Mining, Milling, and Smelting 1500+ Pounds of Gold Ore! Was It Worth It??

What started as a simple problem — too many heavy buckets and one brutal hill — turned into a full mine-to-metal gold recovery run. Instead of carrying ore by hand from the underground workings, we built a homemade haulage system right at the mine: an aerial tram down to the truck, plus a wooden rail line running from the working area up to the portal. With 2x4 rails, cross ties, rope, a small sled/cart, and a few field repairs along the way, we turned a rough hillside haul into a working miniature mine transport system. Once the rail was in, we headed underground into the ridge zone of the vein and started hand-mucking loose quartz ore off the floor. This was not just waste rock. A lot of the material showed strong sulfide mineralization, with heavy metallic blobs running through the quartz — exactly the kind of ore worth saving. Bucket by bucket, we loaded the material, pulled it up the wooden rail, sent it out through the portal, and dropped it down the tram to the truck. By the end of the haul, we had two big bags of ore back at the shop — roughly 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of mostly quartz vein material with very little wall rock dilution. Then the real test began: was this ore actually carrying good values, or did it just look good underground? We ran the material through the full processing system, starting with the hopper and jaw crusher, then feeding it into the 16x12 hammer mill and across the shaker table. Before the run, we changed the hammer mill hammers, cleaned out the screen area, and made sure not to throw away any trapped material that could be hiding coarse gold. Every step mattered, because with hard rock ore, the gold can be locked up in places you do not want to overlook. The shaker table pulled off the high-grade concentrates, which were then panned down, dried, cleaned with a magnet, mixed with flux, and smelted in a crucible. After the pour, the metal cone was cupelled to burn off and absorb the base metals, leaving behind the precious metal button. The final result: just shy of 16 grams from roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of a ton of ore — around 20 grams per ton. That is a strong enough result to make this vein worth another trip. This video follows the entire hard rock mining process from underground ore recovery to homemade mine haulage, crushing, concentrating, smelting, cupellation, and the final gold button. It is one thing to see mineralized quartz in the mine. It is another thing to crush it, process it, fire it, and find out what it really holds. Check out our Shopify and eBay stores for ore, specimens, cabochons, and more from our mines: Shopify: https://mbmmllc.myshopify.com/ eBay: https://www.ebay.com/usr/mtbakerminingandmetals For more info please email or call: Email: info@MBMMLLC.com Phone: 360-595-4445 Website: http://www.mbmmllc.com/ Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/MBMMLLC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MBMMLLC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mbmmllc/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MBMMLLC