# Once again, Gold prospecting



## Hephaestus (Aug 1, 2012)

Hello people! It's been a while, hope everyone is well and busy playing with PGMs.

So I'm returning to gold prospecting after a long pause. For everyone interested I once posted pictures of my visits to the local mountains. Anyway, here's the latest situation: I've found a paper where someone found gold nuggets and wrote up a couple hundred pages of analysis on them for a PhD... bullseye? hope so.  I also found some other stuff but that would be too much for the time being.

I now know there is gold in that ravine and I have to simply find it? too easy! Wait... I have to learn how to find gold in a gold bearing dry ravine... there's the catch!
And that very same ravine was the place I grew up playing in the mountains... little I knew!

I also searched the web and found a guide on how to read a river (from a book) -I'm sure you all know it.

So I gathered some simple equipment as the old timers and will be visiting the ravine hopefully many many many times this August to find some gold. Today was the first day I went there to look around the place and was very excited!

I also have to study again before the next visit as I don't think I digest all that yet!

Until next time,


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## butcher (Aug 2, 2012)

Start with a gold pan, large tub of sand gavel and dirt fill the tub with water, throw six pieces of lead in your pan (cut the lead into small pieces of varying sizes, some just a little bigger than the sand), fill the pan with the dirt, sand, gravel, and rocks from your tub, pan this back into the tub, when you can pan out everything but the lead from the pan and keep all six pieces of lead in the pan you have the skill to find gold in that ravine.

Gold is heavy and works its way down to bedrock in the bottom of the stream or river, under all of the sand and gravel, it will get caught in the cracks of the bedrock, the bedrock may not be deep in some places, and others it can be very deep under the sand gravel and boulders, some gold can be found in the sand and gravel but most of it is down in the bedrock, you can make or buy other tools to recover the gold, like a sluice box, or a home made dredge, you can make a suction tool out of PVC pipe to suck up gold from the cracks in the bedrock, you can spend money buying these tools but I make my own, some of those tools can cost a lot of gold to buy them.

Ancient river beds are also a great place to look, these ancient river bed may not be where the river is now, they can even be found even higher up on the side of a mountain, you can tell them from the round rock that was once in that river, if you find where the ancient river bed meets with bed rock that is a good place to dig or tunnel.


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## Irons2 (Aug 2, 2012)

Screen your material before you pan it to remove large stones. It saves a lot of work. In these parts the Gold is so small that a 5mm screen is small enough to pass 99.99% of any Gold.


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## TXWolfie (Aug 2, 2012)

I would also look at Greece if thats where your from since its on your location on your profile and use Google maps. It shows the land layout mountains, valleys etcetra. There is a lake that caught my eye above a city/town named Servia. From what I seen the lake might be named techniti limni Polifitu. You need to use the satelite portion of it and from what I seen there is alot of dry river beds and alot of valleys and alot of beaches with mouths of rivers flowing into them from high mountains these places I mentioned is where any gold should/could be found especially if it rains alot. There is also info you can get from geological websites, Ironically they can tell you alot of what you need to know.


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## cerise (Aug 2, 2012)

Start with a gold pan, large tub of sand gavel and dirt fill the tub with water, throw six pieces of lead in your pan (cut the lead into small pieces of varying sizes, some just a little bigger than the sand), fill the pan with the dirt, sand, gravel, and rocks from your tub, pan this back into the tub, when you can pan out everything but the lead from the pan and keep all six pieces of lead in the pan you have the skill to find gold in that ravine.

Love it.


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## Hephaestus (Aug 5, 2012)

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.

I started exercising on panning lead and also watched some videos on youtube. Very useful exercise, i'm getting there. I want a better pan I think and a screen. 

You pretty much nailed it TXWolfie as this is the general area i'm at. Skill shows.  I already seen the place on Google Maps and Google Earth and both don't have good picture quality for the area I'm shooting. Elevation geography is useful though. There are other aerial photos available which I used to make a map with pretty decent quality. 

So today I went again, with the map I made on the spot I've seen the other day. I panned here and there, three first tries were successful fails, and the other two gave some black sand. I didn't have a magnet (and it was crystal-like) so took the biggest (2-3 mm) pieces home and also took the last sample. They are magnetic so I say it's magnetite? After that it was getting dark so i left.

I have taken some pictures. The place I picked is an inside curve of the ravine, ~550m upstream from the place the other guy found the gold nuggets.


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## Irons2 (Aug 6, 2012)

I would check the low spot above #1 where the stream bed is very narrow and then begins to widen out. You can see where the rocks and gravel have deposited due to the slowing of the current. Check any crevices in the bedrock. You should bring some small tools to dig them out and pan the contents. Even the tiniest cracks can hold Gold as it will flatten out over time and work its way deeper.


