Prospectors

[WCFAK]

Bigblockyeti. It is fun and mid June to mid July the temp can reach 80 degrees sometimes.

 Beenthere, thanks for the info.

 OldJarhead, most small scale miners don't make much if anything. Unless you hit a rich "pocket" and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on one of those to show up. Mining is pretty much a numbers game. You have to process a lot of material to make a good profit. On the Gold Rush show Parker does good because he moves a lot of gravel per year, but his fuel bill is also spectacular. The mines that do real well are the large scale hard rock mines, Pogo, Fort Knox. Greenscreek etc.. The Fort Knox mine near Fairbanks averages around 1000 oz. per day but their operating cost are astronomical.

[SwampDonkey]

It even cost a fortune on the Klondike rush.

Recently they found a guy squatting up there and the reason they found him was he was Youtubing about it. Authorities ousted him.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/matthew-clarke-youtube-cabin-ensley-creek-1.6389899

[OlJarhead]

wow.  I have to believe he thought he had a claim and it was ok...maybe not right but I wonder if he thought it worked that way.

I know a lot of Canucks believe all sorts of things about mining claims that are more often than not, untrue 

[SwampDonkey]

Judging from the report it was obvious he tried to dodge or ignore the order to leave. So he knew. He probably thought it was so remote an area that no one would ever come along. Ain't too many places you can't be found these days. Some people do however believe there are squatters rights. Because, like my grandfather for instance, he let people dwell on this land. There was a parcel that was boxed in by the highway and the railroad. That sliver of land was no good to him for anything and he was fine with the folks staying there. However, they don't get title or rights to the land, even if they stay there 40 years. No such provision for squatters up here. The sliver was part of 200 acres, that at one time went out into the middle of the river before the hydro dam was put in. He sold off some frontage for building lots over the years, but never that sliver. We inherited that sliver and just let it go to the crown. The guy across the road from it plants a garden there.

[Ianab]

Rainy day here, so been prospecting again. 

Got some paydirt to process. 



 

The large square chips with the gold plated corners usually contain gold wires, memory chips often do, the pins of the CPUs are gold plated, as are the edge connectors on the memory modules. Of course it's all tiny amounts, but if you could pan that amount of gold from a bucket of dirt, you'd think it was a pretty good claim. 

But in reality the nickel plated copper heat spreaders on the top of the CPU chips is actually worth more than the gold, and a good desktop heatsink like this is 1/2 a pound of extruded aluminium, and even better if it has a solid copper core you can remove. 



 

Not getting rich any time soon 

[SwampDonkey]

Most gold in these parts is in quartz veins, when found in creeks it's anchored to quartz stones. Gold can be found in many creeks here, is there enough to get rich, nope. Just enough to keep you interested. This province has been prospected to death and a couple good claims have been identified before the big gold valuation we are in now. No one yet has ever worked them. One of them is 40 miles from here. There's other interesting ores around, like magnesium sulphate. It has metallic lustre and depending on how much precipitation of sulphur is on it, it might be entirely covered in sulphur , and you just walk on by it without much notice. I found one chunk here in the field, about 10 lbs. I chipped the sulphur off it. Magnesium is used in a lot of stuff including flares, fireworks and sparklers. Magnesium sulphate is sometimes used as a mordant for dyes. Used in parts of cars, chainsaws, laptop computers on and on. Magnesium is the eighth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust.

[Ianab]

I get pieces of magnesium out of laptops, used in place of aluminium as it's lighter and stronger for the weight. 

Mostly I keep it for bonfire night. 

If you want to tell magnesium and aluminium apart, drop some vinegar on it it. If it bubbles, it's magnesium ( more reactive ). If nothing happens it's aluminium.  

I'm in a crap area for gold prospecting. We have either "fresh" volcanic  basalt and ash, or relatively new mud / sand stone. Other areas have a lot more interesting geology with those quartz veins in ancient uplifted rocks. 

So a commercial gold mine might process a ton of rock to get 1 oz of gold. That's 0.0025% gold. Good IC chips / trimmed gold fingers are more like 1%. Sure it takes a kilogram to get 1 gram of gold, so to make real money you have to be industrial scale, and also recover the copper / silver / palladium etc.  Hobby scale you likely spend more on chemicals and safety gear than you recover in gold. But the chemistry experiment is interesting in itself.  Dropping some sodium metabisulphite into a jar of chloroauric acid ( HAuCl4), and having it go cloudy with gold precipitate is fun to watch. That part is fairly safe, making chloroauric acid is best done outside with the wind at your back...  

Like a lot of things we do, "Don't try this at home" is more like an invitation.... 

[Texas Ranger]

The only gold we have in my part of the world is black and liquid!

