Prospecting for lode gold
My friend Dave Wiseman sent me this some years ago (2005) to share with others. I love hearing what people have to say in their own words. Great info for those new to hard rock mining and good reading for the seasoned prospector. Dave has found a lot of gold!
Tools
- 3 LB hammer (single Jack) $3-$10
- Prospecting pick Eastwing with blue grip $35.00
- Two metal gold pans, used or New (Rusty is O.K) $2-$9 Each
- Plastic scrub brush $2.00
- Panning tub – plastic or zinc wash tubs
- Chisel head hand steel 12”-18”
- Gad pointed steel 12”-18”
- 2 ½ foot chisel head or pointed steel about 7/8”-1 1/8 thickness for drifting in when you find a good spot. A form stake can be used, such as cement form stakes sold at building supplies or hardware. Downside, they do not hold their sharpness Long- but can be set again on A grinder. Real mining steels are hard to come by, but at a big flea market, it’s possible to find one or more.
- Sample bags- I use 50 LB feed bags- woven. Plastic feed stores (animals) or people with farms or ranches or canvas coin bags- save your old shoestrings to tie at the top.
- Get a good backpack at Army Navy Surplus Store and a plastic rubberized pan to fit the pack to keep it’s shape and do field sampling. About $35-$40
- Mortar and pestle medium sized or get 3 inch pipe with a capped bottom and a steel-part of an axle will do to crush
Lode Gold Prospectors
Sampling:
Find your veins in a known gold bearing area, say on a hillside, road cut, creek bed, flat grounds etc. Knock out some quartz, clay, dirt into a pan or a gallon plastic milk jug with bottom cut out.
Take samples from a few spots on each vein. Do each vein separately and mark a tag as to know where it came from. Put all into sample bag.
Pans one pan must have lots of holes in it to act as a hopper (classifier). This can be done by drilling about 75-100 holes from inside to bottom, in ever smaller circles. Then file the bottom smooth.
Having your hopper pan on top of the other metal pan, pour your samples in, half a pan is plenty, dip in water. Take brush and scrub all the quartz of mud and clay into pan, now rub and rub the rocks and clay, this takes a while. Put top hopper pan aside for a while and rub and rub the finer stuff that fell through the holes into the bottom pan, rub round and round for quite a while, keeping an eye open for the yellow stuff. Pan normally, but slowly as quartz gold is very rough and has legs and will jump out of your pan. Pan all the way down, watching what you discard. If you find even a few colors, take more samples from that vein. If any colors, especially rough ones check all the quartz in the hopper pan very carefully, as there can and will be lots of hidden gold and tiny specie under the clay. You can crush up the quartz and see if it shows (color). Some people do this before panning, I do it after finding color so as to not lose little specimens.
Hard Rock Gold Mining
If you’ve found color and sample same spot again, break out one wall or the other enclosing vein, either the footwall or hanging wall, leave the better wall (more solid) and take more samples. If gold keeps going in or down or up, follow it (following the Lead). Of course electric Jack hammers or blasting would be a great help, but hand tools work fine but are slow. If your onto gold in a vein, think of paint thrown on a wall, ups and down, valleys and flats and peaks (horizontal view). The gold goes in and out. Sometimes it disappears and comes back in, in a few feet or maybe 20t or never.
The average Joe will not keep going. Expense, time, efficiency etc. If your finding more and more color and or rough little pieces and quartz pieces, then you can expect a pocket, but it doesn’t always occur even in pocket country. Some veins that carry, carry only fines. Some areas and some mines pockets follow one another when certain formations occur. Don’t expect this to happen. Where the gold will make in area and formation doesn’t mean it will be the same, only a few feet away. It’s a tough go and sometimes very rewarding, for those who stick with it. The old timers were mostly looking to make a mine or sell it outright, and low grade veins, often shallow were left alone.
Working a lode gold vein
You may have to drifting or down, 5-15 feet and this takes many trips. You can pan or sample at home if you’ve the space. Rubbing and brushing vigorously is very important, so is slow panning. Persistence will eventually bring that yellow stuff smiling back at you.
Good luck, Dave
Note. Photographs used with permission by Dave Wiseman, copyright Dave Wiseman. If you wish to use the photographs please contact Dave Wiseman for copies and permission.
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