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## Laz777 (Aug 13, 2012)

you might also wish to look into dry washing, with the lack of water being an issue, it would be ideal if the material were concentrated enough.
plans to build your own dry washer are available on the net easily, just google "drywasher plans".
note: if your gravels are not very dry, you will not recover a good portion of the gold available.
Irons2 gives solid advice, but try uncovering a few spots that don't seem so likely. of course it will mean much more work, they don't call it "overburden" for nothing.
good luck.


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## Hephaestus (Aug 13, 2012)

I guess I have to dig down to bedrock, right? I forgot the obvious... :shock: 

Didn't know there was such a machine for dry mining. Pretty cool. Does it have a good success rate? I will definitely have it in mind. Thanks. 

I have yet to visit the place and it rained a couple days ago, some serious rainfall. I expect things there are upside down with all that water.
Are the places I checked of any good? should I look for areas with big gravel or with small? Any tips on that?


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## butcher (Aug 14, 2012)

think of that river bed as a big sluice box, the gold is heavier than any of the other rock sand or gravel, and gets caught in the river like it does in a sluice box, it will sink to the bottom and get caught in the cracks of the bed rock, fine flakes can be with the black sand in the sand and gravel (even on the surface or in roots of the grass), but the better gold is at bedrock, in a river bed sometimes the river exposes the bed rock in spots of the river and some places the bed rock can be very deep buried under gravel sand and boulders, and you can find where the bed rock is exposed check the cracks where gold is trapped, sometime a big hammer and a pry bar is needed to break down into the crack, other time you can just brush, sweep, vacuum or use a suction tool to clean out the cracks, some tools I use are a turkey baster sometimes a hose is added to get down into the crack or a homemade suction tool made from PVC pipe and a tennis ball looks like a giant syringe, (I think they call them snippers or something like that, pan this from the bed rock cracks,if these bed rock cracks are on dry land a five gallon bucket of water is handy if you need to put water into the crack to suck out the gold or clean out the crevice, the river may have exposed bedrock and left gold in the cracks and the river has long ago changed coarse or moved over leaving this exposed bed rock on dry land now, so this can be done under water or where a river used to run, around here you can find small flakes of gold in the sand and gravel beds that have not made their way to the bottom yet, so you can also just pan the gravel and sands along the bank but the better gold is down to bedrock.

a sluice box can be used these are not hard to make out of aluminum or wood, a simple one can be made from a corrigated drain pipe split in half log wise these are good for sand or screened material, for the sluice box you need running water, it can be from sitting your box in the stream, from piping the water from the stream into your box or from a pump, or dredge. a rocker sluice and bucketing the water in can also be used.

I have never used a dry washer (always had water or took my material to the water, or took water to my material), but I have heard of miners using a blanket to dry wash gold they would toss up the material in the blanket let the wind blow away the lighter material and the heavier fell back into the blanket. 

I can tell you exactly where the gold is in that river. it is where you will find it, only problem is, then it wont be there in that river any more, it will be in your pocket.


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## Hephaestus (Aug 15, 2012)

I did not find gold yet but your advice is gold to me.

Cracks... all I see in the pictures I've taken is cracks... and when I see the whole stream there are even more bedrock cracks. Pry bar. 8) 

I also panned the sample I took home (#5). I found some black sand which is magnetic and some which isn't (i'm testing with two neodymium magnets). The latter was washing out during the wave action. I think even the magnetic sand was sleeping away while waving the pan so I either do this the wrong way (pretty sure I do it wrong) or it's not the right black sand? No gold in the pan at the end. :roll: 

So I will construct a small sluice box (probably portable) and will attack any crevice I see. Following that sentence I just searched the forum for a simple sluice box design and discovered this thread with an amazingly simple sluice box photo.


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## Laz777 (Aug 22, 2012)

if you have access to running water, a sluice box will recover more gold than a drywasher. drywashing is hard, dirty work, bring something for a dust mask if you decide on using one.
look for a piling up of rock, big is good, but smaller rock or a combination of size is good as well. if the rocks have stopped moving in that spot, maybe the gold has too. 
I say maybe...I've worked spots where everything looked good and come up with little or no gold, then I've worked a spot that shouldn't have logically had anything there and found good color.
look for natural riffles. any crack that runs perpendicular to the streambed is a good gold trap. go to the downstream side of large rocks and boulders.
as you dig downward, pay attention to changes in color and consistency of the gravel. harder is better (even my ex believes this :lol: ) and this is called a compaction layer. the gravels have settled and hardened into a tight packed jumble of rock and sand and hopefully, gold. loose gravel might hold some gold, always sample.
in some places, the black sand will oxidize and there will be a rusty look to the gravel. find a layer that is rusty, and if there is gold to be found, it will be found there. my heart beats faster and my palms sweat when I find such a layer, I'm getting paid today!
hope any tips we've given you leads you to the shiny stuff. good luck and heavy pans!


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