Allen in MT

Finding ladies old vintage wrist watches at yard sales and converting them to necklace pieces filled with placer gold. My girls now have one.

For a number of years I have had the opportunity of detecting behind an operating gold mine. I get to detect the bedrock behind the excavator before they back fill, Anything under an ounce I get to keep and everything over an ounce I split with the owner each day. And yes, there were a few times I split gold with the owner. This particular day I got a loud signal and found a pick in a low depression of the bedrock shown in picture. It looked like maybe it had been a new one as the tips weren't worn down, but it had been in the ground water for a long time. The handle had totally rotted away or had been broken off as some of it was still in the pick. But judging by the looks of the pick that cold water had really worn the metal. How long ago the old timer's 1st worked this I don't know. It had to have been buried a long time to look like this on both sides. It is a neat conversation piece.

I found this ring years ago on the beach of Flathead Lake. It has the look of a Black Hills ring and is 14KP (plumb) It had a cubic zirconia in it, and I replaced that with a 1 carat Montana Sapphire that I found at Gem Mountain and had cut and kept it for myself.

Well, it was early, and we wanted to get out to the hills, but we had to wait. It was an election day, and you know we had to wait so that we could do our patriotic duty and vote for the lessor of two evils. Voting done were off, of course we forgot half the stuff that we normally take. We have talked about making a check list of things that we need every time we head for the hills. This particular day we are looking for a mine that we found on a map on the internet. Once in the hills we have no problem finding the site, as we are guided by a reference satellite photo and info from DEQ. After looking things over and making plans to come back we are off looking for other mine sites.

We are following the road till we are at its highest point when we come around the corner and low and behold there is one snow drift (the only snow drift left on the mountain) about 40' in length, course back about 100 yards there is another road that goes around this spot. But no, we stop to size it up and I says to Ralph (my prospecting partner) (name changed to protect his identity), go for it Ralph, you can make it. He locks in the 4-wheel drive and off we go. Once we get a full pickup length into it, I realize, faster Ralph faster. We get to about the middle of the drift, and oh crap, there we stop, dead in the middle. Now this is the only sight of snow left on the mountain, and we had to find it and we only have one shovel (his). After digging for a while, we find out the wheels don't touch the ground, they just go round and round, we are high centered. After digging all the snow out from all 4 wheels we gather some wood and rocks and filling in the space between the tires and the ground and after a few tries we did make it out.

To pooped to go far so it was time for lunch. A little later after touring around and looking at old mine sites we set our sights on a dig hole and drag out the detectors, lots of old square nails and positive hot rocks. I'm using the GB2 with 6" coil and Ralph is using the GM4 with regular coil. After a few nails and hot rocks there's this nice Zippp zipppp and flipping to iron ID it sounds good, (just like big nails) and after thinking it's another nail out pops this little golden picker, a 4.5 gm piece. Hey this is alright. I rake some more dirt down and tell my partner, you’ve got a bigger coil, check this hole now see if there anything left. He digs a few more nails and then he moves to another spot and continues detecting, so I go back to the hole and then ZZZZZIIIIPPPPPP ZZIIPP. dang another big square nail, right! Dig a little more, run the magnet through the dirt looking for the nail, still nothing ZZZZZIIIIPPPPPP ZZIIPP now this sounds good, and I grab a hand full of dirt, check the hole nothing, got it in my hand, Hey Ralph look at this, is this what I think it is, Yup, where'd you find it, In the hole you just checked. Anyway, out pops this little, bigger picker, a 30.6 gm. Nothing else found that day. But it was a good day. Allen C

This rock I picked off the Yellowstone River in eastern Montana as it looked odd and then sliced it to see what was inside. ???

Anybody slice a meteorite and make jewelry out of it. These I did with a Gold Basin and had it wrapped in sterling silver for necklace for my girls.

when you are on crack in Montana

Used to have all my rings on the wall in cases that held 72 each. It was time to clean house and I took all the gold rings and sent off to a refinery for a nice tidy sum. Was able to return all class rings and a few wedding rings. Then took all the Sterling/.925 rings and melted the bad and broken ones and kept a tray of 72 for later sales or melt.

This rope as of today has 405 junk or trinket rings on it. Threw out a number of broken rings that wouldn't go on the rope. Maybe someday I will re seed for future detectorists.

I have had the big Minelab's, the Garrets, Whites and Fisher detectors and I keep coming back to the reliable Fisher Gold Bug 2 and I would guess it has found 90% of my gold total. The one pictured was with the GB2 in tailing piles in Idaho and is my biggest. It is 5.56oz

Photo from both ends

What do you do with this stuff from years of detecting. All the gold and silver & diamond jewelry was sent to a refinery and provided me a few thousand dollars spending money, Have a lot more jewelry that is not displayed as there isn't any more room. Hundreds and hundreds of keys and tokens. this is just some of my finds over the years. March box cars, civil war relics from VA. Guess I just leave it and let the kids sort it out.

Spent a lot of time in East Idaho back in this shaft right in the middle of good gold country. shaft goes back some 200 feet with a short drift here and there. Huge seams of quarts all thru this place. Don't know if the old timers found anything in here as I sure didn't. Did get one hit in the wall using GB2with 6" coil (no quartz)and tried to chisel it out with a small 2lb hammer and east wing rock chisel but no go. Nothing outside in the tailing pile other than blasting caps. They had to be chasing something. Is a real nice area with good gold 70 ft away in creek bed.