The Art of Prospecting.
This post is NOT going to tell you “how” to find gold, or what to look for, etc., but more so the finer details that some people may overlook or dismiss.
Gold itself will be again on the rise. Not to get all political and all, but the truth is it is politics that drives the price of gold up. You have the Obama Administration going to town with the Nations' credit cards, spending unheard of TRILLIONS, with the blessings of the House of Representatives who holds the very loose purse strings. You have the Private Federal Reserve doing Quantitative Easing (QE) and pumps billions in to the economy which only dilutes the money and devalues it, making the price of everything taking more “dollars” to purchase items. You have the shaky and uncertain Market where investors are cashing in stocks and bonds for gold.
Gold prices doubled in the first 4 years of the Obama administration, and perhaps will double again to $3,200. Time will tell. And then there is the matter of “Fractional Banking” practices, you know, selling each ounce of gold about 8 times, to 8 different buyers. What happens when those 8 people want their gold, or to even “see” the gold? When they realize they had been duped, well you can guess what could happen! Truth is, “If you can't hold the gold, you don't own the gold”.
Along with the rising price of gold comes the big corporate mining companies grabbing thousands of acres in mining claims to “sit on them”. Virtually locking the little guy out of getting their own claims. It's advisable that if you can file mineral claims, even for small “recreational” amounts of gold, it should be done more sooner than later, while you still have a chance to find something available.
I enjoy the “hunt”, be it placer or hard rock. I do both. In the world of ever controlling governments banning or limiting small dredge operations it is getting harder and harder to find those virgin river “glory holes” laden with the heavy yellow metal. What many forget to ask themselves is “where did the gold in the rivers come from?” The answer is normally “from above”. Veins and outcrops poke through, and eventually wear due to heat expansion and freezing water in the cracks eventually breaking up the quartz matrix and releasing the gold. That gold eventually washes down hill until it gets to a river where it slowly wears down and becomes lodged in a depression on the river bottom. I am sure there are tons to find, “if” one could actually dredge down to bedrock!
Over the past 150 years or so, the rivers have been so picked, and the surrounding hills have not had a chance to replenish the gold in the rivers. It could take a thousand years! You probably will not be around then, so the next best thing is to study up and look for “float gold”. That is, gold, probably still within its host of quartz, laying on the side of some hill. It broke from the outcrop and is on its' long journey downhill. The skill comes in by tracing the float back to the original source. The float gold will act like a pyramid, as you will find pieces closer together the further up the hill you go.
If you are lucky enough to find the source, and it has not fully decomposed yet, that outcrop poking through could lead to a very large and deep vein! SAMPLE... SAMPLE... SAMPLE....
Regardless of the method you use to sample the quartz, you will have to crush it down to a LEAST 100 mesh, and 200 to 300 would be even better. Like the old riddle “What's black and white and red all over?” Well is just might be some valuable ore! What's more, that quartz can also hold values in Silver ore, any of the Platinum group, and even copper, lead, zinc or any rare earth minerals. It's also said that the richest ores per ton contains the finest free-milling gold particulates!
It's far better to learn how to do simple field tests on crushed ores and know for a fact if it is worth paying for an assay to be done, than to blindly pay for dozens of assays that may turn out to be not worth the time or effort. But if you do find something promising, it's worth having a professional assay done and a claim filed.
If you are lucky enough to find a viable outcrop, you will have a few options after your claim is filed. (you will be filing a lode claim, not a placer claim). You can work what you can, going for the most valuable ore, the high grade stuff which will allow you to buy more and bigger tools to get in there, or you can sell or lease the claim to a company with the tools to do the job, but they will want to take a lot of core samples to see if it's worth the time and monetary expenditures.
To get started, and assuming your find is in a very remote area, it's advisable to have a utility quad to get to the area. You will need to haul in a small generator, an electric demolition hammer, and an impact mill. You can then run the hammer and quickly and easily break up the decomposing quartz to a size that will fit in the impact mill that will pulverize the rock quickly. Once that's accomplished, it's a matter of figuring out what you want to get out of your powdered ore and the best way to process it. There are dozens and dozens of ways, pending on what is in the powdered ores. Hopefully you will make enough to put in a road to your claim soon.
The Gold Cube will catch fine gold in the 100 mesh and finer in its vortex matting. Crushing to 100 mesh and finer with an impact mill will allow the prospector to run the powder through a Gold Cube
and after running a ton of rock, you will take home a cup of cons!
We think the Crazycrusher is just the tool to do the sampling with. Starting with a piece of ore the size of a chicken egg, with just a few passes you can reduce it to 100 mesh and finer, as fine as you want to take it down to with additional passes. At only 34 pounds, it's quite portable. No gas, no electricity. The ultimate in green technology and a must have when off the grid.
Sure, a pipe in a pipe, or a pestle and mortar works, but once some of the rock is turned to sand, well have you ever tried breaking a rock with a hammer when it's sitting on sand? Doesn't work too well.
Happy hunting!
Gary
