oldmancoyote1

Azurite(blue) and Malachite(green) are two rather soft copper minerals with stunningly pure bright colors. They are relatively common and not that expensive. You could moderate their intensity by mixing some white or black mineral powder. They tend to form acids when wet, so seal them well. Show a picture of your work as I do woodworking too.

Nice gold. Consider making one of Two Toe's hooked probes (see his youtube videos) made from a windshield wiper arm. I find it gives a lot more control than a screwdriver tool when extracting gold from cemented gravel adjacent to bedrock.

Thanks

You have had a lot of success over the years. I imagine you have found some wonderfully large masses of gold. Think about each of those for a few moments, especially those in the lower 48. Does anything appear as a common feature of their locations? Surely not everything would fit the same mold, but was there anything present frequent enough to indicate one location might be a little bit more likely to yield big gold than another? Thanks

That's similar to the area I reported on recently. It was placered by individuals until it was hydrauliced by a large company and then worked again in the 30's. There seems to be more gold left over from prior activities than I had imagined. I thought folks were much more thorough. There is a large bedrock exposure 5 minute walk from where I live during the summer that I thought was so public and so obvious that it was exhausted. Someone told me otherwise, and this week I have started finding flood gold and small nuggets.

At my rate, it'll take that long especially since the fires make my area largely inaccessible. Nice photo.

You are right. I dug 6 more holes. For 3 the bedrock went straight on down. Based on this tiny sample, I will follow two rules: 1) I won't dig unless the site is sort of hemmed in by bedrock on at lest two sides (it's probably too deep if it isn't); and 2) I won't dig unless there is evidence someone got gold within a couple of feet (I will miss some gold, but I won't fail as often.).

What was the site like? Those certainly aren't river rocks in the picture.

BF44: You misunderstand. Everyone on this forum knows about crevasing. Digging for hidden cracks and holes before metal detecting was a change in my preferred strategy. "New for me", get it?

After 3 years with a friend's DFX and 4 years with my own Makro Gold Racer, I finally found gold. Tried a new spot and a new technique. I found 63 pieces in 5 days and my buddy found 81 working right next to me with a Gold Monster. My little VLF can't compete with the big iron, so I needed a new method. I started digging where the bedrock went under the sand and gravel. Following the bedrock along, I noted a few small spots of cemented gravel in cracks and holes in the bedrock. Carefully excavating these gravel patches and detecting as I went let to a wonderful few days. Just detecting from the surface has proven to be a waste of my time.

Fire brick.

It's still way to out of focus. The tiny details are telling.

Someone described nitric acid as less aggressive than muriatic acid (HCl). I would never use nitric acid except under professional supervision in a hood. I have use HCl at home since high school. I carried it around in my pocket. While its vapors will corrode nearby metals etc., it is not a powerful oxidizer like nitric acid which I regard as extremely dangerous. Perhaps the commentator was referring to its action on minerals as being less aggressive not to safety issues. I think it is best to avoid any misunderstanding by mentioning nitric acid is a dangerous material.

A very useful recent post and comments on mining claims left me with the impression that the public can be excluded from mining claims by the holder. It's quite possible that I misunderstood what was written. Perhaps others were left with some doubt as well. The BLM pamphlet "Mining Claims and Sites on Federal and State Lands" reads: The Public has the conditional right to cross mining claims or sites for recreational or other purposes and to access federal lands beyond the claim boundaries. Technically, my post belongs in the previous mentioned post, but it would be buried and missed by many. I hope Steve will permit it to exist as an independent post because of its importance to us all.

An adjacent property is 50 50. I strongly suspect that my area of interest is also 50 50. If it is, I suppose I can not metal detect there. Any info on wether I can metal detect 50 50 land.

I have used The Diggings for active claims. Taking The Diggings info to the County Recorder's office I have retrieved claim filing documents. I have seen some indication elsewhere that there are patented claims in the area (Greaterville AZ), so I got a list of patented claims (Excel file) from the County Assessor's Office. Yet there is only one patented claim shown in my target area. The area I am interested in probably is patented. It's a prime location. I'd very much like to detect this area, but I'm stymied for lack of reliable information. Anyone got a suggestion?

Folks here have referred to carrying guns for self defense. In Arizona it is forbidden to blame the "victim" for a crime. As strange as it may seem, claiming self defense is no longer an acceptable practice as it blames the "victim". You run considerable risk carrying a gun. I write from painful personal experience. I was assaulted in a parking lot. I fought back and hurt the guy. He lied to the police claiming I was a violent homeless man because I wear a beard and was wearing a ratty old coat. I was charged with felony assault. Since I could not claim self defense, I was compelled to plead no contest to felony assault. I had no other option. I carry bear spray, and in potential confrontations I launch an audio recording app as soon as the situation develops. With bear spray if I were charged, it would be for assault not for murder. While I have spoken of the law, I am not a lawyer, and it is always foolish to take legal advice from any forum.

I still don't know what it is. I do understand why someone might think it is a meteorite. The convex side looks like it might have been partially melted by passing through the atmosphere at high speed, and the back side looks like it might have been slightly melted by hot turbulent gasses behind the meteorite. However it does not look like any of the common types of meteorites that I am aware of. I don't even recognize the orange material on the back side. Show it to a petrologist or a meteorite specialist at a university. They might have an idea.

His name is Ray Mills.

That's one weird rock. Where was it found? Both what region and describe the actual location.

No. We work in higher elevations of the Klamath Mountains

The stream valley we were looking at had produced considerable gold in the past but was heavily forested and the ground was covered with a thick layer of pine needles and forest duff. Mostly we were looking for traces of undiscovered Pocket Deposits near know pockets using metal detectors. Some times we detected cracks in the very little bedrock that was exposed. I have conclude the only way to successfully prospect that area is to do what the old timers did there: dig lots of trenches looking for fine gold and following the trace up hill. I'm too old for much of that.

We didn't take a detector. it was lectures with explanations of actual locations.

For several years now I have been dragging my buddy to new places that I thought would be good spots to detect. We both have darn little to show for all our effort. To make up for it, I got a well known nugget detectorist to take us into the field for some lessons. Here are three important take-aways from that trip: 1) High hills in old burn areas are great places to identify new nugget fields. 2) He showed us such an area where there were a great many very small-scale mining features that were invisible In Google Earth, yet the burn made them quite visible from a hilltop. Our guide said that based on his detecting experience, there were many more overlooked gold pieces to find here and in similar areas. 3) It can be easy to recognize the presence of hidden pockets in old burns by the discolored downhill soil these pockets shed. He said this was a common occurrence, and even if they have been mined historically, there were still gold pieces to be found in these places, but again I couldn't see a thing on Google Earth. He's a great guy, he's very knowledgeable, and he's expensive. I don't have his permission to list his name here, but he may added it at some time. EDIT: He said I can use his name. It's Ray Mills of Redding, California. His online name is AUTrinity.

I strongly recommend members of this forum read pages 285 to 296 "Pocket Hunting for Residual Placers" in Ralph's book. Ralph has clearly defined a very promising target that I have not seen meaningfully described elsewhere.