Leaching

[Guest Gripper]

I'm getting pumped up about non cyanide leaching such as chlorine. Float quartz and waste mine rock, motherlode region. Has anyone had measurable success in this area? I am planning on building a small sample crusher. The fever is so hard to tame. Am I wasting my time?

Thanks

Brian

[bcache]

Morning Gripper,

Want to take big rocks, beat them into dust and remove the gold? Here is a good crash course in Mining chemistry.

Wear gloves. Don't sniff things like nitric acid, etc.. Stay upwind of mercury fumes and crusty prospectors that have not taken a bath in a month.

Bill C

basement.html

[Gilaoro]

There are safe methods, Stay away from mercury and nitric unless you are very experinced, the people on these forums who have made mistakes don't come back and admit to them.

Check this we site for crushers and lab advice:http://www.crazycrusher.com/forum/default.aspx?g=forum .

And this one is the one I use:http://www.goldplatinumtutor.com/origppress/welcome.htm

Megan Rose will teach you the right way.

Max

[matt]

Angus McKirk sells or used to sell a small heap leach set up. He also sells a book on leaching using salts instead of acids.

I looked into it a while back, but decided not to waste my money. The amount of gold that you would need to recover to cover

the costs would be something to consider. Usually, unless the material contains large quantities of ultra fine gold and sulfides,

the costs of the acids and time don't make it worth while. Gold needs to be released from the sulfides prior to leaching as well.

A shaker table or a wave table will recover the majority of the gold without the use of leaching. I would run some of the material

through a table and then send in a good sample to be assayed and see if there is a worthwhile amount of gold that you are not

able to recover using conventional methods.

I would use the money to buy a small crusher and then build a small home made pulverizer like a ball mill. Then crush and run

the material through whatever recovery device you have decided on. I am looking for somebody local that has a table so that I can

test my concentrates and crushed material to see of it would be worthwhile to buy something like an RP-4.

Matt

[Guest Gripper]

Thanks for the input Fellas. Bill C, that basement chemistry site is what got me thinking about the leaching. It is an excellent and entertaining site. I think I have some calaverite (or maybe just quartz with extreme sulphides?) and was looking for a way to extract au from it.

Max, thats good advice and the urban mining concept is intriguing as well. I have seen mass quantities of "junked" computers for sale on government auction sites and wonder if its worth it to strip gold from them.

Matt, I have seen that mini leach plant from McKirk, but like you're saying, he sure gets a lot for them. Have you seen the latest thing that McKirk has, a microwave gold kiln kit. Crazy. Just saw it in the new Mining Journal. Yeah, the shaker table route is probably the way to go, and I have seen used ones in the Mining Journal at some good prices. Matt if south fork didn't want those batteries and you still have them I would be interested in one or both. I run a 2100, and yeah, the stock batteries are no joke.

Brian

[29 Prospector]

Matt, Terry, and Max are right. You want to stay away from chemicals if at all possible. In today's mining world, the small independent miner usually starts out in the hole(money wise) and it takes time to begin your recovery rate. We used a 2 table set up. One was a primary cut table and the second one was a home built design by my father which we used as a finish table. If you ore runs 1/2opt or better, and free milling(no sulfides), you should get between 90-95% recovery @-80 mesh or smaller. There are many variables to any process and it will take some testing to get the right combination of fineness and table angles to get the best recovery.

We also found that after we had run over 100 tons of ore that the amount of gold left in the mill tailing pile was not worth going after.

I'm sure that any of us who have spent time hard rock mining and milling have at one time have used chemicals, but we have learned that the result usually is not worth the recovery unless you are heap leaching mass amounts of crushed ore.

There are several ways to test your ore to even see if it warrants mining. Any of us would be happy to share our way of testing.

Bob

[homefire]

All Leaching Processes are safe if done right.

If you don't know what your doing, DON"T DO IT!

I have done small batches with Halide Leach. (Bleach and Hydrochloric)

Worked Good but the Returns from what I had to work with just covered the chemistry and time.

NO MONEY MADE.

Your best source of Info would be these folks.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/

This Place is cool too and easy to follow if you read EVERY THING!

http://webpages.charter.net/kwilliams00/bcftp/bcftp.htm

Again! IF YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT TO HELL YOUR DOING , DON"T DO IT!!!!

When In Doubt, DON'T!

[Gilaoro]

Homefire, You have said what I wanted to get across only better, you don,t ever hear of the horribable failures and acid burns. People who monkey with mercury have to know that in AZ tempetures its already vaporizing, thats whats the matter with a lot of us!!

Max

[bigrex]

Yeah, I would think that is one thing you wouldn't want to do on a trial and error basis, lots of things are fun to try and figure out on your own, but with something like that, one mistake could cost you your lungs, your fingers, etc. Of course, common sense will go a long way toward prevention, but I think part of common sense in this case is to seek out an experienced person/mentor to help out.