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Jasong's Vugs


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Thanks Rob, appreciate the compliment.

 

I believe the coal thing Norvic, I'd be interested to see a photo of it if you get one with all 3, gold quartz and coal. Actually, I'd buy a specimen like that probably and I've never bought a piece of gold in my life, only sold it.

 

In Wyoming, where the largest (or used to be largest?) open pit coal mine in the world lives right north of me, there is occasionally coal which has micron to even very small pieces of gold visible with a loupe. It's all real small and definitely no quartz though.

 

The mudmen would swear up and down we'd be getting gold over the shaker screens ocassionally drilling through parts of the the Wasatch too, which was mostly shale some coal seams. Never saw it myself though since I had to be on the rigfloor anytime we were in soft stuff (was a directional driller).

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Jasong , thanks for the interesting post and video. I have been a subscriber of your you tube channel for awhile but must admit never spending much time on it. I think I will see what else you have on there that is interesting.

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Jasong, No problem, I will ensure I have one such "mission" for 16. I`ll email you photos if I score.

Fair few years back I spent some very rewarding time with a Geo, who writes books for OZ detectorsorists, in one of his early books he mentioned a few areas not to bother detecting in, one of them was coal. Naturally I quizzed him about this and he said he`d changed his mind on this and had found out it was a fallacy. Of interest he introduced me to a low gentle long ridge, on one slope there was a wolfram mine with small species of wolfram, bismuth, molybdenite etc in the mullock not 100 metres away on the opposite slope was detectable gold. That was mind blowing and expanded the search area where I live with some surprising results. Certainly from that added, as you say, detective work to detector work. Adds a lot of interest almost intrigue to our quest, just cannot rule out anything.

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I pulled the following paragraphs from a link to a site: http://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1290/report.pdfthat Steve H. posted a while back in another thread on this forum. (scroll down to "gold deposits" for this info)


 


Keep in mind, this info is gathered and reported from the Klamath and Oregon gold districts exclusively. Here is that info:


 


-Most of the lode deposits are described as fissure veins, meaning 


fractures, usually faults, into which vein material has been 


introduced. 


In general the mineralogy of the veins is simple. The major con- 


stituent is quartz, which is usually milky white. Commonly it contains 


drusy cavities, and some quartz veinlets have a median cavity into 


which small crystals project. Calcite commonly accompanies quartz 


in minor amounts. Other nonmetallic gangue minerals include sericite 


and, rarely, albite. 


Pyrite is the most widespread metallic gangue mineral. It occurs in 


quartz, in wallrock inclusions, and in the wallrock next to the veins; 


it forms individual crystals and veinlets. Other metallic sulfide min- 


erals which may be present in subordinate amounts are arsenopyrite,


galena, and sphalerite. Still less common are chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite, 


and molybdenite. The amount of sulfides in most quartz veins is less 


than 3 percent but may be as much as 5 percent. 


Gold occurs almost exclusively in the veins. It occurs as free metal 


in quartz and in the sulfide minerals, mainly pyrite. Gold tellurides 


have been reported from some veins. 


Many veins contain wallrock fragments; indeed, in some of the 


most productive veins wallrock fragments are abundant; veins in 


slate are commonly ribboned with included fragments, and the quartz 


is bluish, due to comminuted slate (Ferguson, 1914, p. 59-71). -


 


Ok, what I want to know is, are vugs (like in jasong's vid) the same as "drusy cavities"? Can the formations (vugs) be determined to come from gold bearing veins? How consistent are vugs as an indicator?


 


Thanks in advance -


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From what I have learned vugs are crystal lined pockets but I think it was just from the men I have worked around If it didn't have crystals in it it was a void or cavitie. Vugs are not a indicator but they are worth checking out. They just give room for the minerals to forum.

Google up the Cresson vug from Cripple Creek Colorado. What dreams are made of.

Coal is carbon and gold loves to presipatate onto carbon.

I have found gold in slate,schist and cinnabar. I have seen gold that has been found in limestone,coal,calcite and the craziest, in a piece of basalt???

All I can figure is the basalt flowed over a sunbaker.

Root

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I dont know if this qualifies as being vug form but i dug this out down around 4 feet deep,i did not see a pocket at all this rock was by itself,i had been finding gold previously 3 feet away at a vein i was following in another direction when this dryed up i changed direction. I was using a gb2 as i was digging a lot of big rock overburden out and almost pitched this rock out all dirt covered it just looked like another rock,i put the gb on it and it screamed gold. I got out of the hole and cleaned loose dirt off and could see amethest and quartz one end was hitting strong for gold so i had a buddy cut it in half for me and i slowly cracked it open then could see crystaline gold inside i put this in HF.acid a few days to uncover and keep gold intact.

This rock cut in half in picture had the crystaline, the other rock also had gold but it was from a few feet away. Going to have to do somemore investigating to chase this out some VERY large basalt showed up

in this hole. RICK

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Drusy quartz is that stuff that looks fluffy or puffy kinda but when you look close it's not a solid quartz face but made of many hundreds of tiny crystals. A drusy vug must be filled with that kind of stuff I think.

 

I tend to think along the lines Root is talking about where the vugs are not indicators of gold themselves but just give larger minerals room to grow, including gold. So when we see vein material containing vugs its worth investigating closer.

 

Rick, your attachements didn't show for some reason, any chance you could try again? Sounds like an interesting find!

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Any idea what that brownish material is? Do you think maybe its from the wall rock/vein contact zone?

 

I found some similar stuff where the vein was in this weird brownish rock like that which I couldn't identify. The quartz was solid and chunky at first as I started into the vein and towards the walls had bits of the wall material embedded in it (or vice versa), then at the bottom there was a softball size "hole" where everything was broken up and I got a couple handfuls of chunks out kinda like in your photo that all had crystalline gold like yours too, some was in the wall itself. I just crushed mine up though and smelted them since I had to sell it.

 

The second photo the pieces in my hand are washed off and you can see some of the brownish material. Not sure if it was altered quartz or altered wall material or what, but in the sunlight and in person it looked similar to your big chunk there.

post-569-0-37197700-1451623871_thumb.jpg

post-569-0-96880400-1451623875_thumb.jpg

post-569-0-89717200-1451623878_thumb.jpg

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Yes they do both look very similar,im not real sure what all the make up is Jasong,i need to do some more study of this area also. I will try to find picture of this hole and the transition it went through from ground level when i started. This area started out with red (IRON) im asuming,then darker to almost coal black color,then the white colored rock went back to to the typical color of the area (yellow,brown). Very hard to track what vein was doing here for someone with my knowledge of geology.

Someone that probobly remembers the geology of this spot is Chris Ralph, maybe he can chime in with his two cents,the area im talking of Chris is at end of trench where you and steve started testing the sdc's. On south side of trench. RICKpost-38-0-61870800-1451653482_thumb.jpgpost-38-0-82455700-1451653741_thumb.jpgpost-38-0-25285900-1451653948_thumb.jpg

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