A Chain Mill is a total amateur’s tool for “crushing or grinding” rock. It is a set of chains attached directly at the end of a 1700+ RPM motor. The chain will beat your rock to bug-dust, pulverise it, and any gold it might contain, into a size fraction so fine you will not be about to recover it using gravity equipment. That fine gold with not pan, not gold cube or sluice out. You lost the gold because the chain mill pulverised it.
You can be sure you are over crushing when you see a large dust cloud coming out your chain mill. Look here, this is not smoke!
For example, look at these poor miners, having purchased $1000s of dollars in small mining equipment: drill, trommel, gold cube and a freaking chain mill. See the disappointment when the fine no gold and think the are in a low grade zone of their mine.
Using the dumb hammer that a chain mill is to crush and grind rock will likely give you a false negative. This means your find no gold when you thought there would be gold; but, you don’t know for sure since the chain mill pulveriser disallowed you from recovering that gold by turning it into flour gold.
Therefore: if you are using a chain mill and you “find no gold”, it does not mean there is no gold.
Here is an alternative to the low cost chain hammer mill. A simple and low cost small jaw crusher. As you will see in the 2 videos, rock miner Dan Hurd was able to crush gold rock practically dustless and found gold when he what not expecting to find any gold. It easily recovered ‘flat gold flakes’ in his gold pan. Jaw crushing prevents pulverising of the thin or wire gold and facilitates its recovery.
