**I Mined 1,000 Pounds of Rock to See If I Missed Gold — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/mined-1000-pounds-rock-missed-gold/

Exploring a gold claim on public land using old mining laws, expert prospecting, and modern assays to find hidden gold and silver.

## Key Takeaways

- The Mining Act of 1872 allows individuals to claim mineral rights on public land with minimal fees and paperwork.
- Gold can be elusive and requires careful sampling and expert analysis to detect.
- Historical mining evidence like stoops can indicate real past production and potential for valuable ore.
- Modern and traditional assay methods complement each other in evaluating mineral content.
- Small-scale mining is challenging but taps into a pioneering spirit that settled the American West.

## What the video covers

- The creator claimed public land under the Mining Act of 1872 to prospect for gold and silver.
- Initial mining yielded about $500 worth of silver but no gold, prompting further investigation.
- Experts Jason and Harry from Mount Baker Mining joined to help sample and analyze the claim.
- They collected and separated samples of quartz and red clay for testing.
- Panning and prospecting revealed galena, a silver-bearing mineral, and some promising ore.
- Historical mining signs such as stoops indicated past production on the claim.
- The team used both modern equipment and traditional fire assay methods to analyze samples.
- Results showed about 0.1 troy ounces of gold from 1,000 pounds of rock, worth roughly $400.
- The video emphasizes the spirit of old-time prospectors and the challenges of modern small-scale mining.
- Plans to continue exploring and possibly expanding mining efforts based on findings.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Claiming Public Land Under Mining Act of 1872
2. 01:25 Exploring the Mining Site and Sampling Strategy
3. 04:29 Initial Panning and Prospecting Results
4. 05:37 Historical Mining Evidence and Ore Identification
5. 07:28 Reflections on Mining Spirit and Hard Work
6. 09:56 Collecting and Analyzing Ore Samples
7. 11:00 Processing Ore at Milling Operation
8. 19:00 Fire Assay Results and Final Conclusions
9. 23:00 Future Plans and Closing Thoughts

Answers

## Questions about this video

How was the land claimed for mining in this video?

The land was claimed using the Mining Act of 1872, which allows individuals to claim mineral rights on public land by posting markers, filing paperwork, and paying a small fee.

Did the creator find gold on the claim?

Yes, after processing about 1,000 pounds of rock, the fire assay revealed approximately 0.1 troy ounces of gold, worth around $400.

What role did the experts play in the prospecting process?

Experts Jason and Harry helped with sampling, identifying minerals like galena, using specialized equipment, and guiding the traditional and modern methods to analyze the ore.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

A year ago, I claimed this public land behind me using an obscure mining law from the 1800s.

00:08

Speaker A

After that, I spent months taking out hundreds of pounds of rock to get all the gold and silver that I could. In the end, I had about $500 worth of silver and no gold.

00:20

Speaker A

Ooh, a lot of silver on that one. But out here, a matter of a few feet can make the difference between a worthless claim and a fortune. So, I couldn't help wondering, did I just miss the gold? So, today I brought in the experts, Jason

00:36

Speaker A

and Harry from Mount Baker Mining. Both of them own gold mines and have spent decades working underground. So together we are going to go back through this land, take all sorts of new samples, run it through their equipment, and finally

00:51

Speaker A

send it to a lab that's going to tell us exactly what's in this dirt. No more guessing. So either the gold isn't here or it's been underneath my feet this whole time and I've been missing it.

01:03

Speaker A

Let's find out. Gold pin. Maybe there's more here than I thought. Maybe this land I'm on belongs to the American public. And just a year ago, the minerals within this land belonged to the public as well. But thanks to the Mining

01:25

Speaker A

Act of 1872, I was able to legally claim rights to all of the minerals in here just by putting up some posts, filing some paperwork, and paying a small fee.

01:36

Speaker A

And I made a whole video about how you do that and I'll link that below. But my real interest in this is trying to get into the mentality of the men and women that came west 150 years ago and went

01:51

Speaker A

through these processes to try to live a better life. You know, I think these days the mining act is abused by these giant companies, but it was set up for the individual miner. And so today we are going to go through the whole

02:05

Speaker A

process of how they would have done it the old school way. And luckily I have two very experienced miners here to show me the way.

02:12

Speaker A

All right. You guys ready to see the claim? Yeah, the experts are here. We'll see about that. Show us what you got. This is cool.

