Woops, sorry about the trommel pix URLs...here are the correct ones.
Also, I finished the re-write of the paragraphs dealing with some of the various disguises gold wears that are revealed under the microscope.
trommel pix for the perch where the jam breaking shoveler stands:
oregontrail.net (with ladder)
oregontrail.net (without ladder)
The part I previously wrote is in italics. The additional info about coated gold is below that in ordinary type-font.
[Robert Mullenbach] wrote: One thing about finding gold, time makes no difference. Well, I would agree and disagree. Where I agree is that the gold doesn't "rot" or get stale. NOT HARDLY! he he he. BUT, over time, it DOES get "coated" shall we say, and that coating stuff, makes visibly SEEING the gold more challenging.
For example: I set up my big double eye-piece laboratory microscope in the Blue Bucket Gift Shop where I commandeered the display case countertop for the gold weighing and distribution phases. As the various type stuff that DID NOT LOOK like gold popped up again and again in the classification sieves I was using to clean the gold before weighing and distribution, I set THOSE aside to put under 45x magnification for double checking. I had promised a subsequent "Show and Tell" session for any of Roy's buyers who might be interested to immediately follow the gold distribution. Quite a crowd stayed for that presentation!
I then showed the trommel share buyers the different kinds of coated gold we were dealing with. They were astounded!!! I sorted out the coated gold from the "worthless black sands" set aside for demonstration this weekend from each final gold cut process. I placed some "discards" on a 2x2 folded in half square of ordinary laser copier paper and let everyone take a peek.
The coated gold just pops up, big as boulders under 45X magnification. But then so does the veternarian hypodermic hollow S/S needle I use to sort with. Damn thing looks like a scoop shovel under 45X as well!
Then the buyers stepped back, and I quickly sorted out, via needle, all the coated gold I could find. Then I gathered it in one particular mound on the same 2x2 folded square still under the scope. Everyone quequed up to re-view the two mounds.
To the naked eye, the two piles looked identical except in size, except the gold mound was smaller and the "supposed discards" were a much larger representative sample. However, even THOSE discards are set aside for further processing according to shared processing information to another old timer who attended Roy's Mining Event and generously shared what HE does with the rusty looking gold.
They all took off their glasses and pressed to the double eye-pieces for a closer look at the "gold mound"
Some of the gold mound pieces looked like coral had grown on the gold. Some gold had rust on it. Some of it is just pitch black with just a teeeeeensy glint showing even under magnification. Why? Because it is coated with oxidized native mercury from its geological association with cinnebar in this orebody. But since this ground hasn't been disturbed for several decades, and maybe even centuries in some places, it's obviously NOT a recent mercury coating which acts like glue glomming gold particles together in a fascinating jumble. Yes, the microscope reveals many clues in the search for raw gold out here at the Blue Bucket!
Some of it is coated with the deadly arsenic, which can be described as a kind of white paste residue stuck in the various folds and crevices of the free-milling gold. Some is still in its host quartz matrix. Still other pieces looked like amalgam, as if it had just recently been recovered via foreign introduced mercury.
But since this ground hasn't been disturbed for several decades, and maybe even centuries in some spots on this property, it is obviously NOT a recent mercury coating which acts like glue glomming gold particles together in a fascinating jumble. I recalled my earlier training by a friendly assayer/chemist re: black coated gold from the "black sand" gold beaches up in Klickitat Bay in Alaska. I remembered how she said her dad had taught her to clean that gold and then she taught me how to do it as well.
Yes, the microscope reveals many clues in the search for raw gold out here at the Blue Bucket Gold Diggings Mine! (Hey, Paddy, are you paying attention here to my clues????? Listen Up, Man, and reprocess that pile you threw away, ok????!!! <vbg>)
Thanks, Robert for your patience with my expansion on that microscopic interactive learning experience I was privileged to share with folks this past weekend at the Blue Bucket. One trucker told us at Breakfast Saturday morning, he wished he had every piece of black sand he'd thrown away for the last 15 years!
And Robert stayed up all night, in the cab of his big LaPrino Food Stores semi, sorting the gold out of his 1/24 share of the black sand ( which everyone got in a separate baggie) from their trommel run. Needless to say, he spent a few hours with the microscope and the hypodermic "scoop shovel" on Saturday while Roy was doing the first run of the day! Man, was he one haaaaaaaaappy camper by last night!!!
He also had one very sore set of shoulders from being bent over that scope most of the day!!!!<VVBG>
O/49r |
