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And lastly, I bought this specimen at an Indiana rock shop and was told it was a pyrite crystal cluster thing from a quarry in Indianapolis? Where would you even look for something like this in a gravel or limestone quarry? It looks more yellow in room light, more silvery with the flash on my camera.Background is a large hand sized coal slab I picked out of a creek while out gold prospecting.

Unknown Indiana rock specimen found when out gold panning.Appears to be made of sandstone? Looks kinda like coral? Found at the base of a tall sandy cliff on a creek but a thunderstorm toppled trees down onto the collecting area and that was that..I showed this to a state geologist at a GPAA chapter meeting and he had no idea what it is...somebody said it might be a fulgerite...what happens when lightning hits sand..but them things are hollow and don't look like this..anybody wanna hazard a guess? -T

Indiana calcite crystal cluster, needs cleaning, but I need to know how? -Tom

I ordered a gun powder scale off Ebay for $27.50 shipped that is sposed to measure in grains ( up to 1500 grains ) and grams .The seller seemed to know his stuff vs other sellers. I liked the RSBS scales but they are a bit pricey. I'd rather have a bit less money into a scale so I have something left for other toys....er...gizmos.... -T

Thanks Jim Glad to see you are still around? I am thinking about a trip to northern New Hampshire around May/June to do some dredging/sluicing ,maybe could meet up with you ? Need to see my relatives in central New York 1st and apply for a New Hampshire dredge permit. They are kinda strange there? New Hampshire prospecting rules say you cannot use a shovel to dig in the streambed but you can use a gold pan to scoop up gravels and if you pay us $50, you can use up to a 4 inch nozzle gold dredge. So, whats the problem with a shovel I wonder? -T

Thanks Nugget, We need more feel good stories in this world of ours. How did you happen on a real emerald in North Carolina? I thought they were all salted from Brazil at the pay gem mines around Franklin,NC? That's what I was told years ago anyway. I did once hear rumors of a real emerald mine in NC.. That is one cool rock.... -Tom

thanks guys

Nugget, How did you happen to be at Owen Putnam SF in Indiana when you live in California? I'd like to hear the story? I was hoping some of us might get together over there this year perhaps? Were you on Rattlesnake creek or Fish creek or ? Thanks. Ps, I didn't know they had a cabin to rent? -Tom

Me and some friends went the big money dowsing route many years ago and it was a BIG waste of money needless to say.I gave up and went back to homemade copper or stainless steel dowsing rods which work reasonably well and dirt cheap.

I need my fellow prospectors advice on gold scales? Is there a scale that measures in grains and fractions of a grain plus pennyweights,Troy ounces, and grams and is reliable and under say $40? The scale at work measured to only 1/10 of a gram and my home scale only does pennyweights and ounces. Scales on Ebay are saying they round off to the nearest whole number on grains and no fractions...needless to say I am confused...be nice to have one that reads in decimals to tenths of a grain for like a 1.3 grain flake...or 2.45 grams ,etc... Thanks -Tom

I use my brass or copper dowsing rods when sampling isn't doing the trick, success rate isn't as good as I'd like, maybe 30%, been at it 30 years. Sometimes it works great and sometimes not at all. But no method is perfect. Just wish my fellow prospectors would stop putting me down for using dowsing rods? Its not magic, most everybody can do it.Heck, I even discovered if am having a bad day doing it, I can take Vitamin B12 tablets and make it work better for a short while. Where the rods cross, I dig and go back to sampling. Sometimes I can mark out an area where the rods cross. At Gold creek in Indiana, I marked out an area like 20 x 40 feet and color was there all over where my rods crossed every time. That was a GOOD day. A gold dredger up in Maine that I taught to dowse, found a spot with her nephew, she told me ,where they just left their dredge for 2 years and she was getting pea size nuggets, until a hurricane filled in their hole and almost washed her dredge away she said. I even let my chief Indiana dowsing critic use my copper rods to locate a silver quarter I hid under a carpet. He found it right off BUT still gives me a hard time ?? Dunno why? Sometimes I can locate gold deposits on maps and aerials work the best. Found a spot in Lafayette,Indiana last year doing this and the gold was all over in the one hot gravel bar I had targeted on the aerial photo but nothing downstream as I had determined from home, 150 miles away. Too bad it was all fines? Maybe I didn't dig deep enough in the gravels? Was down 18 inches and still getting color but nuthin big.Need to go back again this year and see if can get permission to dig in a hotter part of that creek. My 2 buddies had wanted me to map dowse that creek and I showed them where I thought the gold rich parts were, and they confirmed it, so that was a boost for me...doesn't always work out that well tho, have had my share of disappointments too... -T

