Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Tom, I'd like to see some pictures of gold from Indiana.

If you can narrate it a bit for us that would be great?

Link to comment
Share on other sites


This previous post, the gold was found in a central Indiana stream where some folks think it is all worked out? Took my friend  6-8 months or so to dredge this gold for 2017. He has to drive 200 miles round trip to the spot. Dunno if he got enough gold to pay travel expenses or not? I think he said this photo was 22 grams of gold. I only got fines in this location with sluicing. The dredgers are getting the good stuff pretty much.

Is also the spot where the bedrock area is now under several feet of new gravels just washed in  and downstream  on this large bend about 100 feet across is where the pickers are being dredged up along with multi ounce copper nuggets. The bottom is jagged hand to arm size pieces of broken up bedrock in FAST moving water 1-5 foot deep. My friend says he has gotten like 10 pounds of copper nuggets in and around this stretch of creek, maybe 1/4 mile long.He is using an old Keene single sluice 4 inch dredge with air.

Guess we best not tell Chris Ralph that Indiana has more than gold dust?

 

-Tom

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like nice chunky gold to me! Really, I don't see any small gold there look like its all 20 mesh plus.

If you can figure out getting down to that fractured bedrock that is where you will do good. That fractured rock is Mother Natures sluice box.

Your two inch dredge will be painfully slow to remove a couple feet of overburden but should be a crevis cleaning machine.

Before I moved to a larger dredge I would use a three gallon bucket to scoop away the overburden then clean the bedrock with my dredge. Its surprising how fast the bucket is compared to the two inch dredge.

Good post Tom - Love the Indiana gold!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, quite chunky bits and the odd thing is I used to mine upstream of this location 1/2 mile for 6 years and no matter how deep we dug/dredged/highbanked ,  we got only gold fines, nothing chunky, the gold had no weight, just pretty little fines and hundreds of them, made a nice swirl in our pans. This was all gravels and large cobbles . But bedrock was just upstream 500 feet. I am wondering if the whole creek bottom is bedrock with dips in the bedrock where the gold laden gravels gather in certain spots like where the photo was taken and like where we got them fines?

  I just thought some more about my ponderings. Just immediately upstream of the fine gold location and before the slick bedrock, were jagged chunks of bedrock and the stream was deeper with a 10 foot tall bank. I bet we should have dredged right there for there for bigger gold !!! That whole spot is off limits now as the land changed hands, dammit...

Come to think of it,  where this stream is straight and narrower is where the bare bedrock and boulders tend to be and where it widens out and bends hard  is where the gravels and gold tend to be. Does this mean anything to you as far as reading the stream? Will the gold be the biggest right where the creek widens and gravels begin to show? How do I tell how deep to bedrock in the gravel areas? I can only go about 2 feet with my baby dredge.

If only I were not so afraid of being underwater or getting sick from having my mouth on a hookah thing potentially teeming with bacteria from dirty river water....I had that Giardia bacteria once which put me in the hospital 2 days ...picked it up at the Crisson gold mine in Georgia from the gold panning troughs...do hookah divers generally have strong stomachs or do you get sickly after dredging underwater?

And upstream of the spot where we got the fines highbanking is another hot spot for fines, BB size nuggets and copper, all in a giant S bend with slick bedrock and potholes and FAST water. The stream is VERY wide there too, like 80 feet and the locals swim in the deep holes. Upstream of that no gold at all between limestone bluffs and an island, then a 1/2 mile of slick bedrock the kayakers love at high water, but not a speck of gold.

Hmmmm, so maybe I should ignore creek areas with straight narrow stream width, bare bedrock, as they tend to have no gold and just concentrate on wide areas with fast water just after a narrow stretch and where gravels tend to be , especially if cracks can be worked in bedrock? Deeper potholes are usually poor but the shallow ones tend to have gold ,coins, rings or at least they sure did by that swim area.

 

-T

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ummmm, what's the opposite of TMI..??

A blanket statement about not finding gold at the bottom of a waterfall is 'maybeee' valid in situations where there is a main bowl only.. Show me a gold-bearing stream with a waterfall (much less a multi-path falls) that has secondary gravel-holding-capable depressions or even just cracks off of the main bowls, especially toward the backside, and I'll show you gold every time..

Also, in settings like the one shown, if there's gold above the falls, gold just downstream from the falls, and multi drop points with bowls devoid of gold being the falls, I'm pretty sure I'd be scraping every crack exposed along the route as they are exposed during times of lower water flow.. I'd be checking my fair share of moss too..

Both good info and not-so-good info in the vid.. Where he sees 'a bad place to be checking' I see a huge edge-to-edge top-to-bottom gold trap.. Simply because the Au is getting blown out of the bowls doesn't mean it isn't still right there.. It merely isn't as concentrated in one spot as we'd like it to be is all..

Swamp
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice Georgia gold, is getting me tempted to add another engine with compressor to my 2 inch dredge after seeing DJ's Indiana gold and now this chunky gold from Georgia.. I know Keene makes an unadvertised 2.5 horse engine with compressor unit. Wonder how much the whole air setup will cost me? i could bolt it to my frame up above the sluice i think and still keep the dredge weight under 140 pounds.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You know, looking at the gold in your post. I wouldn't hesitate to use my 4 inch sub surface dredge there.

I bet my subbie only weights about 100 LBS and it will keep up with any standard four inch dredge.

Adding air to any dredge will give you added ability. But its still a two inch and moving overburden is tedious.

Something to think about.

As far as getting sick from the water, that's never happened but I have had the swim ear thing, I use a 50/50 mix of rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide to keep that at bay.

Lastly gold is where you find it. My claim has been worked off and on for the last 100 years or so, a lot of the experienced prospectors tell me where they think I should dig, a lot of times that is the obvious spots like low pressure zones (inside bends and behind boulders) so I try to look for the spots that wouldn't be first on the list of most people. Seems to be working fine.

Have fun and be safe.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...