Summer Goodies!

[Lanny]

12 hours ago, idahogold said:

Great Post , Gold, and Pix Lanny! ? Cheers from 20f Idaho" Ig

Thanks! I appreciate you dropping in, and as I see you stomp the back-country areas of Idaho chasing the gold, it's like a time machine for me because Idaho (Placerville near Idaho City) was one of the places I chased the gold when my two sons were just kids, and for one of them (the oldest), it generated the love of chasing the gold that still burns bright today (as you can see from the pictures of the nuggets in his blue bowl [lots and lots of meaty,  multi-gram nuggets]), so Idaho will always hold a warm place in my heart.

All the best, and thanks again,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Just thought I'd add something to this post for those of you starting out on the grand adventure of nugget-shooting:

Clay Holds The Gold

The key thing to notice in the above picture (of bedrock hand-worked in the 1860's) is the clay (tan-coloured material).

Clay is a great grabber/holder of gold. It also creates a layer that when gold hits it, it sticks! (Clay is also a great robber of gold in sluice boxes, so it's a blessing and a curse, so beware.)

But, when it comes to clay holding the gold, I'm not sure I can overestimate the value of this bit of information.

I don't know how many times when either sniping or detecting I'll find a small amount of clay hidden in the bedrock that's still holding gold, especially small gold (sometimes the nuggets are fat and sassy too, don't get me wrong), but clay holds the gold.

Now, understanding this holding value of clay goes a long way when it comes to prospecting for the precious metal.

I recall many years ago hunting gold in a goldfield far to the north of where I currently live, and it was a major outing to get to that location (16 hours of solid driving), but the gold was indeed fat and sassy in that area, although the bugs were and are an ongoing deterrent; regardless, that's the place where I finally transitioned into a nugget shooter and started to actually find nuggets on a consistent basis (up to that point it was buckets and buckets of metallic trash). Moreover, the bonus of learning to find gold in that environment was due to the insane nature of the bedrock in that area: it annihilated the electronic capability of metal detectors! But I'd packed along a premier pulse induction machine as my secret weapon, and even then, it struggled to handle the bedrock, but in some locations it would at least see the gold in that nasty bedrock.

However, I digress, and I'm pretty good at doing that, so back to the importance of clay.

I was in the company of some large-scale placer miners, and they invited me to detect some virgin bedrock they'd uncovered. Nevertheless, the head miner told me the channel layer they'd removed (and I could see an intact slice of it off to the side) didn't have any clay in it (they called it "wash"). Well, at that time in my detecting experience, any mention of clay didn't mean much to me. So, I set up my machine and hit the bedrock, no gold! Afterward, back at camp, when I related my grim experience, the miners laughed as they said every miner understood that "clay holds the gold" and when there's no clay to hold the gold, it gets dropped somewhere else. (The learning curve of a rookie nugget hunter made me the butt of more than one joke I can tell you!)

Later on in that trip, they invited me to detect an area where the visible channel on the side of the cut held lots of clay (the stones were arranged like they were part of a mason's wall, every stone held firmly in place by the clay), and wow, did I hit some nice nuggets! So, lesson learned, clay holds the gold.

(The above picture is from the area, and the mine tunnel floor is tight on bedrock. It was uncovered by modern mining equipment. Lots of gold riding on and hiding in that ancient channel bedrock. The accompanying clay is very evident.)

(In this picture, it's easy to see the abundant clay in the ancient channel [the boulders are resting tight on bedrock], and every rock is held firmly in place by the clay. The pay was largely in the bottom six feet of material.)

In this picture, it's easy to see how the clay holds the rocks in this ancient channel (mine from the 1800's exposed by modern excavation, bedrock just under the water), pay in the bottom six to eight feet above bedrock.

A peek inside one of those old tunnels, and look at how those Old-timers used the rock to stack up along the sides of the tunnel (bedrock cut down a ways as you can see on the right-hand side under the rocks, with an old mine-tie laying on the bedrock, rails all pulled long, long ago, plus no nails used in any of the lagging or timbers--all fine axe work for joints and fit, amazing actually.)

To transition to another point, too much clay, as in a solid clay layer in a channel will also stop the gold. As part of the learning curve, I've experienced that before by punching right through that "armour" layer of clay that stopped the gold to dig (by hand) four to six feet deeper beyond the layer to hit the bedrock. However, I recovered no gold whatsoever! Through trial and error, I learned that the gold was back up with that armour clay and not below.

To return to my photograph, the gold that day was in the previously worked bedrock where there were bits of clay still intact in the bedrock, but there was also gold in the throw-out piles the Old-timers had tossed aside in the 1860's as they didn't have the benefit of any electronic "eyes" to see what they were chucking aside.

Clay holds the gold . . . .

All the best,

Lanny

[Gravelwasher]

 Congrats on all the good times and great gold.

 A pleasure to read and follow the thread, really enjoying all the great photos.

Good gold to you all!!

