Member Gold Prospecting and Mining report
WildIdea
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Sparked from a gold discussion on the US Coin forum, I was inspired to start a thread here where forum members can discuss hunting and appreciating the virtues of prospecting and mining Gold, Silver and even Gems in the wild. There are several prospecting forums online but I'd like to know how this group is doing if active at all.
With the interest in metals around here I have to believe I'm not the only one to study the craft and strike out and dig some up themselves. I would love to see results and hear stories and techniques. As cool as it is to trade for and earn and buy metals, my own self dug and processed gold is my most valued to me. So I'll go first.
I dug out my Pickers Vial for a few shots. Anything over a certain mesh get saved and the rest melted.
Comments
Legality?
Most States require some kind of permit if equipment is being used. So very legal, if you're not trespassing.
Ive found a few places I might be able to prospect for gold in North Dakota. Would really enjoy trying for few weeks in the summer. Problem is I'd take it too far and have to use a mini excavator and a skid steer
Urban mining!
Mostly old jewelry melted into these bars. Some is from when I scrapped computers and gold plated and gold filled items. I got tired of the loose small beads of gold so made two bars. Purity is rather low though only about 65% gold. At some point I will be melting these back into small beads to refine further now that I have the equipment and know all the chemistry to neutralize my waste acids.
The gemstones are from jewelry that I had dissolved in acid so to not damage the stones. It's time consuming but quite fun. Also an expensive hobby.
Sweet !!!
I suppose I should have narrowed it to "where is it legal?" Trespassing is a hurdle I don't want to jump even as far as obtaining permission
like @Jinx86 said, each state is different, but federal lands are typically under the same set of rules.
I'm live in SD and have prospected in many states, but here we have Private, National Parks and Monuments, National Forest and National Grasslands, as well as Indian Reservations. It can take a bit of getting used to when hunting for either Game or Minerals, access alone takes noting before you pick an activity.
One can pretty much throw out mining in Monuments and Reservations. A visit to the Parks service center will outfit one with maps and rules that outline the situation. Forests and Grasslands are essentially under the same set of rules, which while talking of prospecting, one is free to mine if using no mechanized power machinery and nothing larger than a shovel.
This puts a lot of ground out there to prospect and mine really and a few basic tools and a pan and sleuce can produce Gold if it's present. If one wants to make a "claim" to keep others off their area, one can apply for one the Dept of Land Management in Montana which covers the five state area around me. Rules apply to keeping and maintaining a claim.
If one wants to mechanize, a reclamation bond is usually required and if granted, won't be returned unless area deemed reclaimed. I'm personally a huge advocate of reclamation bonds. On Private Property one is pretty free to mine however, unless you basically blow it up which may have someone weigh in if you are silting up downstream water or other reasons.
Complexities of land management. I basically look for areas that are next to known gold producing areas that have legal access, and are unclaimed, then I hint the edges and leftover areas that still seem unworked for whatever reason, like tough access or fresh erosion areas previously unexposed.
Also, like I earlier mentioned, Private land is the best. When I get on that I can legally bring my suction sleuce and run that if there is water. I've been asked several times by acquaintances to mine their property so they can promote the presence of gold in their sales listing. Let's not forget that it's not easy, takes homework, and research, and at times, disappointment. That's the name of the game, the gold is the frosting on the cake. Getting outside is huge!
If one is really new at this, it can pay off to join a club that has club claims and outings and eager members that will help teach a person. the GPAA is worth a look as they are a national organization with claims and outings in almost every state.
I have panned gold in AZ, CA, WA and New Zealand (Shotover River)....and did some metal detecting as well... found a couple of nuggets that way... Now living in a 'no gold' area ..... Sure do miss it... always exciting to see 'color' in the pan.... Cheers, RickO
This is why I have never moved on from my interest in metals. When I think I know everything about one aspect it brings up more questions to be answered. Never ending field of study and learning. Now I gotta learn more about recycling, Thanks!
Great thread, thanks for starting it @WildIdea
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Very cool, thanks.
