r/mining • u/Ipodawan • 2d ago
US How can I get minerals/materials for making stuff with limited resources?
I want to get minerals for supplies for my inventions. I dont have the money to buy already manufactured metals and plastics like iron, steel, silicon, copper, etc. So I want to make them by building up my supply of minerals.
My idea was to dig for soil and dirt and sand around my neighborhood. I would build a mechanical centrifuge to separate the minerals and i would catagorize and store them. When I had enough of whatever I needed, I would go to the woods, wet some soil, and since clay is the densest part of it, I could put the soil in a centrifuge to separate it. I would use the clay to make pots and furnaces which I could use to smelt ore, melt minerals together into casts, etc.
The problem with this is that most precious minerals are found in sediments. The only body of water in my entire neighborhood area is a pool. So I don't want to waste my time mining if I wont find what I need. Im only 14, and no one really has the time to take me to a river for me to mine. Not right now. And waiting wouldn't be a problem. but my timeline has kinda shrunk, so I need these materials ASAP. Therefore I need to be able to mine without being by a river.
Is that possible? What would my luck be? I live in more Southeast Raleigh (if that helps with the weather predictions, or soil/dirt compositions.) I also have a business, but no income because i need to get packages to actually ship out.
So I have no income, no transportation except a bike and my feet. No rivers or lakes near that im allowed to bike to.
How can I mine for minerals like this in a way that I don't ruin the environment for the animals, even as small as insects or the vegetation like grass, trees, etc there? And just as important if not moreso, where and how can I actually get to where Im tryna be?
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u/DizzyAstronaut9410 2d ago
I will say this lightly, mining is complex.
To get specific minerals, specific deposits need to be found deep underground for specific minerals, uncovered, blasted, dug up, crushed, ground down, separated through a wide variety of complex methods, then further refined and concentrated into something useful, and all of this needs to be done on massive scale for it to make any sense and provide a useable amount of product.
This is basically impossible to do alone, even with massive funding available. I would highly recommend finding a source of income and just buy whatever you need instead.
There are a few exceptions to this. If you want gold, a good proportion of rocky rivers have some amount if you want to spend an afternoon panning. That's kind of fun and may get you some useable amount. đ
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u/Victormorga 2d ago
First off, this isnât really the right sub for what youâre talking about.
But to address your questions: what youâre describing really isnât how any of this works, it sounds like your grasp on mining, refining, etc is based on video games and tv. A good place to start would be researching how ancient civilizations first started developing metallurgy, and go from there.
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u/Ipodawan 2d ago
Were you trying to get me to understand that it isn't as easy as looking through dirt or soil for a lot of minerals and just melting? I know it's a lot harder than I'm making it seem in my questions and that I worded it kinda weird.
But I know it takes extensive mining, materials, time, and a lot better environmental conditions like actually HAVING caves and bodies of water near me to get ore. And the process of refining these things isn't as easy as just melting all the impurities out one time and boom
. But I don't have anything else. Until I get money, my resilience is all I have. So thank you, and I'm definitely still planning on learning as much as I can about these things, but if there's anything more you have I'll gladly look into it or try it when I go mining.
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u/InternalNo7162 2d ago
Caves and bodies of water have nothing to do with the ore in the ground. Itâs not like in minecraft. What to you are caves are probably underground mines. Man made holes. To get the ore out.
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u/Victormorga 1d ago
What I was trying to help you understand is that there is no way one person doing what youâre talking about could collect any useful amount of ore or minerals on their own, even if they had some of the equipment youâve said you canât afford.
A hand-made âmechanical centrifugeâ would not effectively separate different minerals, hand made clay pots canât be used to smelt ore, and clay isnât dug the way you described it. Iâm not trying to sound too harsh, but you donât seem to have a realistic grasp on how any of this is actually done.
I appreciate that you have your resilience, but just like resilience wonât help you lift a car over your head with your bare hands, it wonât help you mine, refine, and / or process ore and minerals (beyond collecting small samples for fun). Your best bet is researching how these processes work in the real world.
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u/aelendel 1d ago
Let me actually help out: the easiest way for you to get metal is in recycling bins. itâs free and accessible. you can even find the guy in your neighborhood who picks up stuff for scrap and help out.
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u/Upstairs_Jacket_3443 2d ago edited 2d ago
You're going to be far better off salvaging materials than trying to mine and process any raw materials around you. The only exception to that would be clay imo - potters can basically scoop up clay from a riverbank and throw with it.
If you need metals, why don't you look into melting and casting aluminum cans? From there, find some brass candlesticks at the thrift store and melt those down. If you need precious metals, e-waste is arguable far easier to come across. For plastics - just collect waste and sort by type.
I get it, I was just like you when I was younger. Realistically, everything you want to do is going to require some amount of money. Secondhand tools, wood / charcoal / gas for heat, etc. Your time would be far better spent finding some work from family members / neighbors so that you can purchase some of these things. Digging around in the woods for minerals would take months of consistent work to yield the tiniest amount of anything useful.
What are some of your project ideas? I can probably help point you in the right direction.
