Popular Post Lunk Posted December 3, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 3, 2020 Sage advice for nugget shooters from the late, great Jim Straight! I always get excited when I come across the old drywasher tailing piles (dryblower heaps) of long abandoned mining claims in the desert. The efficiency of gold recovery using this dry separation method depends on many factors, including the moisture content of the material, its degree of consolidation, the angle of the riffle box and amount of air flow and vibration. Even if all of these conditions are optimal, recovery is never 100% and some gold inevitably ends up in the tailing piles. So, slow and methodical searching of these areas with the gold detector most always guarantees a few bits being added to the poke. Depending on when these placers were mined, the tailings can be hard to recognize, so carefully observing your surroundings while out in the field for these tell-tale clues to productive areas can really pay off. While the coarse tailings have been detected for large nuggets long ago in most instances, the fine piles were left unchecked and can still contain numerous sub-gram nuggets for the keen detector operator. But that's only half of the fun, because searching the virgin ground surrounding these old workings can yield more and larger nuggets, and maybe even an undiscovered nugget patch. Some sub-gram gold recovered from the tailings: 30 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ridge Runner Posted December 4, 2020 Share Posted December 4, 2020 Lunk One time me and another guy was working this dry creek bed using his drywasher and finding little for our labor. We came across a some what large tailing pile and I said let’s run it .If I ever done anything smart that was it .Being we found more gold what whoever had left behind . It could have been too damp at the time he ran it but it was just right for us. Chuck 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim McCulloch Posted December 4, 2020 Share Posted December 4, 2020 Follow the Drywashers for a Magnificent Quest, especially if you are Three Hours to Gold in Southern California. Nice pics Keith. HH Jim 5 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geof_junk Posted December 4, 2020 Share Posted December 4, 2020 6 hours ago, Lunk said: But that's only half of the fun, because searching the virgin ground surrounding these old workings can yield more and larger nuggets, and maybe even an undiscovered nugget patch. The big thing is that they did some hard work there believing or knowing that gold was in the area. In the desert area that I like, I have found it has been a good aid for finding undetected patches within a mile or so of these dry blower heaps. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valens Legacy Posted December 4, 2020 Share Posted December 4, 2020 Thanks for the useful information for the newbies on here to learn from. I am hoping to go prospecting this next year and can use all the help I can get. I try to learn as much as I can from the articles on here, and it really helps when someone gives some good advice to me. Good luck on your next hunt! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zortan Posted December 7, 2020 Share Posted December 7, 2020 It’s not always so obvious.... the really old ones look almost just like the desert floor.... here is one where I found a one gram nugget right next to. Can you spot the small bit that is raised up? 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lone wanderer Posted December 30, 2020 Share Posted December 30, 2020 I found a dry blowing site at Inkerman in Victoria but it was heavily infested with galvanised steel heavy wire netting in small half inch bits and gave it up. Should have detected the surrounding area. Downhill was the start of a long gully with hundreds of shallow holes but being close to a main track decided to look for more hidden diggings. Read a book in the 1980,s written by a detector operator-a Garret Deepseeker I think who included many maps of nugget patches with location of dry blowing dumps in the WA goldfields of Australia. He found many large nuggets in these piles and in total found an amazing 1200 ozs of gold in only a couple of years. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Libertas Posted December 30, 2020 Share Posted December 30, 2020 I was blessed to personally know Jim Straight years ago and spent a number of days detecting with him. Fine memories.. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldseeker5000 Posted December 31, 2020 Share Posted December 31, 2020 Great story Lunk, nice gold. All tailing piles have a story to tell. I think there is great knowledge to be gained by working all types of piles. There are some dry-land dredge piles I detect and the gold in them is small sub-gram gold. The old timers thought that the pay layer was from bedrock, up to 3 feet, but they were wrong. I found out from a mining engineer friend of mine that the pay layer was actually from bedrock up to 5 feet. The old timers through out alot of gold. These piles have two to four distinct appearances about them and they give clues as to the gold content in them or absence of. Alot of trial and error went into finding the first little nugget in these piles. In fact, I have still only found one in these piles, but there are more to be found. It just takes unraveling the clues to paint a picture of what was going on. Thanks for sharing Lunk. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DigsAlot Posted January 1, 2021 Share Posted January 1, 2021 Dear Lunk, I am going to need you to put down the detector and walk away. You sir are depleting our gold reserves. P.s please put the proper cover sheet on your TPS reports mmmmkkkk 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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