You say you have maybe up to 60 ft. of this type of rock. If you can 'Highgrade' with different types of metal detectors this 60 ft. of rock then crush any of this rock that has any interesting signals you may cut down on your 'Prospecting time' and have a good claim there. The gold may all be very fine in size? The real test is how much per ton on your 'Highgrade' is free milling?Hello
If you can get a hold of someones 4 - 5 inch coil on a older gold detector you may want to try running this coil over some of the different mineral zones in the rocks to see what one can pick up. Best to also crush different mineral zone rocks and pan out to see the finer gold to help get a idea of how much 'Free milling gold' there may be. Finding someone at a local club that has a impact mill as well as a gold cube may also help. One can also go down to a hardware store to make a pipe stamp mill for crushing small rocks. Hope you are on to a good find there.
Forgot to ask the basic question have you seen any gold yet in the rocks?You say you have maybe up to 60 ft. of this type of rock. If you can 'Highgrade' with different types of metal detectors this 60 ft. of rock then crush any of this rock that has any interesting signals you may cut down on your 'Prospecting time' and have a good claim there. The gold may all be very fine in size? The real test is how much per ton on your 'Highgrade' is free milling?
Maybe a lot of the gold is 'Lockup' with sulfides or other minerals? Crushing and test panning should give you some idea here.
Time to pan to see what you may have. Gold will hammer out flat say on a piece of steel. This does not look like gold, however there may be some small gold in there after panning. Go take a look at some of the great gold panning videos under gold panning.This is what I got from crushing a pound of the rocks.
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Very good tips. Thank you.Time to fire up the Google Machine and do some research... No point in starting from scratch when most of the basic leg work has already been done,
written up in report form and posted online.
USGS is not a bad place to start, and then get some historic mine names and mining companies and start researching those... If some company in the recent past has
tried firing up a mine in the area, there are going to be papers and reports on that.. The things in those papers can lead you to better understand what you have, and
how to put it in your pocket.
And learn how to pan... It all starts in the pan and ends in the pan... Nothing wrong with buying paydirt... Sometimes you can even buy "ore", I've got a box over
here I bought on e-bay.. If I run out of my own dirt and rocks and I need a fix, I'll crush some of it up and cool down the gold fever a little.
USGS is not a bad place to start, and then get some historic mine names and mining companies and start researching those...