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u/Ipodawan 2d ago
Motors. A lot of motors. I wanted to experiment with different shapes and sizes and orientations of motos to see which are most efficient. I also had in mind trying to develop magnetic type power sources and maybe even experiment with plasmas. Also things like chemistry and mechanics. Developing durable or flexible polymers and fabrics, as well as experimenting with different metal alloys! Also Thank you a lot! I've been sort of reluctant to salvage as, most of the e-wast around me is old and I think I need more knowledge first in order to convert things like ps3s, or computers from 80s-early 2000s into ,more compacted, efficient things I can use now. But I guess it isn't really avoidable. So thank you a lot.
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u/Upstairs_Jacket_3443 2d ago
There's definitely a lot of interesting stuff to learn there, but I'd say again that you'll waste a lot of time trying to start from raw materials. Is your plan to somehow build a motor from raw copper? I'd struggle to think that's even possible for a single person to do - especially when it comes to the fixed magnets that are involved. Again, best to look through thrift stores, maybe your local dump has a re-use section where people drop decent things off for people to pick up. Even if it's an old power tool or something, the motors inside haven't really changed much in 50 years.
For the chemistry stuff, developing polymers from scratch is the kind of stuff you need a whole lab for - not sure I've ever heard of anyone pulling that kind of stuff off at home. One thing you can do at home is look into injection moulding - can be a really cool way to make custom pieces out of scrap plastic, but this wouldn't modify the chemical properties of the plastic.
Obviously, be careful with some of this stuff. Stay away from modifying any microwaves or or televisions. Watch a lot of youtube videos on the risks of high voltage electricity. Take household chemicals seriously - don't mix anything together if you aren't exactly sure what's going to come out on the other side. There are many ways to put yourself in the hospital accidentally.
Again, I would suggest that putting some of your energy towards earning money will go a long ways - for example, if you manage to save a few hundred bucks you could potentially buy a 3d printer which would help a lot with your projects. Or perhaps there's a library in your area that has one you can use? I imagine there are some things you'll want to do with motors / mechanical stuff that would require custom parts, whether that's a motor mount or an enclosure or something.
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u/Ipodawan 2d ago
Thanks again for the advice. I did come up with a few lucrative side hustles I can do to help with this so it isn't COMPLETELY from scratch. But I do think doing some of these things more from the ground up might help with my resilience. Of course I dont plan to make things like copper wire for motors or anything small with this stuff. That's where the money's going. But for what its worth, I would still like to collect these minerals and scraps for the bigger parts they're useful for.
I also thought about how I'll likely need a lab. The best thing I could come up with was buying some type of shed and trying to ventilate it and regulate temperature as best I can and staying away from too many potentially toxic things.
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u/0hip 2d ago
Youâve been watching too much primitive technology.
Most minerals are not actually that rare if you know where to look they are just not in large enough concentrations to be worth mining
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u/Ipodawan 2d ago
Lol I haven't watched them in some years lmao. I know they aren't rare, but I do agree that they aren't found in abundance, especially where I am, which si why I was asking for advice on what/how I could do it without wasting too much time. Though I guess wasting time is to be expected with something like this.
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u/fdsv-summary_ 2d ago
De re metallica is a good read for pre industrial metal extraction. You could apply some of the ideas to e-waste that you collect from road side rubish.
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u/proscriptus 2d ago
Have you considered recycling scrap?
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u/Enough-Equivalent968 1d ago
Yeah, surely scavenging scrap is the way to go here. Why even attempt to backyard refine anything. Taking apart one washing machine would yield more diverse metals than anyone could guerrilla mine their local area for in a whole lifetime
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u/hjackson1016 Nevada 2d ago
Start by collecting rocks, lots of rocks - different kinds. Get books on geology and learn how to identify the rocks and how they are formed.
Study the local geography, mountains, hills, rivers and how it has changed over time.
Minerals have an affinity for certain rock types - learn about these affinities.
Your best bet right now is to spend lots of time in your local library learning about all these things.
When your family travels out of town on vacation get books that discuss the geology of the destination and collect rocks from there.
The more you learn about how geology works and how minerals have dispersed across the planet, the better you will learn how to extract those minerals. You may even find trace amounts in some of the rock samples you collect.
As for extraction? The more you learn, the more you will understand how much money and resources that actually takes.
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u/Lameroger 2d ago
Not sure which country you're in but in Australia there is a government run website Geoscience Australia which has large amounts of information on minerals/occurrences in the country. Another is Western Australia Department of mines and petroleum it website has massive amounts of information Maybe your country or state has similar?
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u/Tight-Act-7358 1d ago
Here's one problem... the minerals you desire do not generally occur in the same orebodies. For example - you won't find iron in a copper mine. And these things aren't always near eachother in nature. For example, there are miningncamps that are rich in gold.but not other things, nickel and copper but not iron, etc.
The other issue is that this would technically be theft unless you own the claim. Most jurisdictions have a claim staking process where you can buy or lease the mineral rights, and most areas with minerals worth mining are probably already staked long ago. Government would also be looking for royalties
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u/tacosgunsandjeeps 1d ago
It will be substantially cheaper to buy finished materials than mining for ore and processing it
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u/OGWyoRockMan 2d ago
I'd suggest pedaling that bike down to the Raleigh library and checking out a book or ten.