G
Guest
Good luck - be good to see you come home with a bit
Newbie a tad confused. Yes another one..!
- Thread starter Barney91
- Start date
Help Support Prospecting Australia:
G
Guest
Mate just with the little dog - keep an eye on it or a muzzle. Could be 1080 baits about. I know they have done bait drops out that way due to wild dog issues.
Twapster
Peter
Another word of advice, not all locals can point you in the right direction. Had to laugh when we drove through Hargraves and dropped by the local store. "no gold around here anymore", Half an hour later not far from there we were into some of the best panning i've ever done.
G
Guest
Twapster said:
Not all locals will point you in the right direction either - surprised the local store said that though.
Goldtarget
(AKA OldGT)
mbasko said:Goldtarget said:
Unfortunately out there one specci doesn't mean X marks the spot although it's always worth further investigation. I had found one in a spot there & went back several times with different coils & used 3 different detectors for nothing more.
Check the grader tracks/windrows for sure - borrow a detector if possible. If you only have a pan take a bucket from where the specci came from & take it down to the creek to test pan it? If your mainly interested in panning I would stick to the gullies/creeks this is where the pannable gold will be out there. The majority of gold left there will be either eluvial or alluvial meaning it will have travelled from the reef source/s. You could spend time loaming if you wanted to but what are you loaming for? The reef lines are well defined, known & worked. Loaming is used to find the source - it's already known. Sure there may be some obscure virgin reef out there but it has pretty much been explored from Hill End through to Grattai & anything left would be deep, very deep. Loaming, in my opinion, would not be of much benefit in locating an eluvial or alluvial deposit as results may be patchy & even misleading. The best way is to look for those natural traps - depressions etc. where eluvium will collect & crevices, inside bends, rock bars etc. where the alluvial will be caught.
The quartz veins are long gone evident by the hundreds of metres of costeans, shafts & tunnels. The odd specci or even nugget can be had with a detector by putting in some hard yards & sifting through the tonnes of junk out there.
You might get lucky - at Big Nugget Hill a nugget weighing 106lb was found in the eluvium by an aboriginal shepherd to spark the rush. Maybe they missed one?
All good mate didn't mean in any way to give a bloke a bum steer , not at all familiar with the area, and I guess that shows in my response, and add to the fact no detecting is likely to be done then the point is moot. I was reading it and responding from the point of view that I would start in an area where I knew the gold was occurring. By following up with sampling and investigating the nearby gullies a hearty course load might be in the offing. A grader wouldn't displace dirt at an excessive depth hence the possibility that good gold may be in the surrounds. I love my alluvial, panning highbanking, slicing, but I love a bigger score just as much as the next bloke, just meant I'd start where I might pick up a tidy few easy grams before hitting the shovel pushing out the cubics. We all approach things differently and that's what makes prospecting in the original sense of the pursuit such a great and fascinating pastime. Good luck barney hope you have many gold lined pans in what sounds like a fantastic area to do some productive digging.
Yea she's nasty stuff 1080. She's a brilliant little thing though. Doesn't leave my side at all. Definetly my shadow. Well obviously I'm back and no luck at all. Went up a gully that leads into the main creek and got into a heap of crevices but still no luck. There was some shiny looking things but Extremly tiny so maybe they were the good stuff but I doubt it. Going to try panning a bit of lead to see if I keep it in the pan. Either way I didn't find anything but found a place I will try one day soon and done a bit of 4 wheel driving on the way. Now to settle in and keep warm.
Barney91 said:
earlier today I was going to suggest you start at home with lead ey. shave off some tiny shavings from a sinker or something, weigh it exactly, throw it on ya pan with some other material and get your pan method recovery to a maximum.
if you can recover all the lead, you will recover all the gold!
Barney91 said:Haha thanks 20xwater. I was planning on doing it before I went but I decided bed was to warm and comfy so was running late as it was. Oh well. Things take time. And with you guys help on here is certainly making it easier
use a sieve to classify all your material down to 3mm first and throw that in ya pan, shave the tinyest pieces of lead possible then throw the lead on top in ya pan. make sure ALL the material in your pan is properly liquified with plenty of water as you start your agitation(use fingers to feel as you start agitation,material should feel like its all floating seperated and freely from each other).
the lead is the LAST thing you want to see in your pan!!!!
I don't LOOK for gold, I prospect for it, it is the last thing I want to see, it is the end result of your processing!
Barney91 said:
yeah if ya left with black sand that's good.
I work ground with a highbanker so I only use a pan and the single 3mm sieve to sample ground, I don't even check the sieve anymore because im only interested in recovering colour to give me an idea of how much gold is in a selected area.
I actually use 2 pans when panning, 1 to pan with and the other to pan my recovered colour off into. this way im not stuffing around with snuffer bottles or tweezers in the field.
if your only recovery method is panning then I suggest that when you start finding a bit of good colour to start checking ya sieve(s).
Went out again today. To a spot that people guarantee you will get flakes. No luck as far as I could see. Got to be doing something wrong or maybe just overlooking it in the pan. Brought a black poly pan today (can't remember the brand) so I'll try it tomorrow and hope for the best. Maybe even tonight with the little bit of stuff I brought home
Not every pan will show gold, sometimes finding where the gold isn't is valuable info.
It may not be your technique, but your location on the water course.
Maybe take some photos of where you are processing material from and post them here.
I am happy to help. A picture says a thousand words....
Ryan
It may not be your technique, but your location on the water course.
Maybe take some photos of where you are processing material from and post them here.
I am happy to help. A picture says a thousand words....
Ryan
Twapster
Peter
He went to a spot that is guaranteed to have gold in my opinion, so i'm a little confused. Ok maybe 1 unlucky pan but certainly its a spot where there should be at min a few specs in every pan at minimum. Can a guy really be that unlucky?
Twapster
Peter
We are talking a spot that test pans like the above photo.
Sorry twapster if it seemed like I doubted you, I certainly do not for one minute. Blaming it on myself totally. Been on you tube just then and i think I'm pretty close to what they are showing. Must be not digging in the right spots. I brought some stuff home from there today just panned it in the new pan I brought this afternoon. I think the photo is only shiny because of the light on water.
