thought i had some!

[timberjack]

I had heard stories of an old gold mine in the next town over that had an assay that showed a little gold (1850) never any known production. Well thats super rare around here. I have not seen it on any maps or read about it in my reasearch, but i have a buddy thats in his 90's and he rememderd hearing about it as a kid, told me the genral part of town. I have been looking at the topo map and walking around in the woods for a while now, figured it had to be in an area were there were a bunch of outcrops. Somehow today while taking my gold bug 2 for a walk i walked right to it,,not much of a hole in the ground, apparently they were following a quartz vein in the host metamorphic bedrock that contains lots of iron. There was a bunch of diffrent shades of orange to white quartz which i swung over carfuly with no signal,,just a couple of real cold rocks. I went around to the uphill side of the diggings figuring mabey they threw some good stuff oppisit the tailings and got a hell of a hit under the pine needles and moss, thought it was probably a beer can but was surprised to find a watermelon size hunk of host rock tranistioning to real orange quartz with a bunch of black at the contact. When i rolled heavy baxtard out of its hole i swung over it agine and the detector just screamed, i hit the high minralzation and iron discrimination switches and it did a weird high pitched double deep,,but loud..well i smashed it into packable sized peices and loaded the peices that gave the loudest signals, walked the 2 miles back out in the horrendous black flies. When i got home i looked over the freshly fractured faces with my loop and ill be!!! Looked like a little color in some of peices ( small), well thats the quickest i have ever crushed and panned a sample,,turned the water jet black,,no gold.that i could see..i think it was arseneopirite..just a ton of magnetic black sand that was very slow to pan with shiny larger peices that were not magnetic but brittle. I was surprised that after i crushed the sample that made the bug scream once it was in the pan as dust the bug had a much much weaker signal?? Was a fun trip,,,you just never know!!! Im going to try to figure out posting pics, pretty neat looking samples.

 

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[DesertNuggets]

Better luck next time! Those #$@& flies are horrible this time of year.

 

[Hoser John]

Better luck next time as the knowledge gained was the gold for the day, and that ain't all bad-John

 

[Lanny in AB]

As John says, every bit of learnin' will teach you what to avoid as well as what to look for next time.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[prospect007]

try roasting the black sand, then re-crush, re-pan. you never know! you said arsceneopyrite(sulfides), have to drive off sulfur to see gold.

 

[timberjack]

Im gonna try that,,,,but i would like to be working a spot that had free gold that was at least visabel. Looking thru the loop you can see what looks like small veins of gold in the host rock, but, when crushed and wet in the pan there is a gold shimmer on top of the black sands whick i think is pyrite, that gold shimmer is the first to was away after the quartz when panning
Its funny how my mind works, on the way out of the woods i was looking to see where i could walk my excavator and thinking where i would could cut in a road ,wondering if my hydraulics would run that rock hammer my buddies selling..mabey next time .....if you dont look you wont find it!

 

[timberjack]

Trying to post pics of the ore

 

[timberjack]

Trying another
This stuff makes the bug scream

 

[timberjack]

Last one
If you blow it up i think you can see the pirite that fooled me,,,i did find that i can scratch-flake it off the rock and when looking with a loop can see the pirite dust attracted to a magnet,,valubale lesson learned