A few beach mining questions

[A#1]

I went out on the Lake Michigan shore line and wandered till I found a nice big patch of black sand about 3/4 inch thick or so.

I ran a bunch thru the sluice, and didn't get nothing.

I learned quite a bit though, and left with a few questions.

will a specific place along a shoreline that collects black sand, continue to collect it?

Does the grain size of the black sand tell me anything? This black sand was much larger than what I've seen in the past.

About 5 miles away, I sampled a spot, and got 2 little chunks of gold, but the sand generally was much finer.

 

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[Mudflap]

Wonder if the black sand your seeing is old stamp sands from the copper industry.....

 

[A#1]

Shouldnt be, I'm a long ways from copper country 300 plus miles, and most of that was on an entirely different great lake, Lake Superior.

Just as I walked along, the grain size of even the blonde sand changed, you could feel it with your feet. The fine stuff felt like walkimg on hard packed, but wet mortar, when it got coarse I'd sink in with each step.

Out of about a mile of beach I walked, there were traces of black over about a third of it, and one spot probably 10 by 40 foot that had any real deposit. At the surfice on the high side, and maybe 4 inches down on the water side.

There were fines in there, but it was predominantly coarse, and a lot of garnet.

 

[et1955]

Placer mining on a river is different, gold deposition is based on flooding but on your lake winds determine it, direction of the wind and wave intensity will determine where the gold will be deposited, one thing I have learned about beach mining here in western Washington is to forget surface deposits and dig down till you hit an old deposit. Good Luck

 

[A#1]

Thing there's any reason to choose one deposit over another?

One area of beach over another?

Is an are where a creek flows out more desireable?

Will the gravels in the water talk to me? I walked thru areas of large rocks, little rocks, and shale I think.

I've honestly never really paid attention to a beach like that until recently.

I can find plenty of intel on how to read a creek, but can't find much on how to read a beach, or a coastline.

I suppose ot could almost change in minutes, with storms, seasons.

Any good books on beach mining?

 

[arizau]

Not books but a couple of google searches for you. https://www.google.com/search?q=bea...j69i57j0l2.14262j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
https://www.google.com/search?q=gre...1.69i57j33.14495j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.


Maybe those coarse Black Sand deposits lay above seams of fine BS? Digging through the top sand on Oregon and Washington beaches often reveal seams of almost pure BS and that is the favorite feed for beach miners there.

 

[A#1]

Thanks for that.

I kicked around Google a bit, but hadn't thought of that search string.

I'll try digging deeper tonight. I only really went maybe 4 inchws or so past the first layer

 

[Capt Nemo]

You might have been hitting black stained sands. I hit some in Door County that had very little magnetite. It comes from rotting vegetation.