A significant gold flake found in NJ!

[Alondro]

I've been panning buckets of material from a glacial moraine in Bordentown for a while now, narrowing down where the melt created alluvial fans and concentrated material.

I think I've found a fan! In this bucket, there are many more little dust-sized 'fly poops' of gold, AND this flake! I'm halfway through the bucket, and I know where I want to test next on the hillside. Hopefully there will be much bigger flakes and maybe small nuggets to come!

 

[bahabully]

Nice find !

 

[Alondro]

Nice find !

I've found even more since then. A couple bigger than this. Here's another one


I've found the core of the moraine deposit. It's ludicrously iron-rich, probably a lot of ground-up, weathered sulfides. There's so much iron in this core mound that it forms concretions around dead roots and cements pebbles together into weak sedimentary rock.

 

[jobinyt]

Try roasting that black sand - quench in cold water then pan. You may find fine gold.

 

[Alondro]

Try roasting that black sand - quench in cold water then pan. You may find fine gold.

I've been saving all my heavy black sands. I want to do a proper smelting assay on them with lead collector followed by cupeling. But, I also am suspicious of the iron concretions. They form near the bottom of the layers, where much of the fine gold could end up. I need to find a way to separate and collect that as well.