tungstun

[gubelube]

hey all, anyone familiar with tungstun, or whatever its called. my dad has like 160 acres up erskine creek , in lake isabella ca. it has old minning sites and used to be small houses for miners , so on. its said tungstun was mined there. just curious. id like to find someone who knows about it and see if its worth starting a small operation. we have a backhoe and im sure we could dig up the mountain. my dad lets me do what i want. and im sure if he got a share hed be happy lol. just curious if this kind of stuff is worth the effort. supposedly alot of tungstun is there.not sure what it sells for, but gotta be worth something once i figure out what it is and how to get it.

john

[Bunk]

hey all, anyone familiar with tungstun, or whatever its called. my dad has like 160 acres up erskine creek , in lake isabella ca. it has old minning sites and used to be small houses for miners , so on. its said tungstun was mined there. just curious. id like to find someone who knows about it and see if its worth starting a small operation. we have a backhoe and im sure we could dig up the mountain. my dad lets me do what i want. and im sure if he got a share hed be happy lol. just curious if this kind of stuff is worth the effort. supposedly alot of tungstun is there.not sure what it sells for, but gotta be worth something once i figure out what it is and how to get it.

john

I am pretty sure, ore of tungstun will be floresicent with a black light. It could be a lot of fun to prospect that property with a black light at night! The old timers used to pick up nodules of tungstun in the desert around Randsberg CA.

As for value, there was a store owner out there that was paying $4.25 a puond for the "spuds" during WW1, so I would think they would be more valuble in this day and age, but I don't know for sure.

Bunk

[Reno Chris]

The ore on your dad's property is the mineral Scheelite, a tungsten mineral - like Bunk says, it fluoreces under a black light. Its not a simple thing to capture out of the ore, processing the ore would probably be far more expensive than you would imagine, and there are no independent tungsten mills out there to buy your ore as there once were 80 years ago. You will find that there may be someone who would buy small lots of tungsten concentrates from you, but I'd expect buyers to be few and they'd want to make a good profit on every ton of your cons they handled.

My guess, no it would not be worth it.

[nvchris]

Tungsten info

[Bunk]

Tungsten info

Looks like most of the production comes from China.

Anyone have any pics of scheelite under a black light?

Bunk

[dutch john]

gubelube... to be brief... Scheelite is the only tungsten mineral that floresces under a shortwave lamp..It's florescent color varies due to molydenum as an impurity...

If the tungsten is scheelite; it can be prospected for its flourescence... It can occur as both hardrock and placer. If as a placer, since it has a specific gravity around "6" it can be concentrated by simply using a small portable dry washer as used in desert gold placer mining. Then the dry washer concentrates can be further worked by panning.

Over the past 50 years ago I have been off and on involved in both floating and tableing scheelite. Also drilling for it near Carson City. Tableing it at Oreana near Lovelock; Mount Wheeler and Lacawanna near Ely.

Short wave black lamps are not that expensive... "Sandtrap" may still have one I gave him years ago... There is still small scale mining for scheelite at Atolia (Stringer) and "Sandtrap" is familiar with this...

[adam]

Short wave black lamps are not that expensive...

Maybe back then they were not expensive ,but nowadays you can plan on spending 250 on up for a good short wave lamp. Idealy you will want a multi use lamp with long wave & short wave combined.

So Gubelube, whats the deal ? you`ve given up on gold ,and now you want to mine Tungsten? BTW, the Tungsten mines I know about here in southern Arizona carry Gold. You may try placering below the mines to check for gold content..

[gubelube]

Maybe back then they were not expensive ,but nowadays you can plan on spending 250 on up for a good short wave lamp. Idealy you will want a multi use lamp with long wave & short wave combined.

So Gubelube, whats the deal ? you`ve given up on gold ,and now you want to mine Tungsten? BTW, the Tungsten mines I know about here in southern Arizona carry Gold. You may try placering below the mines to check for gold content..

no, never give up on gold. i just got me a gpx 5000 few weeks ago. im just getting started. but we have had this property for quite awhile and yes gold also is mined there in the past. found some small specks in the creek also. even dredged some of it. there are quite a few mines around on the place. some said to be gold. i was just curious as this property belongs to us. we have all mineral rites. and we have a backhoe. just thought id learn some about it. let my dad dig up the mountain and once in awhile go prospect some tungsten. just was seeing if it was worth the trouble. my dad is retired, and he has a mountain thats all quartz. when i told him gold was associated with quartz, he tore the whole maountain apart. i need to take my detectors up there. was some old cabins there at one time. lots of jusk and trash. never know whats there. found an old bone knife that was made by some company, lost it and i can remember it was dated in late 1890s or something like that.i think my dad has it. might be all kinds of stuff there. i usually just go up there and bow hunt.never really gave the rest much thought.since keysville is across the lake ive always been dredging the kern river. so i didnt really do much on the property.was too busy in the keysville area.anyways, thanks all. maybe ill find someone willing to go up there and have a look around with me and see what we have. someone with knowledge and wouldnt mind checking it out or even tearing up the mountain and sifting through it.maybe we can just dig up some hills and spread it out, ant hit it with that gpx 5000 to see whats commin out.lol. what i really need is someone like mr staright to come look at the place and see if maybe there is some prospects for valuble minerals there. it wouldnt take much to dig out a mountain and sample it. maybe do some pushes and detect it.i just dont know alot about lode mining so i wouldnt know where to start.if i had someone with experience that would look over the land and say hey, right there is where id expect gold to be, id have dad rip it up and spread it out. but it have to be someone who knows alot about the minerals there and so on. my dad likes tearing up the dirt. always trying to get me to come up and detect the dirt. but i have never found anything rally on the net for research showing where the gold was mined.who knows. might be a motherlode under one of them hills.but where. dont wanna flatten all of it out unless were getting something worth it. but it would be fun just to flatten out one mountain and see what we find.so if anyone is real familiar with this stuff, where to find it, regardles tungsten or gold. let me know. we can always go check it out. even do some relic hunting around the old home sites.i just dont know where to start.

john

[rexb]

There was a scheelite tungsten mine near a gold placer I have been to a few times. I heard that prices fell quite a bit after WWII. It hasn't been mined since then, its a hard heavy metal. Tungsten is used in a lot of high temperature applications.