The Quest for Maine Gold

[OreCart]

Besides research that suggested this was a good area to sample for gold, these large pieces of quartz float in the stream was a good indication that I should sample here. As I said, it proved to have gold.

Beyond being a possible spot for placer gold, since it rises pretty high on the right side of the stream, it might be possible to locate this vein and put in an addit and drive a drift into the mountainside.

 

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[OreCart]

The second picture accidentally added above, shows kind of why these streams have not been checked for gold; they do not exactly look like they would have gold in them. They are obviously not even on a map either...

 

[triple d]

Yes the gold can help you in finding veins. When present the bigger chunkier gold. Will tell you when your close to the source.And if your finding larger amounts of gold. But then the stream must be pretty close to the veins. Good job i don"t think you panned long. And got 3 pieces. Id say thats great. Look to see if the schist, shale or bedrock is in the stream. If so good place to test.You said you had garnets. Another good sign. Also look for the rusty crumbly rocks if you find some bring home and crush. They will usually have Quartz, Garnets, mica and other types of rocks in them. Called conglomerate

 

[OreCart]

Yes the gold can help you in finding veins. When present the bigger chunkier gold. Will tell you when your close to the source.And if your finding larger amounts of gold. But then the stream must be pretty close to the veins. Good job i don"t think you panned long. And got 3 pieces. Id say thats great. Look to see if the schist, shale or bedrock is in the stream. If so good place to test.You said you had garnets. Another good sign. Also look for the rusty crumbly rocks if you find some bring home and crush. They will usually have Quartz, Garnets, mica and other types of rocks in them. Called conglomerate

No, I got ten "flakes" in all. I am not really sure what sizes really are, I call these "flakes" because my wife used a set of tweezers to pick them out of the pan. You could not quite get your fingers on them, but they were not dust either.

I did (3) 10 inch panful's. Two I did at the stream, but the third I brought home just to have my wife verify what I saw, my take being 4 flakes, 3 flakes, then 3 more flakes at home.

I was kind of silly that day because I was originally going to look for outcroppings of rock, but when it was all snow covered, I went to the stream instead. I always carry my pan in my backpack, so I can sample streams if they are open. But by the time I got all the way down there, I realized I had to do afternoon chores (I own a farm) and then pick up my daughter at school, so I had to come right back.

It is hard being a trophy-husband and having to take care of the kids while my wife is working, and the farm takes a bit more work now that lambing season is here, but someone has to do it, so it minds well be me I guess. (LOL)

 

[OreCart]

I got the results back on that ore sample I sent in. It is nothing special, but shows that gold is here.

3-1/2 grams of gold per ton

4-1/4 grams of silver per ton

That site was pretty remote, so I am going to see if I can find a more lucrative spot, and one that is more convenient to get too. There MAY be a few places that I can use grid-based power, and I think that will lower my overall operating cost should/if I can; mine it.

 

[triple d]

The stream sounds like a better bet. With a sluice or highbanker. Should at least pick up some pocket change. And hopefully there"s some better hardrock areas. And also better areas in the stream.

 

[OreCart]

The stream sounds like a better bet. With a sluice or highbanker. Should at least pick up some pocket change. And hopefully there"s some better hardrock areas. And also better areas in the stream.

Yeah the hunt continues for sure.

I have been logging these last few days, but it is raining out today. Sadly, not hard enough. If it was, there would be no snow left, but it is just enough to be wet, but not really make the snow melt. Thankfully it is warm though, now in the 40's so the snow is mealy, and should we ever get a heavy dose of rain, would liquify it nicely. That will allow me to get out to the little streams and sample.

The heavy rain would have kept me from logging too. I did alright yesterday, and started out fine today, but then slipped a chain.

WARNING: RANT ABOUT TO START!

Why oh why oh why, is the only place a person ever slips a chain, or throws a bulldozer track; is in the deepest mud to be found. And not to mention engineers that make just enough room between the axle and the rim for the chains to jam on. It took me an hour, but between a lining bar from hades, and hooking onto the set of chains with the winch, I was able to winch/pry the set of chains off the axle without snapping said axle in half.

But on a better note, the frost is going out, hence all the mud. I think my clothes were so muddy that this tub-o-lard weighed twice as much as when I left to go up in the woods.

I might try to get in the woods again later, but we'll see.

 

[OreCart]

On a mediocre note: I shipped off another Lode Sample off to the lab.

It is neither good nor bad, but I do not trust the results of the assay I had the other day. I did not say anything as I was not sure, but I had a man who is well versed in mining confirm my suspicions.

I will not say the name of the lab because it is possible that my test results would come back the exact same as someone else's from the same assay lab, but it really seems suspicious. I am talking the EXACT same numbers on both silver and gold. The chances of that, on BOTH silver and gold, are possible, but pretty remote. And here the post office moves about as fast as Pony Express Days, so the turn around time, while fast, was almost impossibly fast.

So I did some checking, and I cannot find any accreditation or certification in terms of testing the tester.

