The following articles are meant to help out fellow prospectors
"Gold
ProspectingThe
ultimate Game of Hide and Seek" Many
books and articles have been written about gold prospecting and gold
recovery. They offer a general idea of the most likely places to find
and collect gold flakes and small nuggets. Most rivers and streams
that are mentioned, are the ones that flow through known gold bearing
regions. The gold flakes are liberated from there host rock by many
types of natural occurrences such as: Erosion, Freezing and Thawing,
Glacial slides, etc. These gold flakes and small nuggets are
discovered in the creeks and rivers by test panning and visibly
looking at the material for noticeable gold particles. This is
called: Looking for color. When gold particles are seen in the test
panning, then it is obvious that the area is a good place to collect
many more gold flakes and possibly small nuggets if the prospector
digs enough sand and dirt.The
biggest problem with all of this known information and the articles
and books and discussions, etc, Is this: No one ever mentions the
vast majority of the well hidden gold that is usually much more
abundant and yields much more reward for the effort. There are
literally thousands of prospectors out there searching for gold and
finding limited amounts simply because they have no idea how much
gold they missed or actually put back in its environment because they
did not see the color. Looking for color is very important but it
cannot be the final determining factor of whether or not gold is
actually present in the region. Not seeing any color, Usually causes
prospectors to assume the area is not worthwhile and so they go
somewhere else and look for color.I
am going to mention several facts in this paragraph that will clarify
many misunderstandings about liberated, placer gold. This information
will be very helpful to all of you that are serious about prospecting
and collecting more gold. Fact number one: Gold that actually looks
like gold, has been moving around in the river sands within the last
decade or so. Gold particles that are staged in the river bank
gravels are layered there based on the flood stage, high water flow
that brought them there. The reason the gold particles have a bright
golden color is because of the abrasion during storm movement. This
is the case in all waterways that contain placer gold. Fact number
two: Ancient river bed material has the potential of hiding much
larger quantities of placer gold. These deposits are known as
benches. These deposits are located at various levels above the
present water flow level. Often times these layers can be identified
by studying the eroded river banks and taking note of the sedimentary
layers particularly the rusty looking layers that obviously contained
large quantities of iron. As the river was cutting its pathway down
through the earth, various old layers from centuries back can be
observed. Fact number three: Digging and sampling the ancient gravels
and sands will very seldom show bright, shiny gold particles. The
gold from these layers will be hidden within rust and mineralization.
Imagine a gold coin buried for centuries in a soil that contains iron
and lime and many other minerals. If you were to dig it up and take a
close look, would you expect it to look like gold? It would actually
be coated with rust or mineralization based on the surrounding soil
structure and the minerals within this matrix. Liberated gold
particles and nuggets from centuries ago were traveling in a slurry
of mud and various minerals until they became settled and trapped in
specific layers based on particle weight and size. These gold
particles blend in with their surrounding earth mineral colors,
especially rust color.Samples
of material should be extracted from river banks by digging into and
slightly below the rusty colored layers. These samples should be
panned very carefully and the heaviest material should be closely
inspected with a strong magnifying glass or scope. If gold is spotted
hiding within this material then certain quantities should be
excavated and placed into buckets and taken to a place where it can
be carefully panned or sluiced for maximum recovery of this hidden
gold. When you begin finding areas that have certain quantities of
this hidden gold, you should excavate sections of this material in a
horizontal pattern in line with the estimated sedimentary layer. This
material can be placed in plastic buckets and taken home for
processing.The
well hidden gold that you extract from these ancient benches is
basically locked up in mineralization and the rusty, chunky pieces
need to be thoroughly cleaned up and broken apart by a gentle
chemical process. There are several safe chemicals that can be used
for this. One of my favorites is: C.L.R. , (stands for: Calcium,
Lime, Rust), It is available at most hardware stores and large retail
stores in the shower cleaning and detergents area. Another simple
mixture of Sodium and White Vinegar , (Rock Salt and White Vinegar),
Works very well. You simply stir in approx two cups full of this type
of mild acid along with water to slurry all of the dry dirt that you
have in the bucket. Now you put the bucket away for two or three days
and let it soak and gently dissolve the minerals that are hiding the
gold particles. After a few days you will need to add plenty of fresh
water and stir vigorously to scrub the material and liberate the gold
so that it can be extracted by panning or whatever method you prefer.