02:20

Speaker A

So the first thing I think he was blasting out here was drilling on the surface and there looks to be almost like a collapsed portal here.

02:27

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. And you can see some of the drill right next to you down below you.

02:32

Speaker A

And so I chipped some of this out, but you can see like he was drilling below it and above it.

02:41

Speaker A

Jeez, how would you get a drill up here to do that? Wow. I mean, it's definitely a quartz vein. I don't see a lot of sulfides in it, though. There's not a lot of interesting stuff.

02:57

Speaker A

Yeah. But yeah, I mean he drilled. I'm sure he blasted this out. Yeah.

03:02

Speaker A

So when you were here, you were getting this or both?

03:06

Speaker A

Both. But I was mainly getting like these weird chunks of galena out of this clay stuff. But then there was quartz that had galena in it, too.

03:14

Speaker A

I don't know, Harry. All right. My suggestion just initially looking at this stuff is if you want to sample this, you take two or 300 pounds of the quartz and then you take two or 300 pounds of the red clay stuff and sample them

03:27

Speaker A

separately. Yes. Good idea. And that way you know, oh, the gold is in the quartz or the gold's in the red stuff just for this. This looks like slate.

03:36

Speaker A

They chipped all the—Oh, yeah. Those quartz here. Low veining here. I'll be able to get the detector on some of this, too.

03:54

Speaker A

We can get a bucket or two from here, which should be fine. But I think the easiest, best looking stuff is up surface. Yeah.

04:00

Speaker A

Yeah. That's cool. Oh jeez. I mean, really, all we need is a paner. I chipped some of that stuff off the back. And now I'm going to pan it just to see if there's any color in it.

04:19

Speaker A

If it's wildly rich, we'll see gold in here. But if I don't get gold, I'm not too discouraged. It's an easy quick way to find out if we got some good color.

04:29

Speaker A

Oh no. Rookie. Well, I just panned this down. I didn't see any gold, which is not the end of the world, right? One pan of a little bit of stuff doesn't break my heart. The goal is to find real gold.

04:45

Speaker A

And we're just going to look around in a bunch of different places today and see if we can do that.

04:50

Speaker A

Yeah. There's old hand steel that was sitting right here. And right next to it, old gold pan.

04:56

Speaker A

Oh, wow. There. What we got? Gold pan. Gold pan. I haven't heard of a gold pan being a silver mine. So, I think Jason said he's never heard of a silver pan before.

05:15

Speaker A

Yep. I've heard of a silver spoon, but not a silver pan. So, maybe, uh, maybe there's more here than I thought.

05:22

Speaker A

Maybe. So, it's a really good sign to me that they did some stooping here because that means production. A lot of times with these old prospects back in the 1850s, 60s, 70s, the workings were their drill hole.

05:37

Speaker A

They were just looking for stuff underground. And if you go in even hundreds and hundreds of feet of workings, if there's no stoops, there was no real production. So, having underground workings, they were chasing stuff. But then seeing these stoops, it

05:51

Speaker A

means they produced tens or hundreds of tons of ore that they took somewhere and milled. But that's a really good sign that this mine produced in the past.

06:20

Speaker A

Oh, a little bit right there. Yeah. I've never seen prospecting with an L tech before.

06:32

Speaker A

Galena. Yeah. Straight galena. That's a nice chunk. Wow. Look at that. That's not even all of it.

06:48

Speaker A

So, in here in the fan, you can see that shiny stuff. That's galena, which can contain silver. And my last time in here did contain silver. So, going to keep chipping this out. You can see it's right kind of at the intersection

07:06

Speaker A

between the quartz and the not quartz. So, that's what we're looking for. That shiny stuff right there.

07:28

Speaker A

So you have your galena, iron oxides, and then this is also most likely an iron oxide, but it kind of has a purple hue to it. Hue is the right word, but has kind of a purple tinge to it. And at one

07:41

Speaker A

of the mines he has where those galena, that purple stuff was loaded with gold as well. So, I'm just noticing similarities.

07:52

Speaker A

There's this little trail just above the claim. And I love trying to put myself in the shoes of the miners that were out here, you know, 100 years ago. It just helps contextualize the black and white photos that I see,

08:06

Speaker A

all the newspaper articles that I read. And it's hard to kind of encapsulate the feeling of the prospector coming out here with a pickaxe, and, you know, just believing that with a little bit more hard work and searching that he could

08:20

Speaker A

have a better life for him and his family. It's something that I feel you kind of need to get out here and do a little bit to feel. And I feel like that spirit is kind of what settled the west.