[Lanny]

21 hours ago, Gravelwasher said:

 Congrats on all the good times and great gold.

 A pleasure to read and follow the thread, really enjoying all the great photos.

Good gold to you all!!

Thanks for your kind words, and thanks for your remarks about the pictures, much appreciated.

All the best, and right back at you as far as getting some gold goes,

Lanny

[Lanny]

21 hours ago, phrunt said:

I learnt early on in my sluicing that when I found areas in the creek that had sticky clay I was going to have a good cleanup.  I just had to dissolve the clay in the bucket before putting it in my sluice or it rolled straight through. 

When I used to be able to dredge, it was probably the best visual example of gold sticking to clay ever, as when I'd uncover some clay, the running water would quickly clear the silt and the gold would then be exposed, stuck fast. I saw that many, many times.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

19 hours ago, kiwijw said:

Oh Lanny....what an absolute pleasure it is going to be to have you onboard as a regular contributor. Members are in for a treat. People will now gather where I got the expression "sassy gold" from.  I stole it from Lanny. With your winter season coming on & not being able to get out there chasing the elusive yellow metal, I am sure we will see many gems from you when your fingers dance on the keyboard.

Thanks too for your kind words. Those days on T-Net were memorable days for sure. They were my early days of successful gold detecting. You will probably remember "Wildcat", also went as "Panther". Ex Kiwi, moved to Australia. He was responsible for my early success, & places I still go to today. Named a gully after him, in my own mind, Doug's Gully, that I speak of. Was only there a few weekends ago & it still coughed up some gold for me. Doug & I struck up a good online friendship that was alive for a few years & then suddenly he just feel off the planet. Quit the forums he belonged to, one being T-Net in the States & an Aussie one that I also was a member of. Just over night he stopped answering or sending emails with me. After a while I inquired on the two forums as to his whereabouts. I think it was the Aussie forum that someone PM'd me & told me that something had gone down & he had pissed off a few people & he got banned. I never saw or found out what it was but it saddened me to think he would just cut me off like that. I was hoping he would come back to his home country for a holiday to catch up with family/friends, as he occasionally did, & so I could get to meet him personally. Doesn't look like I will now. Any way....I am prattling.

Welcome to your "new" home Lanny.  Great to have you here.

JW   

JW,

Thanks for the welcome, and as far as the sassy gold saying goes, I'm glad you've latched onto it!

I always wondered what happened to Wildcat. So, reading your summary of his disappearance, it makes me sad to know he didn't contact you to let you know his reasons. However, I guess your legacy of of gold-mining experience gained from him will always be with you regardless. Nevertheless, it's always hard, so I understand why it saddened you.

I'm looking forward to your next nugget shooting post, and I certainly wish you all the best as you chase that beautiful gold of yours,

Lanny

[Lanny]

In the above picture, the bedrock is a black slate, with some of it being very hot to detect, but the beauty of working this bedrock that was hand-mined in the 1800's is that the bedrock is friable (no, not in a pan on high heat) meaning the bedrock is arranged in perpendicular sheets. You will see a reddish-orange colour centre-left of the photograph, and that piece of protruding bedrock is rounded from stream weathering many, many eons ago before it was buried to be preserved as an ancient channel. Slightly above it and to the left, you should be able to pick out plates (sheets, etc.) of bedrock leaning to the left. If you have any experience with this type of bedrock, there are spaces between each individual plate or sheet, and this is where the gold was trapped. The interesting thing is that sometimes the gold is down deep, and other times there's a heavy concentration on the surface and within the first three of four inches of the bedrock (depending on whether the plates continued deeper or were only arranged in a pattern over more solid underlying bedrock) with nothing farther down.

However, once I started to use Minelab PI's, I had an advantage over other VLF users that had detected and hammered the bedrock before me as my PI's could see much deeper into any deeper or larger gaps, and I was able to retrieve many sassy nuggets that hadn't seen the light of day since the dinosaurs stomped across the ancient stream placers. 

Nevertheless, if you've never chased nuggets in such rock, it's a challenge as every time a sheet is pried open to get to the gold, it drops, then when you try to get to it again, it drops again . . . . Quite the exercise in patience by the time the nugget is finally corralled.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

 

Gold retrieved from friable bedrock by detecting. (When I'm in a patch, I power-detect: find a signal, scoop it, throw it in a plastic pan, keep detecting and collecting targets to maximize efficiency of time. I pan the "concentrates" when I need a rest or have finished working an area [darkness often interferes as bears are a real issue where I detect, as are cougars, so not a big fan of night detecting], and it sure is fun to see what all the targets were at the end of the day. All gold placed on the bottom of a full-sized gold pan. This is chunky gold.) 

 

All the best,

Lanny

[Gravelwasher]

 Very impressive haul of nuggets, good size too!!

 

[Lanny]

1 hour ago, Gravelwasher said:

 Very impressive haul of nuggets, good size too!!

 

Thanks for taking the time to leave a note, much appreciated.

All the best,

Lanny