Working clay

Working clay.

We all have different views on this subject what works for me may not be your idea at all, it would be a good idea to kick the tin around a bit on this one. My style of clay working is a bit like this. Once I have opened up an area good enough to get to the clay all depending on the type of clay I find as to the style in which I will work the area. If the clay has pebbles or wash through it I will give the clay a good go. But if the clay has no material through it I will only take the material from on top of the clay layer which has material through it. cheers
James 101

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JB 26/4/2011

yes James I do the same and as recently as the other week at Rushworth I followed the same line -- the balls of clay had some bits sticking to them but nothing inside

Clay balls AHHHHH they drive you nuts. ....... but then there are a few tricks to working clay...

Hi Everyone

Is there any tricks to working clay ?
how do you get the fine gold out of it ?
i found a creek a few months back and it had this sticky blue green clay in it, i tryed to break it up with my hands and i got sick of it so left it alone
By memory i think it did have some small pebbles in it

Thanks mick

On some clays (harder types) I use a cheese grater with the combination of my high banker. But some stickier type clays just block the holes up. Here I just try and break them up by hand or take them home in a bucket and use an electric drill with a paint stirer attached and try and break them down that way I can pan off the residue.
Wombat

Mick by experience I have found that sticky blue green clay only holds gold in the top inch or so. I can process 80% of clays in my Banjo you shovel the clay in the top hopper let it sit for a few moments watching the jets punch holes through it then give it a rake or two with the shovel repeat as necessary. But you must have your pump running flat out and the top hopper must be positioned as flat as possible hence the difference between a Banjo and High Banker. The jetting holes must not exceed from 1.5 to 2 mm in size out of a 20 mm pipe. If you use a 32 mm up to 50 mm pipe you will lose to much pressure and it is the pressure you are seeking when working clay. We also probe the clay we are working to see how deep it runs and what lays beneath the clay level. We do this in two ways with a bottle probe, and a one inch auger both have the capability of punching through the clay level, with samples been taken from the auger.
Remember it is illegal to remove clays and soils from the bush check with your local department on the ruling in this regards.

Cheers James 101
JB 12/5/2011

There are some domestic cleaners that will break clay up IMHO. I am not saying its the way to go as i don't know if you are allowed to use chems for that sort of thing..

my mate takes his paint mixer on a big battery drill and mixes on site..

Rtanweb G’day mate all that type of gear takes too long to work, and would be a totally wast. But they work good in the garden. Choppa yep they work good but when you got to cover distance to get where your working it can be a pain.
cheers

If the sticky clay is gritty when you rub it between your fingers then it has small particles in it and is worth breaking up and panning to get the particles out of it. I find gemstones as well as pinhead sized gold and shotgun pellets in the blue muck that sits on the bedrock and in crevices...it seems to be good at trapping flood gold.

Chuckles mate {blue muck that sits on the bedrock and in crevices.} oh man i love that stuff. cheers

Two things that I know speed up the breakdown of clay are
1/ the addition of detergent to the water, and
2/ hot water.The hotter the water the faster it acts to break down the clay.
I've done a lot of processing of material that I've taken home .And I've used these agents to good effect.Of course its much harder to use these in field conditions.

in vic only remove the concentrates of your efforts -- no clay

When you think clay balls are forming, Add some course river sand Then let the water do the work. It helps!
If your using a straight flow through system it probably wont.
My best suggestion is to have your main classifier set upon the same sized classifiers 3 deep, the water will chop most clays to pieces before going down the sluice!
The only problem is blockage, Some stones will go through one hole and get stuck in the next, even though there the same size holes?

I had some buckets half filled with water & clay/soil mix from Slaty Creek Creswick.

I stirred it up with a paint stirrer on a battery drill and let the stuff sit for a week before adding a few scoops of gypsum before stirring it again.

It turns the clay into a nice slush, which should go through the blue bowl (once I get a new pump)

Don't remove the soil from where you are working!!! ( Vic )

In reading this topic, it got me thinking about clay. Some of you might know that I've spent the last couple of years studying Conservation and Land management at TAFE... anyway, one of the assignments was to rehabilitate a Silica mine in the southern tablelands for the obvious reason, but the main reason was to prevent turbidity (very fine clay sediment) from entering the Shoalhaven River, which belongs to the Sydney Catchment Authority. Now, we did a few tests on the clay and discovered that the reason that the clay remained in a suspended solution was because the actual clay was termed Sodolic, so, we used gypsum to make the fine clay sediment clump together, and so, make the aggregating clay particles sink to the bed of the river improving water quality and reducing turbidity.
So I'm sitting here thinking that if salt (sodium chloride), or bicarb of soda (sodium bicarbonate) breaks up clay into a sediment that fine that it won't deposit on the creek bed, then this might help in the action of breaking up clay particles i.e. when puddling, leave a large amount clay over night soaking in a bicarb solution....Now bicarb would be definitely better for the environment than salt wouldn't it....and you wouldn't dump it in the creek...maybe dig a sump well away from the creek an deposit it there...or use it as a foliar feed for the roses as some clay has a lot of good minerals and elements necessary for plant homeostasis...anyway, just a thought.

Ark wrote:Don't remove the soil from where you are working!!! ( Vic )

Fair call, but doesn't that mean you're not allowed to take the gold home either?

I'm actually trying to make a few portable machines so I can do everything on-site.

ie: Goldzilla


The lack of water on site was also a major problem - we managed to find a few puddles to fill some buckets, but not much.

On this trip I took a few buckets of dirt home so I could experiment with setting up a recirculating blue bowl setup, and also the small sluice I built yesterday. I'm at least an hour away from my nearest goldfield, (Warrandyte), I needed a few buckets of valid test material to see if I'm getting stuff right while also having access to tools & stuff.

Unfortunately my blue bowl pump has crapped out at the moment, so I haven't been able to find out how much we found on this weekend, but I did a few test pans & there's definitely gold in them thar buckets. It's tiny, but it's there!

Fair call, but doesn't that mean you're not allowed to take the gold home either?

No it dosent ! Read the Miners right rules on the piece of paper!! You do have a miners right ?