those sure look like nuggets to me, NICE.... -Tom

For you Indiana gold seekers of pickers vs dust, no guarantees of course :Good Luck... Owen Putnam State Forest Spencer,Indiana ( 50 miles sw of Indianapolis) Park Office , call to get free gold panning permit, no shovels, or sluices allowed,pan and trowel ok Phone:812-829-2462,email OWENSF@DNR.IN.GOV Yellowwood/Morgan Monroe SF Martinsville, IN (30 miles sw of indy ) Park office Phone: 765-342-4026 Call at least 2 weeks before you need the permit, primitive camping under $10 nite, poorly maintained backroads so drive slow,ask the office person what creeks to pan in, watch out for heavy rains as some park roads may get flooded out -Tom V.

Ps, a friend of mine got a picker 3 x the size of this one in Indiana in a state forest where they do allow panning by free permit. He let me hold it altho I don't have a photo.It measured 5/8 inch long x almost 1/2 inch wide and maybe 1/32 nd inch thick.He said he was just digging in a pile of rocks by one of the creeks and just happened to get lucky. This was at Morgan Monroe SF near Martinsville,Indiana.I won't say which creek tho and there are a bunch of them. I hope to be there in early May if anybody wants to come along? Need to get down a 150 foot ,really steep hill, where I wanna go check a new creek I map dowsed. Just 1/4 mile farther up that road from this creek, we found 15 pickers at a friends secret spot creek and where my dowsing rods liked. The pickers were all in a line about 10 feet long x 2 foot wide where the creek bottom and the bank met. on 1 side.That was one of my better gold finding days. Chris, have your Indiana buddy contact me if he wants half a chance to get a nice picker. There are several State Owned Forest properties near Martinsville, where a person has a fairly good chance at bigger Indiana gold. Permits are required and panning only and no shovels but the permits are free and can usually be got by calling the forest office on weekdays and they will send by email sometimes. The free permits are usually good for a year. We usually go to these forests in springtime, rather than summer, cause there is water flowing in spring. The hillsides down to the creeks are EXTREMELY steep and not for everybody and rattlesnakes and briars can be issues too. They do have primitive campgrounds for like $8 bucks a nite but the backroads are POORLY maintained,huge potholes every year. The gold is spotty but pickers can be found on occasion and sometimes color can be seen on bare bedrock in the creeks. This would be Owen-Putnam SF, Morgan Monroe SF, and Yellowwood SF about 30 miles sw of Indianapolis. The GPAA chapters in Indiana and Illinois go here too a few times a year. -T

The only scale I have is for ounces and pennyweights so I guess its back to the coin dealer for a gram weight. Thanks for the nugget opinions guys.

By the way, the gold in Indiana came from glaciers which brought it down from Lake Superior area or so we have been told. And there are loads of limestone quarries in the state which mine this limestone for making cement. I was told the reddish dirt that is removed by bulldozers off the top of the limestone, is actually the glacial till material and can be loaded with copper and gold specks and small nuggets .The mining companies don't seem to want this trash dirt. They shove it all into the woods.My friend found a nickel size,1 /8 inch thick, gold nugget some years back in a limestone bedrock crack while highbanking. If only I had a few acres of land where I could buy this dirt and have it dumped on my land to mine out later? How does one approach a limestone mining company about doing this? My friend already tried writing them letters and they just ignore him. Heck, this was before the Pay to mine thing set in . Might be an opportunity here? Photo shows copper nuggets metal detected from on top of bare limestone bedrock from about year 2003 I think, before I ever owned a digital camera, found with Whites MXT and 6 x 9 coil in Prospect mode. -T

So, Chris ,when does a flake become a nugget is the big question? T

Dunno why the forum went off line at about midnite Sat, Jan 17, just as I was trying to post? Anyway, seems to be ok now. I was bored so finished panning off a bucket of paydirt from Indiana from September. Did the job indoors in a plastic tub in my bathtub with a stopper on the drain. Found my biggest picker in 2 years in the bottom of the 1/4 inch screened gravels. Makes me even prouder considering it was in gravels and clay I scraped off bedrock slabs I removed from a creek bed secret spot I had found with my copper dowsing rods. The picker measures 1/4 inch x 1/8 inch , thick as maybe 3 sheets of paper and klinks in my bottle. Does that make it a flake or a nugget? A happy ending to a week of misery with broken furnace, winter, and more repair bills than I cared for.... I just now tested out my new GB2 I got from Steve with the 6 inch coil, on my new picker. Never realized how hot that GB2 can be and stable, indoors airtest, anyway. Got about 3 - 4 inches airtest that I could hear without headphones. Almost 2 - 3 inches with Tesoro Lobo ST and 3 x 7 coil, minus phones. Nothing on my MXT with 6 x 9 coil. -Tom V.