I live near Goldvein VA and one day will start to mine.
fauquiercounty.gov/government/departments-h-z/parks-and-recreation/facilities/parks/gold-mining-camp-museum
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I just checked the links, I would totally go to the museum if I were closer. Please add your experiences to the thread when you find the time.
Its my understanding that it’s these earlier gold districts that taught Americans mining techniques and primed them to swarm California and then the West and eventually Alaska.
Thanks Wild, I plan on going to the Museum in the Spring. I will update this thread then.
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We'll it's been a few days and I've been thinking about gold some, and when I began getting into it.
My Dads youngest brother was living near us in Spearfish SD in collage studying Dairy Science. He was the the first one that took me on a prospecting outing. We just loved Uncle Paul and he was only 12-13 years older than my brother and I but we worshiped him. One warm summer day, I remember driving around in the hills half a day looking for a certain Ghost Town he was bent on finding and when we parked I didn't see anything. We waded out in the waist high grass ( I was prob only 10-11 years old) and eventually located what was hand stacked rock foundations to formerly small buildings. This was it. We foraged around for any interesting clues of the original occupants, when Paul called us over. It was a discarded old wooden sleuce box made from 3 long thick planks. Nailed inside the bottom was another plank with 3 inch holes spaced evenly the entitle length. This thing was 10-12 feet long and he enlisted our help prying out the bottom board and he scooped up the soil that was wedged in the tiny seams that were pinched between the planks. I remember watching with amazement watch him pan that soil that night and that it produced gold. Who would just leave that there? How neat Paul found it, and I was hooked........
So after Paul moved I was still armed with the info and the apparent secret that gold still existed and how to get it. I didn't have a car but my mom would drop me off at certain creeks and pick me up and my dad helped me build a collapsible rocker from plans we found at the library. This is around 1987 and I was 15.
I remember back then, we were all into rock and metal music back then and being cool partying. None of my friends thought much of my hobby and even made fun of me coining the nickname "Potato Creek" etc, but I could handle it. I've never been embarrassed to walk in the footsteps of my elders and ancestors.
We hunted around all over the hills exploring old mine sites. This mill house was 5 stories tall. It's gone now, forest fire in the 90s. These building were built crudely with just wood and tar paper siding. The big Homestake mine in Lead was the huge load but there was gold camps all over the hills from Keystone to Hill City and Custer and everywhere in between. I'm lucky to have gotten to explore these as they are harder and harder to find and get vandalized etc.
Usually around the mills are the hard rock tunnels. My Dad once had some friends that took us inside some. Um, I like this, but when your walking over humps in the tunnel through the void the "cave in" made, it makes me nervous. I don't go in these anymore, and wouldn't recommend it, it's just not worth it. But I've always liked hanging with older dudes that are into prospecting, and the metals mindset.
So I've been out several hundred times, good and bad weather, learned you can get poison ivy from roots in winter, sunburnt, scratched etc. loved every min of it. A few special places I just can't keep my butt out of. In the last few years I've been able to buy high grade ore specimens from local old timers and my personal results keep getting better as you slowly unlock the secrets of the area. A few friends have even admitted ol Potato Creek might just get the last laugh.
So I realized this weekend while talking about the subject with a local coin dealer and friend, I see that most folks that are into precious metals is because they're into Money. Now as much as I like that about it, I realize I'm a hopeless romantic about GOLD. I can't decide if that's good or bad but I don't think that I could be unique. I didn't start this thread to talk about me but to make sure I wasn't alone in this pursuit.
Wild, thanks for the trip back in time, it looks like a great time growing up.
That last pan looks nice, what are the details? Thanks, BC
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Yeah so the pan is a typical clean up from a day sucking up cracks in a certain section of a creek.
A buddy and I were hitting it pretty regular with our modern sleuces, just shoveling gravels into them when there was water running. Each shovel would have at least a spec in it and over the day you’d have like 500 to 1000 specs depending on how you shoveled. We’d go together or alone as there was plenty of gravels. It would average around 1-3 g and was adding up over the summer and I was going for a Troy Oz.
One day I decided to bring a snorkel and mask and see what it looked like under the water. Wow! I could see visible gold packed between rocks and wedges in the cracks. As well as Lead. I had been missing the real gold the whole time.
