, never hurt real bad. Glad to help.

You are most welcome. I'm glad I can help.

You're welcome.

Yep, doing my best.

Thank you. Something went wack with my notifications, thus the slow reply. Sorry.

You're welcome. Maybe by next year we can give field trips or something on a regular basis. Keith

You're welcome.

Yes, structure is often important also. It is very useful for the small hard rock miner to run enough samples to identify just where the gold tends to appear. That is why the ability to hand pan hard rock gold is so useful. Have you tried my method yet, or do you have a different one that works well also? Keith

I havent tried your method yet I just use a small plastic sample pan and the same technique I use for alluvial. and go slow.

Have you seen lesson 24 yet? That is a fairly simple method that works well for the micro fine. Usually takes me about 5-6 minutes start to result and was so easy that I had a newbie doing it his second pan ever. Keith

You are most welcome. Keith

I try to focus on micro scale mining, and leaching tends to quickly get into an expensive regulatory regime that doesn't work with 'micro'. I have years of experience in open pit/heap leaching with sodium cyanide as the lixivant, but you are talking millions of dollars to permit such an operation. If you have a high grade ore, you could theoretically start small and bootstrap the operation. To start with you would probably use some kind of gravity separation to recover what you could directly smelt into dore' and stockpile the tailings for later leaching. Small scale tank leaching is also a possibility, especially with some of the fast working/low toxicity leaches. They are a lot more expensive than cyanide, but in a small scale/high grade situation it often makes good economic sense. The big companies don't generally use them because they want BIG ore bodies where capital expenditures are less important compared to operating cost per ton than with a micro operation. WRT smelting, if you are smelting a final concentrate to dore' there are often very few complications. If you are trying to direct smelt a high grade/ complex concentrate then it can get very difficult. In general hydrometalurgy (leaching) is almost always the best way to get to a smeltable con if gravity won't do it. If it is complex, then it is often best to sell the concentrates to a refiner as they are set up and permitted for the situation as well as being experienced. Is this primarily theoretical, or do you have a specific project in mind? Keith

Not in my ore- darn it!

Hard Rock University ....keep trying , I hope you find something great !!! Look up "Jon Aurich Google Plus" and you will see my site on High Grade that I have found !!!

Will do

You're welcome. Good luck!

Just saw this comment. If you are ever coming to Tucson, let me know. I have the tool...

Glad to see you tonight. Keith

You're welcome.

Possibly. I am not a minerologist unfortunately.

@@hardrockuniversity7283 this comment looks great nxt to 'exploring abandoned mines' praise of your mineral knowledge and educational value😂😂 I just but I'm also totally serious

@@neilwilson5871 So am I. I am an experienced miner, not a trained geologist or minerologist. I wish I was. I hope I can find time for some classes during winter.

@@hardrockuniversity7283 I wish you well with the classes, I'm sure field experience gives you more grounding than most as you will have seen much of the jargon in situ or in process😂 I am only an amateur rockhound, with a fascination for geometry more than geology, and I must confess, most of the "knowledge" I have is from books and I'm almost always identifying visually🥴..

It is not a matter of speed, it is a matter of EFFICIENCY. A modern ball mill costs less per ton than a stamp mill. Also, they are quite productive as a single large ball mill can pulverize thousands of tons per hour. OTOH, an impact mill can be quite portable.. For these reasons, a stamp mill doesn't fill any modern needs as well as another device.

Don't know the frequency, but I know it happens. I know of ore or concentrates shipped from Mexico to the US to avoid the prohibition on export by Mexico. Gold can actually alloy with Tellurium in some ore bodies. Telluride Colorado was thus named. Here is a Wiki article on one such mineral: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calaverite

Copper and gold often go together. It is a good sign but no guarantee.

Gold in rock is rarely large enough to set off a metal detector. Extremely valuable ore deposits could be easily missed if you only used a metal detector. Therefore you have to look for other clues.

If it is in a wet region, you may have to go down to the water table. Below that, there is very little oxygen. Rain water percolating down to the water table can dissolve minerals and carry them down to the water table where they re-precipitate in a process called 'secondary enrichment' and can produce very high grades. In a dry environment, sulfides might be found close to surface irrespective of the water table. Keith

