Very interesting stuff on this link.
First let me say Hi to everyone as I am new to the forum but I am very old to diamond mining.

In my experience diamonds behave much differently than gold when it is washed away from the source material (Alluvial diamonds)

The old prospectors would and did find the odd diamond here and there but a sluice is not the right way to find diamonds. You need a diamond washing plant, they can be small or big depending on your budget.
The most efficient diamond plant is the 14 foot washing plant. Many of them are build to be a mobile unit that can be towed behind a truck or a serious 4 x 4.

The 14 foot pan is capable of washing many tons of gravel per day and you can sort the heavy concentrates almost every 15 minutes. You will need a excavator to pile the alluvial gravel onto a stock pile and a front end loader to pick the gravel up and feed it directly into the wash pan. No need to feed slowly since the pan feeds itself with buckets on a conveyor belt, almost like the old water wheels were powered. Similar concept.

Anyway if you can afford to setup this kind of operation you will need to make sure your tests are done in controlled circumstances I suggest you test the pan properly before you go into production.
The speed with witch the pan sorting arms turn must be very specific the consistency of the water and soil sludge must be %100 correct in order to push the diamonds out to the edge of the pan. If it turns too fast or too slow you will loose diamonds. So experience is the key, you must know how to tap the concentrates into a bucket (Old fashioned Milking bucket) and when to tap the concentrates out of the pan.

Once all this is done and you have your four to six buckets full of concentrate you have to classify and sort. Here we use a half a 44 gallon drum, and four diamond sieves about 20 inches across from large to small. Pour one bucket at a time into the top sieves make sure they are properly stacked on top of each other and the drum is filled almost to the top with water. Then you classify the stones the same way as you would gold bearing gravel. With diamonds it is slightly different because they are bigger than gold flakes. So you carefully scan the rocks for any diamonds. They can be any color so I always hold the top two sieves under a Blue light (Ultraviolet) All diamonds are florescent and they show up blue in color blue so they are very easy to spot.

The third sieve is usually where the diamonds are, up to three carats in size will be in this pan. This one you shake under water and rotate the pan about 15 degrees every time you shake it, usually about ten times this will rotate the light gravel to the outside of the sieve and the heavy stones will be in the center of the sieve if you do it right the black sand/stones will form a circle in the middle of the sieve.

Now you have to turn the sieve over onto the sorting table (In the shade) with one swift move, then drop the sieve a few times onto the sort table to make sure everything is out. Then comes the FUN part. I use a small 4 inch builders plaster trowel to separate and screen the concentrates. But usually the diamonds are lying on the top of the concentrates and they are easy to spot if you know what to look for.... just look for the bright one of a kind shine! I always run the ultra violet light over the rest of the wastes just in case, no one is perfect!
Well I hope this helps you a little in your prospecting endeavors.
DD

after checking my wifes expensive wedding with my flo. light not all of them glowed. i got scared!! then i was told that not all diamonds were florecent. so what is it? glow or not to glow?? long wave or short wave to check them out?

No need to panic!

There may be confusion with the energy source being used to “light up” the diamond crystal. All diamonds will respond to x-ray but only one in seven (my experience...not scientific) will fluoresce under black light.

A Sortex x-ray machine was used briefly at the Kelsey Lake Diamond Mine (at the border of Colorado and Wyoming) just before it was forced to close after the landowner (Union Pacific Railroad) filed suit for mineral trespassing in federal court in the late 90’s. Many stones were recovered from the old tailings in early testing of this machine. It is my understanding that the Sortex machine was sold to a diamond interest in South America and was not used to a great extent in mining production due to the lawsuit.

If one uses a black light in the field for prospecting, it may be possible to identify some diamonds but many, many stones will be left behind. In the Stateline Mining District, one would want to use additional caution as black lights at night will attract numerous mosquitoes. There have been problems with West Nile virus in mosquitoes across Larimer County, Colorado. I would suggest using strong mosquito repellent, even if you aren’t using black lights after dark.

ASTROBLEME

Hi,
I did say I only use the light after I sorted the concentrate.. However here is another link explaining the question.
http://www.diamondhelpers.com/fivesteps/4-fluorescence.shtml
So if I missed any that do.. I can get them!
DD

thanks for the link Digger!

Diamond Digger posted this in the Off Topic forum under "Halo All Prospectors" topic. I found it very interesting since one of my first sampling efforts recovered a stone much like he was describing...

