Prospectors

[Faron]

The Grandkids and I were discussing  glaciers in Indiana and the fact that they brought small amounts of gold with them.  A little research revealed the presence of gold in Pike County, our home.  So we decided to give panning a try.  We bought some equipment and gave it a try yesterday.  This was in our first pan.


I guess I must confess, though.  That picture is an image from a microscope. :D  The actual sample is about the size of the end af a toothpick.  But, as best as I can tell, it IS gold.  Anyone else do any panning?

[Ernie]

Every now and then, actually a lot more of the now and less of the then Jan and I talk about selling up, buying a big motorhome and taking off to pan for gold in the South Island.  Fishing and whitebaiting are also high on the motorhome list.  The only problem is, we love our bit of dirt with the sawmill, cattle, sheep and chickens and we just bought an incubator as well.  Boy are we ever a confused old couple.

[Mooseherder]

The subject comes up every Friday when we are watching Gold Rush. :D
I want to get a couple of the pans and swirl some gravel in our creek this summer for kicks and giggles.

[Sprucegum]

Prospecting for gold can be a fun family outing. Way back when it was only $35.00 an ounce I knew a family that paid for their sumer vacation each year with what they found. He had built a small rocker out of aluminum so he could carry it to the stream. From then on the kids aged 12, 11, 9, 7 did all the "work" and Mama got the gold!  :D

I used liquid mercury to pick the gold out of the pan - had maybe half an ounce in a tiny bottle. My one-year-old got into it somehow but we couldn't tell if he had drank it or just spilled it so we rushed to the hospital. They took x-rays but didn't find any gold or mercury. I didn't find any in that old shag rug at home either  ???  ???

[OlJarhead]

Hate to dredge up an old thread (wow I didn't even mean to be that punny) but our property is right in an area full of gold mines and small short lived gold rushes from over 120 years ago...some big mines mere miles away even. 

Anyway, I keep seeing minerals in the rocks laying all over and a now past geologist neighbor kept telling I likely have gold deposits on my property. 

There is even a seasonal stream that ran a lot more in days long past, so much so it carved out a valley so I keep thinking of looking.

Here's a rock a picked up last summer likely just pyrite but keeps me thinking of doing a little gold hunting. 


 

 

[Magicman]

I love the prospect of having a rich friend.  This is better'n them lottos-n-stuff.  

[OlJarhead]

lol maybe he can find an ounce or two to be able to afford a flight to next year's BBQ 😉

We've been lining our driveway with these rocks and I keep thinking  "what if there is gold in them?" 😆   Gold lined driveway!  

[SawyerTed]

Your piece of heaven - streets of gold and all that!   :D

[beenthere]

Time to get a crusher, and have at it. Then an excavator and then a sluice box and a pan. Need lots of water maybe. 

[OlJarhead]

lol or just get a pan and a sluice and teach the grands to Placer mine ;)  and then when they find gold tell them grandpa will keep it safe 😉

[sawguy21]

Back in distant history when I was a young 'un I spent a summer working at Barkerville which was the center of the Cariboo gold rush. We panned the creeks and found the best areas were the tailings piles from the old dredging operations. It was fun but not very lucrative, I think I had a pill bottle about 3/4 full at the end.
Gold was $35/oz USD at the time, the old claims were being sold for anywhere from $75-$150 for taxes. Two years later it was put on the open market and hit $900/oz, the road had been upgraded and there was talk of reopening the mine at Wells. Sigh. :'( Oh well.

[OlJarhead]

This Barkerville?  I love the place and hope to return when it's sunny ()

My sister went when we were living in Ocean Falls back in the mid-70's and really enjoyed it so it was something I always wanted to see and finally in 2019, was able to make the detour on the way to my son's wedding in Chetwynd.

While I was born in Oregon I was raised in BC   All over the provincelol.




 

 

 

[sawguy21]

That's it! I was there in 1971, have been back once since.

[Ianab]

I've done some "prospecting" in computer E-waste.