08:31

Speaker A

It's what settled Sarra Gordo, the town that I live in that I love so much. It's also kind of the spirit of the country.

08:38

Speaker A

You know that I think that if you go out and you do hard work, then you'll be rewarded. And I think it's a spirit that is a little bit lost these days.

08:48

Speaker A

Certainly the mining act no longer feels like that with all the giant companies that exploit it. It's also just not as prevalent in the culture these days.

08:58

Speaker A

There's something about coming out here, working hard, and hopefully being rewarded that taps into something very human that I like a lot. And so, we're getting the ore out now. Obviously, I have no idea what that ore contains. That's what the

09:14

Speaker A

assay part will come to be, but feel like we're putting in the work right now. And, you know, we'll see if that's rewarded. I see some sparkly stuff. Oh yeah, look at all that.

09:25

Speaker A

Yeah, you got a whole chunk right here. Oh yeah, there's more underneath. Oh yeah, there's some shiny stuff. Well, we just realized a couple things. So this stuff kind of looks like black mold is actually all galena and it's a solid galena. It's so

09:43

Speaker A

glittery and this stuff weighs so much. And then up there, Harry saw a little seam.

09:56

Speaker A

Oh, that's a nice big piece. Oh, yeah. Wow. Wow. Nice. There you go, buddy.

10:10

Speaker A

Crazy. That's so heavy. It's so heavy. Look at that. It's like a slab of galena. I've never seen it like that.

10:22

Speaker A

Well, I think that we had a chance to prospect some amazing ore. It looks real.

10:28

Speaker A

Yeah. But you don't know until you start running it. But it looks really good.

10:32

Speaker A

So, it's promising. Yeah. And then the galina you're finding and the color of the galina. There's, you know, a chance it might be more than just lead and zinc and silver. Maybe there's some gold in there. We'll see.

10:43

Speaker A

We'll see. We found some great mineralization. Galina for sure. My hope is that there's gold either in the quartz with the Galina or in all that oxidized red stuff. Um but yeah, I think you got a really cool mine and I got a lot lot

11:00

Speaker A

more stuff to do here. Yeah, there's some really cool stuff. So today is the day I am taking my ore a few hours away to Harry's milling operation to hopefully get closer to seeing gold from this claim. And I feel

11:21

Speaker A

like a prospector back in the day waiting to see the results. You know, there's something about human nature that likes a little bit of uncertainty.

11:31

Speaker A

I feel like that's why people like gambling. And this feels a little bit like gambling, but it is going to be very hot over in 29 Palms where Harry is. And that's why luckily I have Element with me. This

11:50

Speaker A

is an electrolyte mix that's just sodium, potassium, magnesium. Doesn't have any of that other crap that a lot of the sports drinks have in it. It comes in these little sticks. And all you do is take one of these, put it in a

12:02

Speaker A

water bottle, shake it up, and you're good to go. And I have been bringing Element with me everywhere over the past 6 years on hikes, on mine explorations, and now on milling adventures, and it's amazing. It saves you from the

12:16

Speaker A

dehydration, headaches, the cramps, and all of that. So, if you're looking for an electrolyte mix, I hope you check out Element. They're giving away an eight sample pack of their best flavors with any purchase. All you have to do is use

12:29

Speaker A

the code Brent at checkout or go to drinkleelement.com/brent. So drinklnt.com/brent and you'll get that deal. It's great.

12:41

Speaker A

I'm excited. Let's hit the road. What you're looking at is is a lot of work. Uh our team did all kinds of crazy things. We went to we went to Nevada. We got conveyors that didn't work. We bought old equipment. We just kind of

13:09

Speaker A

made it all work. And then we got to We have some on loan. Yeah, we have some on loan. And we got to a certain point where uh working with Jason, he, you know, was talking about our system. He's like, "You know, you

13:20

Speaker A

probably should change some things." Because we were trying to make decisions on a system that wasn't really grinding the orb properly. So, we have a system now that can do that.

13:31

Speaker A

This is our jaw crusher. This thing is older than all of us, but we put together.

13:36

Speaker A

I didn't I saw the hopper at first. That's Yeah. This is the Franken Hopper. Yeah.