While I am not one to accuse anyone readily of scamming, and for me it would just be easier to do the assay and not fake it, well it would be pretty easy to deduce a no-name prospector, in a no-name town, would never reassay the same lode sample, or compare notes with someone else. And it would be pretty lucrative to take the person's money and just send back a result that they send to all no-name prospectors, and never assay the sample.

I do not care what the assay comes back as, I just want accurate results.

Again, it is possible that the silver and gold were the exact same, even from rock spanning half the country, but it seems suspicious.

 

[OreCart]

Another day of Rinse and Repeat.

I had thought that with temps in the 40’s, and a little light rain the day before, that the snow would have been melted and the streams opened up. The snow has significantly gone down, but it is still up to my knees in most places in the woods, and so stream after stream I visited, was still covered over in snow.

That was until I got to the last one. It was one on my sampling list, and it was running. I panned about ten pans, and got 6 flakes, but it is obvious, this stream is lackluster.

It has a lot of issues. The first is that it is very small. It probably is 2 feet wide at most, and circles off a mountain, so it is not draining a lot of acreage. I also never found bedrock, just gravels and muck, but that might have been because when we logged the area, we bulldozed around the stream. It is really hard to get away from the sedimentation of doing that.

It will stay on my list of streams to pan as it was not a washout by any means, as it had gold, and is an interesting spot, but the other stream was better.

 

[triple d]

I would look for a company. Thats been in business for a long time to send. Your samples to. But ive watched some videos. Of the process. And they get the samples in and out the same day. Remember to look for signs of veins in the streams. And the rocks can tell you a lot. The streams have already done a lot of your work for you. Our snow is mostly gone. So there is hope. Hang in there buddy.

 

[OreCart]

I would look for a company. Thats been in business for a long time to send. Your samples to. But ive watched some videos. Of the process. And they get the samples in and out the same day. Remember to look for signs of veins in the streams. And the rocks can tell you a lot. The streams have already done a lot of your work for you. Our snow is mostly gone. So there is hope. Hang in there buddy.

I have a few samples due to come back from a few other assayer's now, so that should put my fears to rest.

Nothing is as truthful as gold in the pan, and so far two of the two streams I have checked, have panned out...literally. That means there must be lode gold nearby. I would like to check out some more streams today, but they guy that wants one of the sawmills, is in a hurry for it, and I would like to get a few more boards out of it before it leaves. So I got to log today instead of playing in the dirt or the streams.

In talking to the geologists yesterday about possibly finding Platinum, I told them about trenching across my field to get an indication of the frequency of quartz veining (every 20 feet? Every 40 feet, etc) and checking to see which veins look the most promising. They seem surprised that I would go to that length to deduce what I have for bedrock, but it only makes sense. Bedrock is not that far down, and to trench it would not be that costly or time consuming.

 

[OreCart]

I was semi-able to sample a stream I have been meaning to sample for gold.

It is a pretty big stream, and on the southern end of the farm. It drains a pretty big area of about 500 acres, and first runs almost due north, then rounds a big horseshoe bend, and within a few hundred feet, reverses course 180 degrees and runs due south. It is at the apex of this horseshoe curve that looked promising, but it has been snowed in.

Today I checked it again, and 99% of it was snowed in still, but I found a section that was open just enough to test pan. I found 2 specks of gold in 10 pans, but I am not sure I have written this stream off because of the lack of gold.

If you look at the pictures, you can see I was extremely limited where I could sample due to the snow and ice, and the water was really flowing where I could sample pan. I think in low water, and picking the insides of a bend, and looking for the eddies and bedrock, I could put myself in a more conducive spot to finding gold.

This pot holds water most of the year, and has pretty good flow too, so of all the streams I have sampled thus far, this has been the only one I can run a sluice.

This picture is looking upstream.

 

[OreCart]

For the record I did NOT play hookey in terms of logging.

I went out this morning and got some logs out, and was sawing into the third log when the hit-and-miss slab slipped off the log and wedged itself into the outfeed guide. Within seconds it dynamited, blowing the band and tweaking the guide where the slab had wedged inside it. I went back to the house to have the shop make a new bandsaw blade for me, and then had lunch. Then in the afternoon I went back in the woods to pull some more logs out, but I was busting through the frost. I had to back up and get a running start to get over the mud/ice. It was pretty clear, that was my last trip out of the woods for awhile.

So figuring I was up by the sawmill anyway, and out of commission on both logging and sawing lumber, I minds well hike down to the stream and test pan it.

The boys will weld together a new bandsaw blade tomorrow, so I will be back at it then, repairing the damaged guide wheel bracket, and putting on a new bandsaw blade. Gold, sawdust and ice; Just another day of retirement in Maine!

 

[OreCart]

Oh here is another view of that icy stream. I am still looking upstream in this picture, but I am down a few hundred feet from where I test panned in the last picture.

It is pretty obvious, it has been awhile since we logged down here!