@@hardrockuniversity7283 So far all I have found close to the surface are blebs of hematite, and all of the vuggy quartz is stripped bare of anything that looks like a sulfide, and although I once read that microscopic specks of silver might be in there, if there is, its far too small for my cheap digital microscope to recognize. www.deviantart.com/deliciousdeblair/art/Vuggy-Quartz-in-Chert-for-Visual-Example-001-771256987 www.deviantart.com/deliciousdeblair/art/Vuggy-Quartz-in-Chert-for-Visual-Example-004-771257971 I sense that it is possible that more of this vuggy layer might be inland, possibly, however, at a point that goes beyond the edge of my property, which would of course become a problem unless it was enough mineral value to justify buying the adjacent properties. www.deviantart.com/deliciousdeblair/art/Hematite-001-681933586 www.deviantart.com/deliciousdeblair/art/Areas-Circled-in-Red-Look-Like-Metal-785524547 Down in my well [it was drilled to a depth of 500 feet] there is some chalcopyrite, magnetite, malachite, some tiny red crystals which might be zinc bearing, and what looks like really tiny drips of solder [bright shiny thin bits of metal] but they are very sparse and very small [since there is a screen over the inlet of the pump to protect it from ingesting abrasive material], and most of it is quartz and chert grit. www.deviantart.com/deliciousdeblair/art/Minerals-from-Well-Sample-Series-007-742910542 www.deviantart.com/deliciousdeblair/art/Minerals-from-Well-Sample-Series-006-742910373 www.deviantart.com/deliciousdeblair/art/Minerals-from-Well-Sample-Series-005-742910145 www.deviantart.com/deliciousdeblair/art/Minerals-from-Well-Sample-Series-001-742902554 I have an idea I would like to try which would dredge the well, but it would be quite the undertaking, requiring that I pull the pump out and build a specialized jet pump with a fabric filter to retrieve the sediment, but I feel hopeful that such a rig could pull up at least enough material from that depth to show if the land is mineral bearing to the point of financial justification. Also, I have an idea how to make a low cost 90 degree borescope to drop down the well and see if veins can be identified directly in the wall of the well borehole or not. It would be most delightful to find that there is not only minerals but at a depth above the water table, although I have my doubts. Also, it seems difficult to get an affordable core sample because the drills are crazy expensive and nobody seems to rent them in this area, you either buy one from some other place, or hire a core drilling company from some other place and they come in for a fee to sample the rock strata for you. I am really hoping to find out something without spending a fortune.

I'm not sure which part of the video you are referring to so I will guess the first part where I showed the five mineral types I tested. The 'black mineral' sample is one of the few that is not an obvious breccia. 'Breccia' refers to any rock that has been broken into pieces and then re-cemented together. Any rock can become 'brecciated' and it is very common along the faults and fissures that form veins as the movement and breaking of rock is what opens up passages for hydrothermal fluids to flow. The big rock I washed with water is clearly a breccia as you can see where cracks opened up and were than filled with other minerals. Keith

thank you for the informaion

You're welcome. Hope it comes in handy. See why I like the hand panning technique? It allows quick and cheap information that while not as quantitative as an assay, is nevertheless quite useful. Keith

It was a bit wet this year. Cost me a bit of money on the weekends when it crushed sales at times.

My email is HardRockU@outlook.com

Oh yeah! Buying another 20 tomorrow.

Every ore body is different and usually changes with location. That is why regular testing and good record keeping can be very valuable. Good luck, Keith

Hard Rock University i used fisher gold bug to locate some mineralization in the vein and took samples. In Arizona i tested i got some color around 0.1-0.2 gram per bucket. But in Nevada i tested with the same technic using metal detector, didn't get any color at all. But instead lots of silvery looking pyrite. After panning it usually settles in the bottom with gold. I'm not sure what was giving target noises,sounded like perfect targets. I was ready to bet i got a ton of gold until i crushed it and got nothing.

You might try roasting the pyrites and then crushing and panning. The gold can be inside the pyrite. Use good ventilation, some minerals have toxic fumes when roasted.

Hard Rock University than i realized that metal detector isn't going to work on fine gold. I was searching a mine i found on USGS report, my GPS lost connection so i averaged where the mine might be and ended up going to another hill thinking that's where the mine is. Found another mine,but it was dangerous to enter. Instead i saw an exposed vein took some samples, looked through jewelers loop saw small spec of gold. So i knew the quartz vein has gold, but the fisher gold bug didn't give any signals at all, not even a sighn of mineralization. Got 0.1 gram of gold per bucket, but i think it's worth to test more. Probably it has more than 0.1 gram per bucket, and the deeper i dig i assume the quantity of gold will increase.

That sound very good. Are you certain the 'gold' is not chalcopyrite?

Not that I know of. Sorry. Never hurts to ask. keith

I don't know about "soaking up", but they are often associated. Lead and silver are also common companions.

It is also 3 years old and has been out in the weather the whole time, but yeah, I could have done better. :-)

I understand. I have cleaned the lens and it won't go away. I'm afraid I might have damaged the CCD somehow. If not, perhaps I can disassemble the camera and find the issue. I'm afraid to do so though because I have no confidence I can get it back together. Any suggestions? Keith

One of the problems is that I only see the spot when editing and by the time I get back to filming I have forgotten it. Thank you for reminding me. It looks like there is some sort of small debris on the INNER lens. Unfortunately I see no way to get to it to clean it. Hmmm...

Hard Rock University need your email. Need you help on how to process an ore I have. It's a sulfide ore of silver 400ozt and gold 3.5-7.0 ozt. As per assay from a lab in Reno. It also has lead, manganese and a high iron content with arsenic. Would like to send you a sample to see what you think. Kasse. pmpcmining@gmail.com

My email is hardrocku@outlook.com Any time you need it you can look it up at hardrocku.com if the assays are accurate and representative, it should not be a problem to make a profit if there is even a modest tonnage. Keith

Quite possible. Not sure in this sample.

You can email me at hardrocku@outlook.com