Frustration Of One Piece Patches

[Norvic]

Working in a new area away from gold workings. Got one subgrammer after doing, probably 50 hours in small creeks, enough to wet the interest slightly, so resorted to detecting the gentle slopes that were strewn with rough quartz. Two more subgrammers than a 6.67 grammer ( all smooth but no smooth wash thus elluvial) but the three pieces separated by 1/2 k or so on different slopes but in a line at approx 90 deg to the mapped fault line. Encouraging stuff but very frustrating, time shows that only a small % of these finds turn into anything more than diesel returns, guess its the lure that drives us in this crazy hair pulling passion. One big positive in those hours only 2 other signals, one disappointing signal that was 99.9% "sure" to be gold till at a metre or so depth a bloody horseshoe not the 10 ozer of expectations.

[fredmason]

oh the pain!!! all my deep holes have been junk.  I dread the thought of the holes my GPZ has waiting for me, only the hope of a really nice thumper keeps me digging.

 

Doug Stone once told me on my first trip that nuggets are never alone. He forgot to mention just how far apart they can be...

 

fred

[Norvic]

Doug was probably referring to the WA & NT working gold fields, one piece patches seem fairly norm in NQ away from gold working areas, the one piece patches in WA seemed to be just pieces left by other operators. I find NQ and WA gold prospecting is like chalk and cheese when it comes to prospecting attack methods, indicators, terrain etc. Challenges are somewhat different but same lovely yellow stuff and pain of course.

 

The GPZ should come with a complementary excavator.

[fredmason]

Yeah, I tried to get my wife to do the digging but she won't dig...she would rather supervise...

 

fred

[klunker]

 I believe Norvic Plagiarized his post. I've heard it a million times from thousands of prospectors. "There should be more gold here".

[Norvic]

Bugger I`ve been sprung.

[Chris Ben]

Every time I think I've found a patch with my ATX, I added another (single)nugget to my poke, LOL Just once I want to find a patch.

Chris

[jasong]

One thing the GPZ has taught me is a bit about why those 1 nugget patches exist. This is just my experience in the ground I work and might not apply other places dunno.

 

But I've found a few hard rock pockets now with the Z and when I dug them out they were all pretty similar. One or two larger chunky pieces of gold/quartz, then a lot of little Gold Bug size blebs, then some finer disseminated stuff as a halo towards the edges.

 

So maybe in pocket gold country these 1-2 nugget patches are common just because the pockets are small? There is probably a lot of Gold Bug fodder down deeper if a guy dozed off the dirt in layers below the pocket, but it seems like only a few macro sized ones came out of the pockets I found and those are probably what we are hitting on these micro patches?

[nvchris]

It's the nature of hunting Eluvial gold with detectors.

"​the gold probably derived from many small veins and stringers"  is often cited by M Jonson's  Placer deposits of ______. When describing economic stream placers.

 

It stand to reason that there would be far more locations where "a few veins" scattered trace amounts. These areas are what I call the "lone/few" nugget patches.

[argyle]

While Loner's are great to find, I must admit they can turn into a real hindrance at times if on the small side.

Not only do you go over the immediate area with the combo your running, but you head in what you think is most obvious place for that shed, all the way to least likely.

Then it's daily trips back with every detector combination you have.... and not another nugget or specie within hundreds of metres.

The surface loners I don't mind so much, but any past the 6" mark to 10" mark really tick me off!