09/01/2026
I posted a few pictures of some quality gold ore showing lots of mineralization, chalcopyrite, pyrite, sulfides, and a tiny bit of free-mill gold.
This ore has some free-mill gold, but for the most part the gold needs to be liberated from the sulfides. It’s like the sulfide minerals are trapping even smaller gold particles within and between the mineral grains.
The gold isn’t necessarily chemically bonded to the other minerals, but can be physically locked inside them. Since the gold is so small, it becomes very difficult to recover.
The heavy sulfides and other heavy minerals make panning this stuff pretty much useless. So largely, this type of ore needs to be broken down and the sulfides oxidized, either with controlled heat or other processing methods. That breaks down the sulfide minerals and helps expose the tiny gold particles.
From there, the gold can be recovered through further concentration and smelting, or some operations use chemical leaching to dissolve the gold into solution, recover it back out, and eventually smelt or refine it.
The hard part is doing this stuff on a small scale. You end up with s**t you really don’t want to deal with. Lead, arsenic, and other nasty stuff can be present depending on the ore.
You don’t want to mess with that unless you’re educated on what you’re working with and have a real plan to handle and dispose of anything toxic the proper way.
