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I want to start a mining operation and I need help figuring out what the best way to get off the ground is with limited starting capital and only a modicum of technical know-how.
Normally, this would be a pie-in-the-sky nonsense dream, but I have an unusual set of circumstances. I have inherited a 400-acre mountain property which was the site of an old mine about 100 years ago. That mine was started by my great^4 grandfather, but it died in the fuel-rationing of the World Wars.
My father attempted to start a new operation, but a lack of business-acumen, determination, and time prevented him from doing so.
The property itself is loaded. The 20th century operation was attempting to mine copper, not realizing the immense mineral wealth they were casting aside as refuse. Of particular interest to me are two things:
There is a particular mineral vein (about a 100ish feet wide, around 1000 deep) that tests show containing several ounces per ton of gold, an obscenely dense amount. However, this gold is AuO2, or gold oxide. I’d you’re thinking “gold doesn’t oxidize!” you would be mostly right. AuO2 has been made in labs, but I can’t find much info on it. A PhD student from a local college went and did a paper about it, but had few answers. No idea if it complicates extraction at all.
There is another deposit that tests show as containing around a half an ounce per ton of Rubidium. For those who don’t know, rubidium is a rare-earth metal used in many electronics which the US is currently 100% reliant on imports from China for. It is worth somewhere in the ballpark of $100 per gram.
It’s definitely an opportunity, but getting off the ground will be difficult with me having no idea what I’m doing. My circumstances are as follows:
Bank loans are usable, but the property must never be used as collateral.
I currently make $45,000/year in a low COL area, and don’t pay rent as I live in an RV on the property. I work 45 hours/week
I have a friend who inherited a fortune and is willing to bankroll me effectively for free but only if I have clear, well defined checkpoints and goals.
I need help figuring out where to start. I messed around with acid leaching in high school, and I’ve looked into making an arc-welder furnace, but I’m somewhat lost as to what the extraction process should even look like, or where I should start. I’m just rather scattered.
If anyone here can help, I’d greatly appreciate it. If there’s any interest, I can post mineral tests.
Mt. Baker Mining and Metal. I have no idea if they're any good but they sell machinery and the guy has a YouTube presence doing all kinds of mining. He had a similar story to yours, where his dad owned some property that was mined.
The machinery is mills and shaker tables, so the high density ore moves along the table while the lie density rock gets flushed across the table. The YouTube content is also smelting gold with flux, mostly. The mill/table combo would recover whatever your gold oxide is, as long as it's denser than the rest. It will be mixed with copper and other metals.
If you want to watch someone refine gold from scrap, or what you'd be doing with the best off of the the table, Sreetips on YouTube has years of videos of basement precious metal recovery and refining. He uses the acid methods you mentioned, where the gold is inquarted with silver or copper, then the base metals dissolved away with nitric acid, leaving the gold behind which is the recovery. The refining is when he then dissolves the remaining gold in aqua regia, precipitating out lead and filtering, then precipitating out gold with sodium metabisulfite. He also runs a silver cell, where he grows pure silver crystals.
I honestly have no idea if this works with gold oxide. If not, I can't imagine a torch would have any trouble driving off the oxygen and melting the gold, especially with flux. Between the two of them I think you have a good start. Your friend would be out tens of thousands of dollars for the equipment, think a tractor or new vehicle. Some more for glassware and reagents if you're doing it all yourself. And then you'll be left with .999 gold which you sell at market rate.
https://mbmmllc.com/
https://youtube.com/@mbmmllc
https://youtube.com/@sreetips
Welcome to The Motte.
This is exactly the type of thing I’m hoping to do, thank you. I’ll dive into it.
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