There is some gold in there, but it's not simple to extract. You need a chemical brew that fist dissolve the base metals, filter those away, then something that will dissolve gold.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroauric_acid

There is a good "nugget" in this pic, the nice round "button", and others than show some gold, but need more refining. Old computer stuff had serious gold plating of connectors and pure gold bonding wires inside the chips. Modern stuff? Not so much. Improved production to lower costs means less gold used. 



 

The best nugget came from finger strips from RAM modules. Dissolve the copper, remove the fibreglass, and then filter out the gold plating. Other extractions are more "messy". 

[SwampDonkey]

Remember those old C-band dishes. The porcelain piece in the antenna had a piece of gold about 1/4" long by 1/8" diameter. I saved one around here someplace. ;D

Should dig up that Klondike Stampede thread in here where Adney was talking about all the placer mining going on up there. That'll spark a little gold fever. ;D

[WCFAK]

 

 

[WCFAK]

The above photo is from an operation I was working last summer in the Brooks Range roughly 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle. I managed to post the picture but wasn't quite bright enough to have the dialog in the same post.

[bigblockyeti]

Looks like fun, but too cold for my blood!  You need to get some Discovery channel money in there like those Gold Rush fellas did.  All woe and want one minute then magically a new $600K loader just shows up at their disposal.

[beenthere]

WCFAK

have the dialog in the same post.

You can click the modify button on far right of your post with the photo and there can add the dialog to your post. Works every time.  ;)

[OlJarhead]

I've watched some of the shows up there.  Fascinating but it dies seem they don't often make much $$$

[WCFAK]

Bigblockyeti. It is fun and mid June to mid July the temp can reach 80 degrees sometimes.

 Beenthere, thanks for the info.

 OldJarhead, most small scale miners don't make much if anything. Unless you hit a rich "pocket" and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on one of those to show up. Mining is pretty much a numbers game. You have to process a lot of material to make a good profit. On the Gold Rush show Parker does good because he moves a lot of gravel per year, but his fuel bill is also spectacular. The mines that do real well are the large scale hard rock mines, Pogo, Fort Knox. Greenscreek etc.. The Fort Knox mine near Fairbanks averages around 1000 oz. per day but their operating cost are astronomical.

[SwampDonkey]

It even cost a fortune on the Klondike rush.

Recently they found a guy squatting up there and the reason they found him was he was Youtubing about it. Authorities ousted him.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/matthew-clarke-youtube-cabin-ensley-creek-1.6389899

[OlJarhead]

wow.  I have to believe he thought he had a claim and it was ok...maybe not right but I wonder if he thought it worked that way.

I know a lot of Canucks believe all sorts of things about mining claims that are more often than not, untrue 

[SwampDonkey]

Judging from the report it was obvious he tried to dodge or ignore the order to leave. So he knew. He probably thought it was so remote an area that no one would ever come along. Ain't too many places you can't be found these days. Some people do however believe there are squatters rights. Because, like my grandfather for instance, he let people dwell on this land. There was a parcel that was boxed in by the highway and the railroad. That sliver of land was no good to him for anything and he was fine with the folks staying there. However, they don't get title or rights to the land, even if they stay there 40 years. No such provision for squatters up here. The sliver was part of 200 acres, that at one time went out into the middle of the river before the hydro dam was put in. He sold off some frontage for building lots over the years, but never that sliver. We inherited that sliver and just let it go to the crown. The guy across the road from it plants a garden there.

[Ianab]

Rainy day here, so been prospecting again.  :D

Got some paydirt to process. 



 

The large square chips with the gold plated corners usually contain gold wires, memory chips often do, the pins of the CPUs are gold plated, as are the edge connectors on the memory modules. Of course it's all tiny amounts, but if you could pan that amount of gold from a bucket of dirt, you'd think it was a pretty good claim. 

But in reality the nickel plated copper heat spreaders on the top of the CPU chips is actually worth more than the gold, and a good desktop heatsink like this is 1/2 a pound of extruded aluminium, and even better if it has a solid copper core you can remove. 



 

Not getting rich any time soon  :D