Jump to content

EastTexasChris

Full Member
  • Posts

    23
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location:
    East Texas
  • Interests:
    Prospecting, SCUBA, gem collecting, gem faceting, jewelry making, RV travel
  • Gear In Use:
    Old Garret GTAX1000, Whites MXT, Minelab Gold Monster.

Recent Profile Visitors

2,772 profile views

EastTexasChris's Achievements

Contributor

Contributor (2/6)

16

Reputation

  1. Well that sucks! Or at least I hope it does. Maybe I'll go back and give California another shot. They prohibited dredging just before I retired and screwed my plans up. I hope they get sensible about highbankers also.
  2. Really nice gold SJM and a good report of the season. I know that water is fast and cold, as I can attest to a few days with you summer before last. Was really hard on an ole Texas boy trying to 'long-arm' in thin wetsuit inside a pair of insulated chest waders! By the way, you haven't found my clean-out bucket from that one day it washed down the creek, have you? I'm sure it had at least an ounce in it!
  3. Thanks for that opportunity last summer and I would have done even better if one of my days cleanout hadn't floated down the creek in my 5 gal bucket! Oh well, lesson learned, wwhen working by one's self, keep those knees tight around the cleanout bucket! Good to see the creek is still paying. That's a tough place to work, with the narrow canyon and water flow, but fun none the less.
  4. Name says it all. Not much gold here though. Have to travel long way to find anything.
  5. It worked fine on my Windows laptop. There were a couple of 'cursor movement' issues that I thought could be confusing. Maybe these are what we used to call 'features'. (1) On a horizontal cursor drag on the lower half of the map, the the map rotates the direction of the drag. On the upper half of the map, it rotates the opposite the drag direction. This was counter-intuitive to me as a user. (2) On a vertical cursor drag, you can actually 'flip the map' so that you are looking at the back or underneath. It all depends upon what you were trying to achieve. Looks pretty good! Take it for what its worth from an old software HMI developer.
  6. Petrified Palmwood was adopted by the Texas House & Senate in 1969 to be the 'Official State Stone of Texas'.
  7. TS, I was at Northlander #2 this past summer. I too found a locked gate at what I thought was the entrance, but walked up and it led only to a power substation or something. I went back down the road(away from Summit Lake) and took the first gravel road just past the creek. It backtracked a short ways and then doubled back to the creek. I think you can use this road to access the lower end of the claim. The road continued further, but was very wet and I did not go further. I thought this would lead up to the Ken & Brian claims. This road may have a gate further up, I don't know and if this was the road you were on, sorry for any confusion, you may have travelled farther than I did. I set up a little highbanker up at the first creek access, but was not very successful. Would love to hear how the K & B claims look, if you make it that far. Good luck!
  8. I've seen several ways of opening geodes. (1) The best way to insure a smooth cut is to use a rock saw. If you have any lapidary friends, they may have one large enough depending on the size of the geode. It uses a vise to hold half of the stone and then cut it in two. They have a diamond blade and water system to keep the blade cool and dust contained. This might be the only way to cut into a solid geode. (2) A 'chain pipe cutter'. This looks like a pipe wrench or pair of pliers, except it has a chain with small cutting discs that you can adjust around the geode and then apply pressure. (3) The third thing I have seen looks like a hydraulic press with an inverted V cutting head at the top and the bottom. Place the geode between the blades and use the hydraulic jack to put pressure on it until it breaks. With the last two methods, be sure to cover the geode so no fragments fly off and be sure to use eye protection. As far as determining the hollow ones, you might try must by comparing the weights of similar sized stones. You might be able to even float them in water, if the inside is large enough.
  9. That's not a 'good' sample pan. It's a 'great' sample pan!
  10. I did get some nice comments from my friend and others who were highbanking. Working in pairs or three, they would run 40, 50, 60 or more buckets for the same time I worked. They would get more, but again there was 2 or 3 of them working too. My few half buckets of crevice material was pretty rich. Did spend lots of time breaking up pieces of bedrock to extend the reach.
  11. I had several offers to purchase a full New 49er membership for $1,000. Now with even more restrictions on motorized highbanking, you might find one for even less. Many have been disappointed at not being able to dredge for many years and if they can't highbank, are ready to give it up. There were other members MDing on some of their claims, but never did see any results, just hearsay. Most activity was around the river and creeks flowing into it. Lots of people would raft/kayak across to the far side of the river. Seemed not to be worked so hard for so many years as the near side.
  12. I'm surprised there wasn't beer available. Most of Arkansas is 'wet'. Must have just been that city. Texarkana, TX is my home town. In those days, the AR side was wet and TX side dry. There is a state hwy that runs through the middle of town. One side all the beer & liquor joints. The other had DQs, Sonics & such. Wknds had the TX teens running across the street to purchase and then run back. Or it was just a short drive down to Bossier City, LA, where you only had to be 18 to buy a beer and get in clubs. So its an individual municipality thing. The voters have to vote it wet or not. There's been lots of changes recently, even lots of TX cities in NETEX now have beer & wine sales. Chris
  13. Here's some of the Klamath river gold! A pretty good haul this day. This was from crevicing. It kept getting better the deeper I got down in the crevices. This was in August 2015 and pretty hot. We would leave at daybreak and return to camp about 1 PM. Usually got up over 100 dgs, most days. Happy Camp is a really nice little place. Will definitely return soon and get a New 49ers membership if they ever change the rules back in CA. Seems they have tried to implement more restrictions now that prohibits even highbanking along the river.
  14. Roughwater, the commercial operation was Spokane Bar Sapphire Mine. They have lots of bucket already filled at the store and the usual salted bags. Or you can go (like I did) about 1/2 mile back behind the store where you can did your own. It's just a little rise in a pasture that was a gravel bar long ago. They a shaker frame & screen there for you to use and you save $2 a bucket if you do it yourself. Lots of online reviews complain about not finding anything here and I did only find one in that bucket. There is another operation over Philipsburg and we went there also. You can't dig for yourself. We did find lots more at this location, but they were small. The rough is mostly less than 2 cts, by the time the good ones were cut would be even smaller. The Klamath was a nice destination. We stayed at a local RV park at Happy Camp. The New 49er headquarters is located here. My neighbor in the park invited me to go along to their claims as a guest. We stayed there for a month. There is no dredging there though because of the Calif. moratorium still. While my friend used his highbanker, I went crevicing along the higher ledges of bedrock. I set up a small recirulating sluice to run my screened material. Wouldn't run more than a bucket or two each day. The material was good, just hard to scratch out. No nuggets, but lots of small flat oval pieces the locals refer to as 'surfboards'. I had hoped to get 1/4 oz for my time, but ended with just over 1/8th oz for about 2 wks of fun. I did get a good buy on highbanker my last 2 days and my friend let me use his pump. Arkansas Diamond Mine at Murfreesboro Arkansas. A really nice RV park close to the mine(field) entrance. Remodeled just a few years ago. Not too far from me and we have been several times.(Haven't found any, but have seen one found. They the best times to go are after a large rain and just walk around and look on top of the rows of plowed material. Many, many acres to look over, with washing troughs set up at different locations. You can rent eqpt there or bring your own. Nothing motorized though! If you don't find anything, there are several stores in Murfreesboro that sell real Arkansas diamonds (Not like Herkimer diamonds, which are really quartz). Hope this helps on all accounts. Happy to help. Please ask if you need more info on any of the locations.
×
×
  • Create New...