El Dorado

Awesome carvings

That is some top notch material. I would love to make some jewelry with it. If you could ever lead me to a source, I would be indebted. Thanks for sharing.

Can you believe it was his first nugget........cool find for sure

WOWSA Chris, those are beauties

Tears of the sun, nice

Thanks Rob, that means a lot coming from a fireman!

Great story Paul

WOWSA that is a hunk of yellow sunshine

California Victorian Jewelry is amazing stuff. Here is another picture and some more info about that impressive cane. click on the pics for full view

come on up to Indy Hill.... dirt is nice and dry and there is plenty of gold to be had

Nice stuff Paul....if you ever want one of those beautiful Agates turned into a cab..let me know

great looking nugget...looks like a frog eating a pearl

I clean my gold in a salt/white vinegar solution in an ultrasonic cleaner. Purties them up nice, but most N. Calif placer gold is merely dirty and seldom needs acid treatment. That gold in your first post sure does look like flame worked gold, possibly a casting. HF treated quartz gold only looks great if all the quartz is dissolved, IMHO it makes the quartz look very bad. I have one collector/buyer that used to pay me for microscope work to pick away quartz from HF treated specimans to reveal a natural quartz surface. Very time consuming, but leaves the quartz in its natural shape.

One of these days I am going to try duplicating some of the Gold Rush/Victorian era gold work, but I have lots of learning left before I can

What a great find. I am always amazed as to how the ancients worked gold like they did///// http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/37420

You could not have had a better instructor plus an amazing historical place to hunt. Congrats

I have been very happy with my Keene 151........it certainly gobbles up as much material as can be thrown into the hopper. I would like to see Road Dog's mods

WTG, that machine is certainly working out well for many folks

Some great friends own a mining patent on the NF of the Middle Fork and have given me permission to helo my new dredge into there......hmmmmmm

maybe I'm lucky that the pounds of metal in my legs keeps my from getting a ZED.......

yellowtail tuna are shoing up in marinas and at piers in So Cal. Lets hope we have a winter like 1986. That was the biggest in my time in the Sierra. Got to break tracks in 20 plus feet of powder on KT-22 at Squaw Valley. 97 was pretty big too because much of the snowpack in January was melted by the fierce warm El Nino rains. Flooded much of N. CA. It will happen again

North Fork of the Middle Fork of American River has treated me well.

Fishermen leave tons a crap and fishing weights. Makes hunting these areas damn near impossible to detect.

yup that was part of a prospectors hard rock kit. used for crushing ore samples. Very cool find for sure

The amazing thing about the limbcasts are the original tree were Giant Sequoia. Some of the finds I have that are only partially opalized are very cool becaust the bark still looks like original in shape and color