I just started using Topo maps,Geo maps to help find bedrock rivers and deposits, and quaternary map for material deposits. So I was out prospecting, and the area I was testing had a nice red layer only a few inches deep in the gravel bar inches from the water. While I found no gold in my test pans. I did find some very heavy material that acted like gold or lead. Being that I'm in ohio. I mainly hunt glacial deposits close to rivers. I think I found a river with a rich galena deposit. Does anyone have a picture of small Galena fragments in their pan so I can cross referance?
The chunks of galena I find while panning or dredging are never sharp. Any edges have been rounded off as they've travelled a distance from the source. But, when I smash them, they are a bright silver gray inside.
When I used to chase the gold up north, we used to get lots of little cubes of galena in the pan and the sluices. It was an awful nuisance.
If you're working in a red layer, that says more iron to me than anything else, but that doesn't mean galena can't be traveling with the iron as gold, galena and iron all like to travel together as they're all members of the heavy family of minerals.
You say they're sharp on the end? Like poke yourself they'll easily stick in sharp?
Have you tried a crush test on any of them yet? If you smash them with a rock or hammer, and if they're Galena, they'll shatter very easily and reveal that bright silvery gray I've talked about earlier. If they don't shatter, and if they flatten out instead, they you might have pieces of lead from a battery or something else. It's amazing what I've found while dredging; almost anything goes!
If you try the shatter test and they break off in chunks or pieces but don't crush or flatten out like lead, you've got something else again.
All the best,
Lanny
