Gold is where you Find it.

[jethro]

With the weather cooling off a bit on Wednesday it was time to head up into the Hills and do a bit of Hard Rock sampling. The Picture below shows a small Lode of broken slate and what looks like Feldspar as well as some clay, its about 4ft below the natural surface level in the side of a cut the old timers put in which is about 4metres deep. It is carrying very fine gold. There is little if any quartz in it and it is much softer than the schist on either side of it. I thought Id post it up just to show that you dont want to confine your searches to quartz veins.

Ive taken about 15kg of this material to crush and concentrate. If it shows promise Ill try and push a Wheel barrow up to the cut so I can get out a couple of hundred Kgs for a decent test.

 

[A-team]

Thank you for sharing, knowledge is the key! P.S. Loving the pick head!

 

[jethro]

Thank you for sharing, knowledge is the key! P.S. Loving the pick head!

The Pick is just my light weight detecting pick. Made from Car spring, Plow Disc, Pipe. and red gum for a handle. Its the D4 of the pick family. I have a D9 and a vintage Cat 30 as well layful:

Another picture of the cut

Looking straight down into the partially collapsed stope just under where I took the sample.

 

[Moneybox]

Yeah that looks quite safe :lol:

 

[A-team]

Yeah that looks quite safe :lol:

Think Ill "choose" to leave some gold for others....I suffer major claustrophobia - forget the safety issue. (though it all looks like solid rock??)

 

[jethro]

Yeah that looks quite safe :lol:

Think Ill "choose" to leave some gold for others....I suffer major claustrophobia - forget the safety issue. (though it all looks like solid rock??)

Its a bit hard to explain, but the lode channel ( I wont call it a Vein ) dips about 75 degrees to the east as it goes down (dip) it stikes sub parellel to the bedding plane of the country rock, I think this type of fault is called a tension gash. The old fellas opened up a cut wide enough for them to work in and take out the lode about 4ft, but over the years the hanging wall has collapsed onto the footwall and left a solid platform to stand on while I dig out what they left as too narrow to bother with. I wont be getting down into the stope as it is just too dodgy
I dolly'd a bit of ore today and got a nice tiny little tail of ultra fine gold in the dish, probably didnt wash more than 100 grams of -60 mesh.
There is another more defined reef on a top of a ridge 2 gullies over that is very similar in stucture but it runs parralel to the bedding plane of the country rock but is displaced by several cross faults as it goes up the hill. The enrichment seems to be on the reef intersection with the crossfaults. ickshovel:

:goldpan: :goldnugget:

 

[Hunting the yellow]

love it mate how's this for taking samples one of the many old adits I've dug out not easy work but rewarding when you get inside finding relics most of the time there's no connecting shafts to drop down so its all virgin unexplored territory

yes that's my shovel in my hand dug trench 2 full months worth of worth there with a pick shovel and wheel barrow

ps gold makes people do crazy digging like above don't get hooked on it :argh: :lol: :goldnugget:

 

[SWright]

As a mining person I would suggest that is NOT an adit but a stope to surface. There is likely a Winze in there capped with now rotten wood and soil. Been there, done that - not safe.

Araluen

 

[Mackka]

Welcome back Mr. Yellow, I have missed you adventures.
Mackka

 

[Hunting the yellow]

As a mining person I would suggest that is NOT an adit but a stope to surface. There is likely a Winze in there capped with now rotten wood and soil. Been there, done that - not safe.

Araluen

here's another shot looking inside now what is it ? i would still call it an adit there's no connecting shafts or winzes inside to it and it doesn't go through the hill so it is not a tunnel you could call it a cross cut as it cuts across the rock strata but lets not complicate things.

the start/portal/entrance of adit above long time since its been open tree roots coming down from above

reef is running on the side of adit top right with east west running spurs crossing it on left side. the miners put a drive/adit through them both

 

[Hunting the yellow]

Welcome back Mr. Yellow, I have missed you adventures.
Mackka

couldn't resist looking at the hard rock mining section but have been busy building fences and retaining walls little time for fun stuff these days

 

[Upside]

Please be careful digging trenches mate. Collapse happens so quickly you wouldn't even get time to say oh crap. You probably won't get out alive.

Sorry to sound negative, but trenches are highly dangerous.

Check YouTube, type in trench collapse for an eye opening

 

[Mackka]

Hunting knows what he is doing. He has been doing this stuff for years and recorded lots of great info.
Mackka

 

[Hunting the yellow]

Please be careful digging trenches mate. Collapse happens so quickly you wouldn't even get time to say oh crap. You probably won't get out alive.

Sorry to sound negative, but trenches are highly dangerous.

Check YouTube, type in trench collapse for an eye opening

i batch my trenchers if they're deeper than half a meter generally when I dig them I'm standing upright with a pick picking away at the face if in Rocky clay mixed soft earth. And yes I have been digging away and have had small slides happen when I'm deeper than a meter even after batching the sides there's not much you can do about it really so I let it go and once it's all slided into the trench it usually never happens again in the same spot i find silty Rocky ground with no clay the worse to dig in as it's like digging in a sandpit. Old miner's referred to it as running ground. the clay is good because it helps holding the sides of the trench. So far I've opened up 8 different fully blocked Up adits some are duds only go into the hill 10 metres and just stop other's Go for hundreds of metres before you get to the end of them.

 

[Hunting the yellow]

I also don't recommend that others copy what I do for many obvious reasons water gas false floor's under the rotten timber rock's as big as a bus ready to drop on you you need experience to know what the dangers are sure you can read Up on it and watch the videos but unless you have seen it with your own eyes you can juge what will happen better it's like riding a bike for the first time at first you have no idea how to balance it only after experience can master steering it without hand's in a safe environment with no traffic around of course haha but you get my drift/idea