[KEC]

I dabble in scrap metal, often taking discarded appliances apart and recovering light iron, copper, brass, aluminum, etc. Gives me something to do, cleans up the roadsides, conserves resources and puts a very modest amount of jingle in my pocket. The motor windings yield either copper or aluminum wire. There is another "wheel" in there that has cast aluminum attached to in. It is an incredibly time consuming/labor intensive  job separating that aluminum from the iron/steel "wheel". While doing one of these today I noticed that when cutting into the cast aluminum it gives off a chemical odor, somewhat like the chemical odor you smell after a too close encounter with a skunk. Do any of you guys know what this is ?

[SwampDonkey]

After my grandfather retired from his outfitting business he did a lot of scrapping, especially when municipal dumps were still open access. But also where people just dumped where ever they felt along roadsides. Collected beer bottles and cans to recycle. Gave him something new to do.

I remember an old guy in town, he collected and road a tricycle with large basket on behind doing it. Something to do.

[Magicman]

I read that as a result of all of the additional rainfall/snow melt runoff in the Rockies this year the streams should contain much additional placer gold.  The "panners" will probably be busy.

[OlJarhead]

That had me thinking a lot   With gold once again bumping up near $2k per oz it might make a fun recreation activity when camping with the grands

[Magicman]

Early in the morning on Monday, March 20, 2023, the price of gold surged past $2,000 an ounce for the first time in history.

[SwampDonkey]

There's a known spot south of here with good yield, as far as gold goes, but it's never been worked since the price of gold reached several hundred dollars an ounce. Too much anti resource extraction rhetoric, even if it's about a dozen people. Their voices are louder than the silent majority.

There is talk of a different ore mine (MANGANESE 10% - IRON 15%) being considered only 30 miles away. It's scope covers 5,875 ha (14,500 acres), with 232 claims. I doubt it sees the light of day. Just politics for votes.

[OlJarhead]

I suspect gold prices will continue to rise (against the dollar) though in reality it's the same as it's always been.  There is a very good book called "The Creature From Jekyll Island" about the creation of the FED and how it's impacted the dollar but it's a long reed for those not into economics

However, I've got the itch and hope to get out as soon as the weather warms to try to learn how to pan   Seems like a great afternoon activity when camping near a stream

[rusticretreater]

Plenty of youtube vids on the subject. A lot of hype, but also some good info.  I have researched gold mining in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia a bit, but we have a ton of limestone and caverns and not so much gold. I even own a section of a creek, but there are no black sands to be found. There has been some found on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

When prospectors say they made a huge find, they usually mean they got 3-4 grams from a days effort.  That is good wages, but you can't do it everyday.

There is a huge cobalt mining area in Idaho that is estimated to provide for US cobalt needs for the next 5 years and was just about to start production with its first mine.  The Aussie operator put it on hold because of falling cobalt prices. Just as the US is set to get production, the Chinese controlled international market suddenly has a price drop.  US is suckered once again.

[SwampDonkey]

WV is setting up shop to make batteries in Ontario. There is a large reserve not far away in the Sudbury region. There is a town out that way called Cobalt, which became pretty much a ghost town after silver mining declined. Cobalt, as it turns out is a by product of silver mining. Until the latest craze over batteries it was considered a nuisance. The only permitted cobalt refinery on the continent is located near the border of Temiskaming Shores and Cobalt, Ontario as it turns out. The company that owns it plans on it becoming the continent's only producer of battery-grade cobalt according to a statement made in Sept 2020. Previously it was all shipped to China, they plan to put an end to that. This will be only 5% of world production.

I don't think cobalt is the answer in the long term, there just isn't enough world supply. Rumour is that VW received up to $10 billion dollars of provincial and federal money for their plant. Dispelling the myth that EV technologies aren't subsidized compared to oil. And this is just one facility.

[OlJarhead]

I've read some articles on sodium ion and and iron based battery and both appear to be promising but I'm pretty certain gasoline is going to win the day until there isn't any oil to make it with and by then the free market will come up with a solution.

Meanwhile, gold is bumping up against $2k again and I think will make it over....so it will make a fun warm weather activity when camping I think

[SwampDonkey]

Iron is too heavy for autos. I think hydrogen will win out, it's not there yet. Some automakers are into EV's and hydrogen at the same company, and they are sure about hydrogen, some day. Toyota has EV's, hybrids and hydrogen so there is a lot less bias than at other companies. Iron won't work so well for grid storage, required lots of maintenance over their life. Maybe they can work it out eventually, not yet.

[OlJarhead]

Meanwhile GOLD is over $2020/oz now and Silver just tipped back over $25/oz

Time to warm up the pan