13:40

Speaker A

Um, come on over here. This is a 1954 inline 6 Chevy. Uh the owner of this machine put it together and and it it runs wonderfully when it wants to start. Um we need to replace the flywheel, but other than that, it it

14:01

Speaker A

runs great. Runs this jaw crusher 5 ton an hour uh more than we need for this system. We have two conveyors. We run it into a surge hopper here. So, we'll jot crush. We'll get the hopper loaded with

14:12

Speaker A

our our test door and then we'll run it through the second part of the system.

14:16

Speaker A

This is the uh one ton an hour hammer mill. There's I believe 20 hammers in there. U they're they're massive and they take 3/4 in rock and turn it into dust pretty much.

14:31

Speaker A

And then this is our 1 ton an hour shaker table. Uh you've probably seen this before on Jason's stuff. We we love this thing. We've we've run some cons on it. We run some hard rock on it and it

14:42

Speaker A

does what it says it's supposed to. It puts all the gold over here and then puts all the waste on the back side of the table. Very basic. We're going to take big rocks there, put them into that. That's going to make them smaller

14:53

Speaker A

rocks. Going to go up here. Come over here down to sand. Yep. Sand will go on the table. Gold will get shimmyed over to the far side of this table.

15:06

Speaker A

That's correct. and go into one of these collection situations. That's right. Heat. Heat. All right. So, the last of the rocks dropped in the hopper. The last of them are up there, and they're going to drop down here. We're going to let it do its thing

16:16

Speaker A

for a little bit. And then after all that, we're going to have our concentrates and we'll see what's in there.

16:29

Speaker A

Getting every little speck out here. So, we just brushed the table down and this helps us get all the material off the table faster. You can see there's still a little bit on the table here.

16:45

Speaker A

And we've created a number three concentrate which is going to be the lower weights. So like the specific gravity of gold is extremely high.

16:51

Speaker A

Galina is about half that. And then all the other stuff's going to go here. So this is also your your your Galina sulfide, but it's going to be mixed with a lot of um waste rock and other stuff, but it

17:05

Speaker A

was just heavy enough to make it here, but not heavy or not light enough to get thrown off the table. So now we have what's called the number two.

17:15

Speaker A

And the number two concentrate is not as heavy as gold. This would be considered all the stuff that's like half the specific gravity. Gold. I think gold's like 17 or 18, something like that. This would be like 9 10 on this

17:30

Speaker A

specific gravity. There'll be some gold in here. Fine stuff. Or if it's a weird shape and it rolls off the table, the safety groove will put it into here. And then you have your number one concentrate. And this is where the

17:42

Speaker A

heaviest of the heavies go. And so this table is designed to set up to where you can only put gold in here or you can put in all the stuff in between the mid midweight and then gold. So for you,

17:54

Speaker A

since you have a Galina ore, we've chosen to put all of it in here. And it's ultra fine. This is all your heavies. Um no quartz. So this is just all going to be sulfides and metal.

18:04

Speaker A

Well, this was uh incredibly smooth. You guys have quite the operation going on here.

18:09

Speaker A

Normally doesn't go like this. You You come with a bunch of rocks and some buckets. Now you're going to leave with empty buckets. A number one, number two, and your number threes.

18:18

Speaker A

All right. And that's it. To visualize, all this was piled with buckets of ore.

18:23

Speaker A

And those buckets are now empty. And this is what we got. Just these three.

18:29

Speaker A

And that's about a quarter full. So, we lost a lot of waste, but hopefully we got the good stuff right there. And now we got to get an assay to figure out really exactly what's in these things.

18:41

Speaker A

But we're getting closer. So now I am back at Sarah Gordo with all of my concentrates, my number one, my number two, and my number threes. And now it is time to determine how much, if any, gold, silver, and otherwise are in

19:03

Speaker A

these. And typically I've done that up here at Sarra Gordo using a accupulation process where you heat up some of this and you get rid of everything that isn't the precious metals. This time I'm going to send it to a lab. We're going to try

19:17

Speaker A

to get very accurate. And so I'm going to take a bit of the number one, a bit of number two, and a bit of number three and send it off to a lab for a fire assay, which has been done for

19:27

Speaker A

centuries. And in there, they're going to get rid of everything that isn't gold or silver and report the results back.

19:35

Speaker A

And to do this accurately, I am going to spread out my number one, my number two, and number three into a big patch, mix it up really good, quarter it, then quarter it again. So that way I don't

19:46

Speaker A

get a hot pocket in there or I don't miss any of the gold. So, let's lay all this out, bag it up, send it in, and then I should get some results here shortly.