 

[OreCart]

It is windy and snowy here today. I did manage to get out and ample another stream, but that is or a different reply. With the wife sick, the storm raging, I retreated home and set about looking at old documents I had kicking around.

The problem with old documents is, you look at them 100 times and still find something new. I am not sure how I missed this, but I found another gold mine near the house. Like the other one, it is four miles away and had confirmed Gold and Silver. Unlike the other one though, this one was four miles south, while the other one was four miles north. When I used Google maps to draw a line between the two, my farm was located inline, and halfway between the two.

No wonder I am finding gold, so did the old duffers.

I thought it was an interesting historical notation for sure. Again, this area of Maine is not known for being gold bearing...

 

[OreCart]

Todays discovery was a new stream, a teeny-tiny one that is for sure. It might be 18 inches wide, but closer to 12" as it had barely enough depth, and width to drop in my 10 inch pan. It does not drain a lot of acreage being at the top part of a hill, and the hill being the dividing line between two watersheds. Yet the stream was open, had a gravelly bottom, and yielded gold.

Not that it was much gold granted; 5 specks in 5 pans, but it was a lot like yesterday, where 90% of the stream is stilled iced and snowed over, so I could only pan in the open water.

I am pretty happy though, I expected this stream to yield a big fat goose egg (no gold) so it will be a stream I return to and see if I can find a better place to pan whenever the snow decides to melt.

Normally for a test area I do 10 test pans, but I was getting cold because of the heavy snow, and when I went to take a picture to show everyone what I meant by small-small stream...I had left my SD Card for my camera at home. I did not want to hike to the next spot which was over a mile away and not be able to take pictures, and being wet and cold, I headed home.

 

[OreCart]

Well my hunt for gold has changed course, and I suppose I should say I am on the hunt for precious metals.

After really spending some time researching what I had saw regarding the Platinum Metal Group, I began to see just what metal of the six in the group it was. The only one that would not tarnish and be spiny, whose picture looked identical to what I saw, and whose host rock had the copper-zinc sulfides I have found here in abundance; was Palladium.

Only after coming to that conclusion did I realize how much that rock is worth! Holy suffering snot balls....

So I called the Maine Geological Survey, and after speaking at length with them, and them researching the issue, they said they had just a conference on the Platinum Metals Group and that Maine has the potential for this group, but that no one is really been looking for individual platinum metals. The mineralization that I have been finding, coupled with the gold mines in my area, and what they reported in the 1800's, is indicative that the Platinum metals Group would be here.

This one regular geologist is going to see an Economic Geologist in the state tomorrow, and is going to mention what I might have potentially found. That geologist is very busy, but a nice guy apparently, and perhaps might have interest in the situation.

 

[OreCart]

I do have a correction to address:

Since the start of this, I have mentioned the quartz-schist-garnet bedrock as having Melanite Garnet. THAT DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE THE CASE. What I have been calling Melanite is most likely Ilmenite.

Both are black from having titanium in them, but the Ilmenite is only MILDLY attracted to a magnet, whereas Melanite is STRONGLY attracted to a magnet.

My confusion came in because I wrongly assumed, since geologists had identified the bedrock here as garnet-bearing, then it was a true garnet. It is Melanite's sister Ilmenite, according to the geologist.

 

[triple d]

Ore cart garnets are good. And are usually with gold. But are pretty much every where. Some places there so heavy it makes it hard to pan. Hemitite can be in cubes and can thought you off also. When looking for platnum. Good research. And good reading. Thanks

 

[OreCart]

Ore cart garnets are good. And are usually with gold. But are pretty much every where. Some places there so heavy it makes it hard to pan. Hemitite can be in cubes and can thought you off also. When looking for platnum. Good research. And good reading. Thanks

I have not run into hematite that I know of anyway. I have heard of it being around gold-bearing areas, and may or may not have it. I really have to research that better for sure.

I am not sure when I will be able to check some more streams out. I have been doing good, so new exploratory streams are getting further, and further away from the house. Snow storms are expected over the next few days too. Jeesh; when will winter end!

The cold that returned has been good and bad. So far I still have my sawmill, so I got that fixed and having been making round wood into rectangular shapes. With the ground frozen again, I have been sneaking out logs, so I have not really taken the time to prospect. I also had to wait around for a bunch of guys to check out my skidder I have for sale. They seem to be pretty serious about buying it, giving me some money as hold-money. Honestly I wish they would just pay me when they show up with the lowbed. If a guy says he wants something, then I will not sell it to anyone else. I am not like that, but they insisted.

On another front, we decided to start a new business as if farming, logging and mining was not enough. Katie has wanted to get done banking for awhile now, and when a friend closed her Day Care we knew there was a real need in the area. We got a big house we are not using, so rather then sell it and have cash, but lose net worth, we thought a Day Care business would give us both net worth and income. We used to be foster parents so that house already met state specifications for the American's with Disabilities Act, so it should not be that bad to become a Day Care. And unlike Gold, Silver and Pallidum, people seem to be making more children all the time! :-)