Now the Hidden Gold will be visible and you have just won this game
of Hide and Seek. Author:
Ed Eckley Co-Owner Sidewinder Sluice LLC Date:
05/24/2015
"Illusive
GoldThe
True Mother Load" Throughout
the centuries mans quest for Gold and precious metals has been
focused on the noticeable or visible material that can be extracted
from the earth with minimal effort using gravity and water to harvest
these metals from their surrounding gravels and soils. I
am going to speak primarily about Gold in this article. Most
prospectors and miners realize that Gold has a specific gravity of
19.5 and that means it is much heavier than surrounding earth
particles of its equivalent size. For example, a particle of gold
that is 1/8” should easily out weigh a particle of granite, quartz,
etc, by at least 4 to 5 times if that surrounding particle is the
same size. This type of situation makes it very simple to pan the
gold very quickly because of its weight by volume. The problem is
this: Particles of gold 1/8” or larger, actually make up a small
percentage of the known placer gold around the earth. The fact is:
Over 80% - 90% of the liberated, particle, (placer), gold on the
earth is smaller than the human eye can see. We are talking about
massive amounts of micron sized gold that actually blows in the wind,
runs down the muddy rivers in floods, and accumulates in small
temporary layers during flood water rescission.The
vast majority of this micron gold cannot be panned or extracted in
river or stream water because of the viscosity index of the water
itself. The micron gold particles will go into suspension and drift
right out of the pan during agitation. Therefore, the visible gold
particles that you may capture when you are sampling an area, only
represent a small fraction of the gold that you actually put right
back into the river or stream. This is especially true in areas where
the viscosity of the water is increased by seasonal changes in the
water itself. Things like bacteria, algae, and other organic products
that make the water less suitable for affective panning.It
is very important to take your known gold bearing concentrates to a
controlled water environment for your careful extraction of the gold
particles. Many of you already recognize the importance of careful
screening, (classifying), the material to increase your odds of
successful gold extraction, but there are several more very important
things to know if you want to increase your odds even more. In the
next paragraph I am going to list several very important steps that
will increase your gold yield by possibly as much as 3 to 4 times if
you are careful with your material and follow these steps.-
The water environment is important for all fine gold extraction
methods including: Hand Panning, Spiral Wheel, Shaker Table, Blue
Bowl, etc, etc…..-
Clean, Warm water at a temperature above 90 degrees helps to decrease
buoyancy and helps prevent the micro particles of Gold from floating
away.-
Additives such as thinners and surfactants help control the water
viscosity.There
are many other tricks that we will discuss at a later time. For now
we will discuss the best way we have discovered for capturing the
Micron Gold particles at a much higher percentage than other known
methods. This captured material must be taken to a controlled
process, not the river or stream. Material separation at the river or
stream will absolutely result in measurable loss of Gold.My
wife, Sharon, and myself, have been prospecting for Gold since the
early 1980’s and we have certainly captured lots of Gold. The thing
we were missing was the majority of the illusive micron Gold. In
fact, we were loosing the majority of the gold that we were sluicing
for. We did not realize this until we began studying our tailings
very carefully with microscope magnification.One
early spring day in April 2010, Sharon Eckley had an incredible idea
about the natural water flow activities in our nearby mountain
canyons. She began drawing sketches of the way rivers are cut into
the landscape of the earth. She mentioned to me that the larger
quantities gold we had captured in the past, had been extracted from
the upper layers of the river bends after floods and storm deposits.
She had the idea of creating a sluice system that could replicate
this natural proven method of trapping and staging the tiny Gold
particles in specific layers. I immediately realized she was
absolutely right to think this way. It occurred to me that women are
often times quite ingenious in their thoughts about relativity or
process, specifically where scientific discoveries are concerned. I
believe women are more in tune with Gold Prospecting than most men
realize.I
quickly recognized a possibility of replicating natural river flow
fluid dynamics and so we built a sluice box that induced a reverse
spiraling vortex within the mainstream flow path. This first
prototype performed so well that we immediately realized vast amounts
of micron could be captured in layers. The larger particles of placer
gold were trapped on the bottom just like all of the other sluices we
had previously used, but now there was another action taking place. The
hidden Micron Gold was now in our grasp and we were taking it home!
This often times yields upwards of 4 to 5 times as much gold by
capture.
Unfortunately there seems to be more
Negative thoughts and information than Positive when it comes to Gold
prospecting and Gold recovery. Everywhere you look there is more and
more opinionated Fiction out there than True Facts! …. Our advice
to everyone that is serious about Gold, is to search out and follow
Positive and Successful people ….. Learn the Truth and develop a
better understanding.
Fiction:
The old timers got all of the Gold
There is no place to find Good Gold
You need thousands of dollars worth of
equipment to get Gold
Gold prospecting is harmful to the
environment
Gold originated in outer space and
somehow sprinkled down onto the earth by some cosmic event.
Gold is most important for Jewelry and
adornment
Fact:
All of the mining taken place
throughout history has Not yielded more than a very small percentage
of the actual Gold that is hidden within the earth.
There are hundreds of thousands of good
places to find Gold. Some have larger quantities than others, but
Gold is available never the less.
Capturing and Recovering Gold can be as
simple as using a five dollar Gold Pan…. It is up to the prospector
to utilize the equipment that they choose.
Gold prospecting Is Not harmful to the
environment … Often times it can actually be a good
thing!….Responsible prospectors will clean up the trash and waste!
Gold is a natural earth mineral that is
a very important element in part of earth’s creation along with
other important metals that establish natural balance of all living
things!
Jewelry and adornment is actually the
very lowest priority of Gold usage. The highest priority is
Electronics followed by Medical followed by many industrial
applications and so forth.
It is very important to separate Facts
from Fiction when you become serious about Gold Prospecting and
Recovery!
