Some 4th of July finds from yesterday. Ran about ~50 gallons of classified material. I also had some amalgam pieces I put into a quarantine vial that I haven't weighed yet.
Apparently they are illegal on public land?
Someone told me I should collect the bottom 1/4 of pans from panning until I can fill up a 5 gallon bucket with the concentrate and then take it home to run through the high banker.
I’m new to panning, so idk if this is the best approach, or if I should just sell the high banker for an in stream sluice box that I can actually use?
Last weekend was a banger, got well over half a gram. That's a lot for me. Beautiful pieces.
We have a hill which it’s soil and rocks are red and I had a chance to buy Gold Monster 1000 (metal detector). I tested the rocks and the sound turned to be exactly like testing a pure metal.
I took a sample and tested with 2 different XRFs .
The first one showed 99.9% Fe and the second one showed 98.45%Fe and 1.55 % Co. Could generous professionals suggest any idea what it’s about and if it’s worth to do fire assay. Here above is photo of both tests.
Hey all, delete if not allowed, just wanting to show some gold prospecting and dredging I’ve been getting into in New Zealand, fairly new to the whole gold mining thing, started a year ago slogging my ass off in the public fossicking areas that are free and legal to mine with hand tools, and now getting into dredging which is a whole other ball game! Any other kiwis here? 🤙🏻
Prospecting on my own land in NC, Carolina Slate Belt area, northeast along strike from a historic gold mine that produced back in the 1800s.
On the hill: Multiple old prospect mounds. Tons of quartz on the surface, some iron-stained, some with pink/purple staining.
In the creek: Exposed layered argillite bedrock with natural crevices. Gravel-clay contacts. Weathered rusty material that I think is saprolite/gossan.
When I pan:
Massive amounts of black sand, maybe 30% magnetite
- Lots of small red/brown garnets after magnet
- Using Jet Dry
- Digging to bedrock, cleaning crevices, screening carefully
Barely finding gold. A few tiny flakes once, then nothing on follow-ups
With this much black sand and this much iron-stained material, what am I missing? Wrong spot? Wrong technique? Should I be crushing saprolite instead of quartz?
I want to also say that I just started. All the fancy names are from research and YouTube videos 😅
Photos: creek, bedrock, dig spot, sieved material, gossan chunk
.
And I'm still just an amateur, but I just ran a bucket off the top of the pile of dirt/gravel I've dumped off the side of my porch for more than a year of prospecting every single weekend - and this was the first result, just dirt off the top.
I can't get to the river this weekend but it looks like I've still got a good spot to work, again.
Latest from my little honey hole on the kern got a few good flakes and even some wire gold. Plus the super fines that I'll amalgamate later. It aint much but ill keep taking it.
I’ve been planning this river a lot, and mostly finding very fine gold “sand”. Where my shovel is pointing there is a lot of quartz in the rocks.
Think it’s worth exploring further?
Québec, Canada. I found most of it while sniping. The left eye is 4.92g.
More than 10g in total.
I need to learn a lot more about technique and strategy, but I'm geeked to find this.
Anyone ever pan in Allegheny? Ny / pa ? Going this weekend to camp and want to do some exploring with the gf
With my son graduating High School and some other social obligations I haven’t been able to get out to the claim in over a month. Went out last Saturday to do some exploring and saw the river was low enough to expose a hole I got some decent gold out of at the end of last season. Ran a test pan and sure enough there was some ok color. Ended up pulling about 5 gallons of unclassified material out and brought it home. Classified it down to 1/8” and ended up with about 2.5 gallons of 1/8” and under. Ran it through the sluice and here are the results.
Does gold precipitate in hard rock deposits like this? From sudbury, ONTARIO
Me and all my friends just recently got into prospecting and panning. I am lucky enough to live on a section of land that is very close to the south fork of the American river. We went out for our second time today and found all of this. I was hoping if anyone could offer some tips and possibly other tools that we may need to get that will help us find more and make the whole experience more enjoyable. Right now we just have pans, a couple small shovels, and tweezers to grab the small pieces. We are still pretty clueless as to what we are looking for as far as location of possible deposit spots goes. Inside bends and black sand is the extent of our knowledge. Thank you!