Sluice gold private property

On a friends private property in VIC he's got some river looking gravels on the surface on the property. It's about 100 meters from a gold bearing creek. We panned some samples from his gravel and got some specs.

So recently we scraped up about half a cubic meter of the gravel and dirt, just from the top 4-5 inches of the surface, and this is what we got for 2 hours work: https://2img.net/h/s15.postimg.cc/quidni7sp/20170225_181913.jpg

We haven't weighed it but it looks pretty good for the surface gravel. There was a lot of dirt on it too, probably 50% of the half a cubic meter was dirt.

There is only about 30cm of gravel, after that it hits clay, either a brown clay or a white pipe clay. We haven't sampled any of the clay yet, but there is not much gravel at all in the clay.

What would you do from here? Go into the clay and test that? How to break it up before sluicing it?

We are not sure where or how the gravels got there. We think maybe either the creek used to run through his property, or, the old timers bought the gravel up there to sluice it. What signs should we look for that we tell us the gravels story?

G'day OTH. Your post got me thinking, and here's what I come up with.

It wouldn't surprise me to find that this area on your mates property is a branch of the original creek, which changed its direction quite some time ago. The fact that there's quite a bit of loam over the top tells me that it was quite a while ago.


I reckon that you've got some work in front of you, but, there's also going to be a lot of fun. And the clay? Do a bore hole straight through where you reckon that there's a chance of bedrock underneath - soak the clay with a couple of handfuls of gypsum to break it down, and good luck.

on claims i've worked, as long as there's quartz or ironstone pebbles in the clay, no matter how small it is, you'll get gold. as for pipeclay, the old timers reckon the gold sits in the top of it, but i could never get my head around that, as when it's dug out it's like talcum powder, so the gold being heavier should travel down through it,but they were experts, i'm not.

We got a trommel to see how it would go with the clay. We wanted one anyway to wash rocks. It does a good job on the rocks but no good on the clay. It still comes out the end of the sluice in little clay balls, with gravel still in it.

We've got some buckets of clay soaking at the moment, will leave it soaking for a week and run it through next week and see how it goes.

Have made a few improvements to trommel since this video, fixed leaks, put hopper back onto highbanker, improved angle and flow, and rubber matting around sides, so not losing any material out sides.

Hi onthehunt, I did a lot of sluicing once, but not so much now. What I did with the clay is what you are doing now by putting it in a bucket with gypsum and water, leaving it for a week or two. And then stir it up with a paint mixer attached to a electric drill. Keep poring clean water into the bucket until the water in the bucket starts to clear. This way you know that you have got rid of most of the clay, and just leaving your concentrates behind . Then run this through the sluice. The old timers did this in a wooden barrels cut in half and used a big paddle to stir it up. This was before they started using puddlers on a great scale right through the goldfields to do the same job. Good luck.
wombat

Thanks Wombat. Regarding the gypsum, would it be safe to wash that into a creek? We are running our water back into a creek. Don't want to cause any issues with contamination or anything. My and other downstream sheep drink from the creek.

onthehunt wrote:Thanks Wombat. Regarding the gypsum, would it be safe to wash that into a creek? We are running our water back into a creek. Don't want to cause any issues with contamination or anything. My and other downstream sheep drink from the creek.

No I don't think it will do any harm. As you can use this on vegie patches to break up the clay. But in saying that I suggest you read the direction on the pack first.
wombat

G'day on the hunt. I reckon that Gypsum would do no harm to the quality of the creek water because it will settle any sediment load in the creek water.

The majority of soil in Australia is what they call Sodolic, [sodium bearing] which means it's salty. Perpetual cloudy water is damaging to micro and macrophytes [plants], and will cover any fish eggs laid, preventing them from hatching - this is what the greenies are going on about concerning our hobby.

Bear with me now, but sodium makes negative clay ions repel each other, and gypsum weakens that negative polarity, making that sediment load attractive to each other, making it aggregate [clump together], causing it to drop out of the water flow.

If you've got a dam where the water is always murky, the treatment will be Gypsum.

Buggered that. Instead of reading 'negative clay ions', read 'suspended negatively charged clay platelets repel each other'