I set about buying a water pump and fitting my sleuce with line hopper. My typical day involved shoveling the gravel off the bedrock into an exposed area several feet wide and would take about 3 hours. Shoveling loose gravel out of running water isn’t easy but it was worth it. Let me say here that when your snorkeling for gold it’s an enchanting experience, a subterranean universe where nothing else matters and complexities of life cannot find you, a great escape and hard to stop yourself when tired. Prying rocks apart and seeing gold and watching it get sucked up your nozzle is one the biggest of joys.
A few times I’d crack a rock and hear its pitch of clunk, plunk, clinch change and I would get ready. And there it was, the fabled half Oz line, like a golden ant farm of virgin deposit 5 inches long. I would just work like a dog, and then have to haul all the gear out.
A clean up might take a few hours the next day. No clean ups done in the field but at home in the garage. The pan shows a quick peak at the days take. The red soil is other heavy sands and we wonder if the gold were mining was brought to the creek by old timers and these are their crumbs. The Lead is industrial waste, little screws and every effect of man and bits of wire etc And collects in the cracks like the natural gold. The towns around the area were prone to burn and I believe the lead is from their melted water pipes but who knows.
These fines get melted and then added to until I move on or the area stops producing
Thanks for the story and the pictures.... I love gold panning... nothing to compare the feeling when you see 'color' in the pan.... Cheers, RickO
I'm a big fan of gold as well, the money portion is nice, but sometimes is the pursuit of the gold that makes it that much more exciting. Here is an image of a small diamond lot extraction. I trim as much gold away as possible and add them to a test tube, cover with Hydrochloric Acid, bring to a gentle boil and drop in Nitric acid. I let this slowly eat away the gold to safely remove the diamond or gemstones with no damage. It's about a 3 hour process from start to finish on small lots. I have larger vessels for processing about 10 ozt or so of stone bearing material. No where near the capacity of the "big guys".
@Jinx86.... Do you then reclaim the gold also?? What is your process for that? Cheers, RickO
Thanks for sharing the great stories. Sounds a bit of my early days driving out to the wilderness in my old truck with UFO, Led Zep, Deep Purple blasting down the road. Camping gear, Sluice box and Gold pan in the back. Some Gold panning in CA back in the 90's.
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@ricko
Yeap the gold is fully reclaimed. Method depends on the amount of gold dissolved, sometimes I don't remove the silver on small lots. After the liquid is poured off and the stones rinsed off the gold bearing solution can be cooled which will result in the silver dropping out as a fine powder that I can filter from the solution. Once its filtered I add SMB which drops the gold from the solution, that I can leave in the bottom of the vessel and pour off the waste material. Once the gold is dry I can melt it. The waste material is then boiled down to reduce volume, I add this to a larger stock pot that has copper in it. The copper cements out any precious metals that might remain, such as if I missed any gold/silver but will also drop the platinum and palladium from the solution, this is a slow accumulation. Once the pot gets so high I then can siphon off the top of the bucket and add that solution to another stock pot where I have iron bars added which will drop the copper from the solution. Once the copper is gone I can add that solution to another bucket drop in some lime to get the iron to drop out and get the PH in a safe range. What's left is salt water and iron powder. All safe for disposal. All throughout I test the solutions with Stannous Chloride to make sure there are no precious metals being lost.
It's much more complex and time consuming than most people realize.
@Jinx86 ....Thank you for the detailed explanation. It is complex, I did think it was (have some chemical and metallurgical background), but did not realize quite how complex. I am sure you must have a volume that makes it all worth it. Thanks again, Cheers, RickO
Nice nugs and pickers @metalmeister. Thanks for posting!
Why are those vials of gold always in water?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
Makes what's inside look larger!
I've always found that if you press your finger down on a flake or dust in a pan or dish it will stick and the water tension will release it and drop it in the vial. Water will grow mold over time or get milky from the soil still present in the pours in the gold so one day I tried rubbing alcohol, and that solved that issue, so that's what I use.
@Insider2 reason is valid and it also helps if one side of the vial has a strip of black electrical tape on it as that really maxes out the color contrast and helps show it off.