Hi,
Your questions are interesting. But you should never worry too much about how it got to the surface just that it is there!
I am not a Geologist but I held many pieces of Kimberlite in my hands and I sure know what to look for and how to spot it.
Garnets is the first indicator you want to see small dark purple ones. Then Feldspar, ilminite etc they are good indicators but a tip I can give you is to look for the pointer stone.... (Spits in the corner ) It is a dirty white stone small usually around 5-10 mil big looks like two separate stones joined by a dirty brown band... in any direction, hence dirty stone. The lore is you will always find a diamond right next to one of them. At first I thought it a joke so the old man took me into the field with a test sieve and we spend the day looking for dead gravel. This is gravel that does not bear diamonds. We did find some and it looked OK from afar but close up the indicators were gone. On the way back we did a quick hand wash of some promising samples and found a small .3ct diamond next to you guessed it.... a dirty stone!
Have fun.
DD


Here is a photo of the brown and white banded stone I recovered on my very first sampling effort for diamonds several years ago. After reading DD's post, I remembered the odd brown and white rock so I went back into my old samples and put together this picture to share...



The stone under the tweezers is the sharp edged fragment that was contained in the lake sediments that formed inside the granite walls surrounding my first kimberlite pipe discovery at the Stateline Mining District. I imagine that a similar sample that had eroded out of a pipe, after tumbling in a stream for some distance, it would look like the white and brown banded stone DD talks about. If you come across a sample like this in the Stateline Mining District, it is a "very good indicator" in my opinion.

DD, do you have any photos of the pointer stones?

Johnny

Johnny,
Well yeah it looks like the same rock but once washed a little down a stream its a dirty old bugger and no idea why, you find one of them the diamond will be next to it.

Unfortunately I have no video or pictures of mining. Just never thought I will want any, how sad is that?

I am designing a new diamond wash plant at the moment.
So far it looks quite exciting so we shall see how it works once I get it going. I have incorporated a gold separation unit so if any gold comes into the plant it ain't going out thats for sure.
Have a good one.
DD

Thanks DD,

Have a Happy New Year!

And a very Happy new year to you too!
May your only worries be where to invest all your money!
DD

Gents,
I have seen many video's and have done lots of research piles and piles of documents and files under my frustrated belt LOL. I am dying to get to the USA with my diamond mining knowledge and to build a proper diamond wash pan (Much Different than a gold wash plant)
There is just so much potential to mine diamonds.... sigh.... One riverbed produced a 7ct white stone that alone will pay for all my expenses building the plant! Massive untapped resources.
It is so frustrating.
So if anyone of you guys are up for a challenge get hold of me.
DD

the way the ecconomy is right now, id be afraid to start up anything! wacoenviromentalists are telling our gubermint what todo and when todo it despit what our federal laws say we can do!

LOL so you have Eco-hippies as well; they are everywhere!
But mining alluvial diamonds is the cure for a bad personal economy. It is the only business I have ever been in where the turn of a sieve can hold $100 000 in sparklers.... no other business has that kind of profit potential.
Only one thing, I will bring all my knowledge build the plant set it up build a few more to sell on and get the money back (lol) train them lads to use it but this time I want a small share in the company.
Not making another fella rich and get nothing myself!
Anyway diamond mining is very Eco-hippy positive.. no mercury no chemicals of any sort nada nothing to pollute the environment. So they will have a tough time finding fault... but give them credit they try!
DD

eco-hippy positive??? just wait untill you hit the good ole American shores and find out how popular youd be with them when they find out you want to dig into "mother earth"!! they are against any form of mining,logging,ranching (grazing rights) and if you dont fit into "theyre" ideal setting, your bad for "mother earth"! do some research on earth first!

Yeah.. but then Women are bad for you as well but we still love them LOL
So not all Bad things are bad hehehehe
DD

The law protects both the miner and the resource. If an individual miner or a mining company cannot comply with the law, they cannot do business. Pretty simple concept in my opinion.

I grew up in coal camps where a company would post a small bond, tear up everything that stood in the way of getting out the coal by strip mining and then...surprise after they cashed the checks for the production...go out of business and let the bond cover the mess. Well, the bonding was set so low that reclamation couldn't be funded so the taxpayer footed the bill. I saw the same trucks with the same drivers change their names from "Mining Company" to "Reclamation Company" and further profit from their earlier efforts!

If the individual or company cannot comply with modern mining laws, they will not get the permits needed to operate. The government saw the same thing I did growing up...too many people jumping their bonds and walking away to let everyone else pay for their destruction.

Good mining plans will get approved with an adequate bonding fund to assure proper reclamation.

ASTROBLEME