My First Assay Report

Hopefully the pictures loaded right at the end!

I like to spend a week or two camping where I grew up in Montana and exploring old mines, something I’ve done since a teenager, aside from a year here or there. I’ve never done much prospecting though, never even looked much at the geology sadly, until a few years ago.

This year I was camping and had several mines I was focusing on. One day I decided to hike up the mountain above my campsite to search for a cellphone signal at the top (which I eventually found and used daily after that). About halfway up the mountain, quite unexpectedly, I found an old mine. This mine does not show up on any maps, there is no visible road going to it, and I thing it’s sat up there half forgotten for a very long time. I’m sure a couple people have seen it, but I don’t think many.

When I walked to the back there was a pretty nice sized black vein, along with tans and coppers. The rest of the wall and ceiling was peppered with the same rocks and minerals. I took out what I believe was a decent representation of the different materials in the face and sent them in the be assayed. I have to add, the material came out super easy, just small taps with a hammer and big chunks would separate off. Surprisingly easy, in fact I was a little nervous about the material above my head it was coming off the face so easily.

I got the assay report back and I don’t know if I should be excited or not. Ha ha! I’m hoping someone here could tell me if I have a dud, or something to say “hmmm” about. I know it’s not great numbers, but with as easy as the rock seemed to come out, maybe the numbers aren’t awful??


These numbers are oz per 2000lb.
Gold - 0.216
Silver - 0.288
Platinum - 0.027
Palladium - 0.11
Osmium - 0.23
Ruthenium - 0.019
Iridium - 0.008
Rhodium - 0.005

According to the Kitco calculator, total metal value is at $576 per ton. What do some the the experts think because I’m pretty new to the operational side of mining!

The first picture did not come up very well, so I cropped this one.

Hi Dcramer, thanks for the post.
I'm no expert in mining, I have a few share in gold mines here in OZ, and read their reports often.
Unfortunately the figures look to small for any venture be it small or large.
To make any profit you would have to pull out thousand of tons of ore, if you're doing it for a bit of fun that's ok.
But trying to get a ton of rock out of a old mine and down a mountain by hand sounds like a nightmare.
I think the old timers knew when a mine was good or not, they knew when to walk away
Good luck with it all, keep posting it would be nice to see more mining picture from Montana.



cheers moredeep

moredeep wrote:Hi Dcramer, thanks for the post.
I'm no expert in mining, I have a few share in gold mines here in OZ, and read their reports often.
Unfortunately the figures look to small for any venture be it small or large.
To make any profit you would have to pull out thousand of tons of ore, if you're doing it for a bit of fun that's ok.
But trying to get a ton of rock out of a old mine and down a mountain by hand sounds like a nightmare.
I think the old timers knew when a mine was good or not, they knew when to walk away
Good luck with it all, keep posting it would be nice to see more mining picture from Montana.



cheers    moredeep

Thanks so much for your input! I knew my numbers weren’t great and I was hoping there was more silver in there. I was in an area with rich silver mines. I do have to disagree with your assessment though that just because old timers were there doesn’t mean they didn’t leave anything behind. Many of the silver mines in this area shut down around 1900, coinciding with a big silver crash. It doesn’t happen all the time, and if it does I don’t think people talk about it, but occasionally someone steps into an old shut down mine with plenty of ore left that is profitable with today’s prices. I was hoping this was one of the ones that shut down and never reopened. It has been known to happen!

Fluctuating metal prices have always governed the viability of mines was what I should have added on.
Large mines operate on fine profit margins and as I said It's only because they can remove thousand of tons of ore.
A lot of gold mines in oz operate on very low grams of gold/ton.
There may be better assays further into the mine? but it sounds a little unstable, is it worth the effort/silver at $27.84/ounce?
Keep safe.

cheers moredeep

moredeep wrote:Fluctuating metal prices have always governed the viability of mines was what I should have added on.
Large mines operate on fine profit margins and as I said It's only because they can remove thousand of tons of ore.
A lot of gold mines in oz operate on very low grams of gold/ton.
There may be better assays further into the mine? but it sounds a little unstable, is it worth the effort/silver at $27.84/ounce?
Keep safe.

cheers    moredeep

I quite agree with you, I don’t think it would be worth it at today’s prices. About the only thing holding my interest at this point is the rock calculator giving me a value of $576 per ton. Then I would have to find a smelter that would take it.

My original hope was that there would be enough silver I could mine it, crush it, and smelt it myself. But I can see now it wouldn’t be worth it for the silver alone. I can get a 4 wheeler and a trailer to the mine, even inside the mine if I were to dig the opening out all the way. The stuff seems easy to chip out, so the part about dragging the rock down the mountain was the thing I was worried least about. But now it seems finding a smelter that wants all the base metals would be my biggest challenge.

I was looking online to see what other people consider a “good” assay number. Most everything I read was reported in grams/ton. I was seeing lots of numbers in the 1-8 range for large scale mines. My assay report says 0.216 ounces per ton. When I convert .216oz I get 6.12 grams. According to that math I am getting a really good gold number, as good and even better than professional deposits. But that doesn’t seem right. Am I missing something or did I not calculate something right?

G’day Dcramer and welcome to the forum,

I would think that would depend on how many tons/day could be processed, as the big mining company would be processing a lot more than the smaller miner could. Just my opinion of course.


Cheers.

Mike.

G’day Mike! I think I just realized I joined an Australian prospecting forum! Do you guys have underground hard rock mines or is your gold mostly found on the surface through dredging? Well that’s cool, I picked the wrong country to join, but I can’t wait to get some perspective from my brothers down under! Hope you all are fairing well down there in these nutty times. I for one would love the opportunity to get away from it all for the summer and spend it chipping rock out of a mountain!

That’s great! I always assumed Australian miners worked mostly on the surface. Goes to show how ignorant I am I guess! I figured you needed mountain ranges to have underground mines, and I didn’t think Australia had mountains. I’m learning all kinds of things tonight.

If you can see visible gold, chip and detect you'll get enough to pay for your beer
Be careful though.


cheers moredeep

Dcramer,

Greetings from the smokey state of California. What a small world we live in today, and this is a great forum. I do enjoy reading the posts from the blokes down under. Great gold, experience and sense of humor!
It sounds like your discovery warrants more exploration (very carefully) and as someone suggested if you are seeing visible gold perhaps you could cherry pick it with a good VLF machine.

If you are looking for some input from guys more local I know there are several fellas in Montana who are gold hounds and they can be found on a couple of forums, one being Detector Prospector another Nugget Shooter Forum. Lots of experience on those sites.

Best hunting to you and stay alert!

Jeff

I see you have a bit of rhodium in the mix.
https://www.mining-technology.com/features/five-most-expensive-metals-and-where-they-are-mined/