20:17

Speaker A

All right. So, after all that prospecting, mining, and milling, and moving all around, I have my results.

20:26

Speaker A

And in this email should show whether or not the experts were able to help me find gold. And pretty much every fortune and bankruptcy in the Wild West came down to report similar to this. And so I am a little nervous. You know, a year

20:43

Speaker A

ago, an XRF gun said that I had no gold. So this time I went old school. I went fire assay. And so without further ado, let's look at what we got. So we go down a lot of different minerals,

21:02

Speaker A

but what we're looking for is AU. We got a little gold. AU is gold. And it shows that for concentrate number one, there is 13.3 troy ounces per ton, which would be absolutely bonanza grade if that was the

21:28

Speaker A

raw ore. That's the concentrate, unfortunately. But we even got some gold and concentrate two and even in three, which is pretty sweet. For silver, 15.5 troy ounces for concentrate one.

21:43

Speaker A

This is going to be greatly under reportported because before I sent it to the mill, I hand took out all the chunks of galina that I could see that looked really pretty. So, these are just the ones that survive. So, that should be

21:54

Speaker A

way, way, way higher. But, there's also 15.5 troy ounces of silver per ton. Now, these are all in tons. And I started off with a,000 pounds of raw rock. So, I am going to need to do some math to

22:11

Speaker A

determine both how much gold my raw ore has per ton and how much actual gold I ended up with in my concentrates. So, I will be right back.

22:31

Speaker A

All right, to save you all of that, here is the rough of it. I started off with about 1,000 lb of rock. And out of that, I got.1 troy ounces of gold, which is worth about $400 today when I probably spent

22:47

Speaker A

more on that on gas. But per ton, that's double. So, we're at 0.2. And inevitably, I probably lost some on the table and elsewhere. So, I would be comfortable saying that this ore runs about a/4 of an ounce of gold per ton.

23:03

Speaker A

And there are operating mines around the world with real payrolls, real investors, real employees that run on a quarter ounce of gold and less. And the silver I had about 2/3 of an ounce, but again, it's greatly under reportported

23:19

Speaker A

cuz I took out all the Galina. So, let's say that I ended up with, I don't know, $20 worth of silver. And so, in total, I may have had $420 worth of precious metals. um through all of that effort. But obviously the name

23:35

Speaker A

of the game in this is volume. You know, it's not that much more work to run four tons of rock through Harry's refining equipment than it was to run one. And so then I would have an ounce of gold. And

23:45

Speaker A

suddenly that's thousands of dollars and it makes it a little bit more worthwhile. And then if you can imagine if I had a mill right there on site, then I'm not spending all that money traveling to Harry's then even better.

23:57

Speaker A

Then if I could get it all the way down into pure gold right on site, even better. Then if I could hire a minor or two to help me get out even more ore every day, suddenly I'm really rolling.

24:08

Speaker A

Then I need housing for them. Then I need restaurants. And then suddenly, you can see how a town like Sarah Gordo comes to be. And that was kind of my hope from the beginning of this video and the last one about this is just to

24:24

Speaker A

try to put myself in the shoes of the miners that came here before me. You know, I spent a lot of time over the past six years looking at old photos and old research reports about mines and it

24:35

Speaker A

talks about how far back they went. It talks about the amount of ore they processed, the amount of slag they had.

24:43

Speaker A

And eventually history can just feel like a bunch of numbers and unknown people. And in this case, I kind of got to feel what the minor felt like in towns like this. You know, all of these towns started with some person holding a rock

25:02

Speaker A

and wondering what's inside. And it kind of got me into the mode where I could understand where you could convince yourself to just go another 100 feet.

25:12

Speaker A

just go another 200 feet. Just stay up here at Sarrao for another decade. Really try to find that ore because it always feels like everything's going to change with the next rock. And that's kind of the feeling that I really got

25:26

Speaker A

from this. And so I appreciate you guys coming along on this adventure with me.

25:31

Speaker A

Um, as always, uh, I hope you get out there and experience some of this yourselves. Again, if you're interested in filing the claim, check out my last video. And until next time, I hope you guys have an amazing week and I'll see

25:44

Speaker A

you guys then.

Topics: gold mining Mining Act of 1872 public land claim silver ore galena fire assay prospecting Mount Baker Mining old mining methods small scale mining


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