Has anybody used the mini gold rocker box made by Allan Trees from Gold Dredge Builders Warehouse in Idaho? It lists for $329 on the website but no details and I can't find any YouTube videos on it. Didn't Steve buy one of their $ 599 full size rockers a couple years ago? The smaller one would be more backpackable I would think and easier on my wallet. -Tom V

Some nice scoops out there but I'd stay away from any with a sharp digging point as they tend to swivel under your foot as you dig,Stick with a curved digging end. Also, I try to get one with a foot pedal in back or an angled backside to the scoop you can push with your whole foot, otherwise you will get black and blue toe nails. I learned this the hard way. Small holes towards the front of the scoop will help catch small items like earring studs, chains, small fishing weights, etc that will otherwise fall thru large scoop holes and drive you nuts trying to recover them. Be sure to attach a magnet or 2 of them, the ones with a hole in the center, inside the back inside of the scoop, to catch iron/steel trash, like bottlecaps and bobby pins. If going with an aluminum scoop, ask if the handle is anodized? If not, your hand will turn black as you use it. Stainless is nice and won't rust but tends to be heavier. My all time fave was the BeachBrute scoop from Bill Babb but it does not seem to be on the market anymore. Oh, and metal scoops tend to sink if you let go of the handle, so maybe put a small bit of foam at the end or fill the hollow handle with foam to make the handle float a bit.You don't want your scoop to be on the bottom of the sea after all , especially if the water is dark. Be careful and have fun...don't take chances with too deep water or currents....a floating sifter can help a lot if you are doing swim areas too. If just digging on the beach, a chicken wire mesh will sift sand the fastest but has no strength to the mesh to push against with your foot unless you can find one with a reinforcing bit of steel welded onto it. No more than 1/2 inch holes so you don't lose dimes and small rings. There are some cheaper scoops on Ebay made from PVC pipe,dunno how well they work tho... -Tom V.

I found a TOP NOTCH Prospecting video that answers most of my desert prospecting questions in terms I can understand vs geologist mumbo jumbo. Unfortunately, Rob Allisons website says the video has been discontinued and he has only 2 copies left at 15 bucks each. It is made by Chris Ghoulson from Arizona and the title is " Nugget Hunting Essentials,Volume 2, From the Ground Up " and is 90 minutes long with intro by Jonathan Porter. Answers about 75% of my recent questions on this thread and then some. Too bad it is discontinued?? !! I wonder what Volume 1 was all about? The video covers such things as detecting recent dry washer tailing piles-what to look for and what to ignore, red dirt and white quartz rocks, ironstone or magnetite rocks,detector coils and what makes them work, what hotrocks, trash, and gold sound like on a Minelab GPX machine, rock formations to look for to improve your nugget finding chances, and plenty of video examples of these things so no guessing...when to use large vs small coils, dangerous critters in the desert, etc, etc -T

Chris, Could a pick and shovel miner,like most of us, be able to get a good gossan sample to send in for an assay to see what minerals might lie below or in it? How deep would a person have to dig? How many samples to send in? If you see visible gold in the red stuff or can pan it out, how do you determine the ounces per ton? But one good sample does not a gold mine make,right? I seem to remember your mentioning the nugget effect in sampling ....a few more tools for gold and mineral locating I am learning here.. Thanks. -T

Thanks Chris, I will remember that not all gossans are rich in gold but at least I kinda know now what a gossan looks like thanks to that websites photos. I seem to remember a copper find in central Wisconsin from around 1996 in Ladysmith, Wi. $400 million in copper ore underneath a Gossan . I think it was Kennecott that mined it under strict supervision from Wisconsin DNR who was concerned about sulfide pollution to the nearby river.and I heard rumors of a fair amount of gold recovered as well , but never knew what the gossan thing looked like at all until now. I understand the word Gossan comes from the Cornish miners of the 1800's era in England? -T

I found a COOL website that shows several color photos of Gossans including one laced with GOLD. They are large rusty iron caps produced when iron pyrites are exposed to air and water and the rusting process begins. I even found out they can catch on fire due to heat produced in the oxidation reaction. Apparently the copper mine at Jerome, Arizona had an underground fire due to this phenomenon. I also just learned from watching a Jeff Williams seminar on YouTube, that the Vulture gold mine in Arizona, was found by Henry Wickenburg as a result of his examining a RED Iron gossan cap he found on Vulture Mountain. His samples were loaded with visible gold it seems. -Tom V. http://au-prospecting.blogspot.com/2013/02/gold-and-gossan.html

And the HF pinpointer is on sale for $17 -T