Bedrock and Gold: The mysteries . . .

[Lanny in AB]

Do you love to chase the gold? Please join me--lots of gold hunting tips, stories of finds (successful and not), and prospecting poetry.

Nugget in the bedrock tip:

I had a visit with a mining buddy this past weekend, and he told me of an epic battle to get a nugget out of the bedrock, and of what he learned from the experience. I thought some of you might like to learn from his mistake.

While out detecting one day, he came across a large sheet of bare bedrock. The bedrock was exposed because the area had been blasted off with a water cannon (a monitor), by the old-timers! It was not fractured bedrock, in fact it was totally smooth.

He was not optimistic at all of the prospects of a nugget. But, for some reason (we've all been there) he decided to swing his detector over that bedrock. After a long time, just as he was about to give up on his crazy hunch, he got a signal, right out of that smooth bedrock.

There was no crevice, no sign of a crevice, nada! So, he had to go all the way back to camp to get a small sledge and a chisel. The signal in the rock intrigued him, but he still wasn't overly optimistic. For those of you that have chased signals in a similar situation, sometimes there's a patch of hot mineralization in the bedrock that sounds off, but this spot, according to him, was sharp and clear right in the middle of the signal, not just a general increase of the threshold like you get when you pass over a hot spot in the bedrock.

Anyway, he made it back to the spot and started to chisel his way into the bedrock. If any of you have tried this, it's an awful job, and you usually wind up with cut knuckles--at the least! Regardless, he kept fighting his way down, busting out chunks of bedrock. He kept checking the hole, and the signal remained very strong.

This only puzzled him all the more as he could clearly see that it was solid bedrock with no sign of any crevice. He finally quit at the end of the day, at a depth of about a foot, but still, nothing in the hole.

An experienced nugget shooting friend dropped by the next morning to see him, and asked him how the hunt was going. My buddy related his tale of the mysterious hole in the bedrock, and told the friend to go over and check it out, and see if he could solve the riddle.

Later in the day, the other nugget hunter returned. In his hand was a fine, fat, sassy nugget. It weighed in at about an ounce and a quarter! After my friend returned his eyeballs to their sockets and zapped his heart to start it again, he asked where the nugget had come from.

Imagine his surprise when he heard it came from the mystery hole!! He asked how deep the other guy had gone into the bedrock to get it. "Well, no deeper" was his reply.

So, here's the rest of the story as to what happened. When the successful nugget hunter got to the bedrock, he scanned the surface got the same strong signal as my buddy. He widened out the hole and scanned again. Still a solid tone. He widened the hole some more so he could get his coil in, and here's the key and the lesson in this story, he got a strong signal off the side of the hole, about six inches down, but set back another inch into the side of the bedrock!!

My unlucky friend, the true discoverer of the gorgeous nugget's resting place had gone deep past the signal while digging his hole!!

Now, of course, a good pinpointer would easily solve this problem. The problem was, my buddy didn't have one, so why would he widen the hole, right? Well, the other guy was the one with more experience, and that's why he did. It was a lot more work, but what a payoff!

So, my buddy's butt is still black and blue from where he kicked himself for the next week or so for having lost such an incredible prize.

Some nugget hunting lessons are harder than others to learn. . . .

All the best,

Lanny


P.S. When in gold country--check the bedrock, regardless of whether it looks likely or not! Mother Nature likes to play games sometimes.

 

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[Terry Soloman]

Great stories Lanny! You need to put a book together of these stories so I an buy an autographed copy!!!!

 

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[arizau]

Great story as usual.

PS: I'm open for adoption.

 

[old digger]

Thanks for the inspiration! But just have to wait for all this unforgiving snow to disappear.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hi Lanny, wonderful reading once again! Thank you for taking the time to share some of what you were up to this past summer.

I was out for a month late in the year searching for a spot I'd come across many years ago I did not find it on the ground though I did find it just recently in one picture I took. I compared the ~ 2008 photograph of the Quartz Vein to my 2017 pictures and when I paid attention to the mountains far in the background I realized there were clues there about where I was at in 2008. Turns out that one 2017 picture showed a section of the vein though I did not notice it when I was actually out there. So I've a project for 2018! Enjoy your time off and the mountains when you get back out................63bkpkr

Hi Herb,

I'm glad you had a chance to visit those mountains that have such a hold on your heart. In addition, I'm glad you've figured out where to go back to in your hunt to find your special spot and hopefully some nice gold as well.

All the best, and as always, great to hear from you again,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Great stories Lanny! You need to put a book together of these stories so I an buy an autographed copy!!!!

Thanks for your kind words and support Terry, much appreciated.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Great story as usual.

PS: I'm open for adoption.

Great to hear from you, and as for the adoption, I'll keep you in mind.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks for the inspiration! But just have to wait for all this unforgiving snow to disappear.

Thanks for dropping in, and I'm with you on this winter's snow; I just want it to go away!!

We had the wrong kind of climate change this winter, back to snow, ice and cold, not the climate change I wanted that's for sure.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Nice time out with your son, how wonderful the fever has been passed on to him and of course wonderful "Lanny" writing! Noticing clues is so ever important, I suspect when I was out last year the warmth but mostly the hard work of clearing a trail had gotten to me so I missed going over and looking at what a vaguely recall having seen when I was there. Of course, thank goodness for having taken a picture while there which allowed me to notice the clues later on.

And yes I will be back out there this year IF I'm not in India teaching engineers all about extruding tubing, which might happen. IF I am chosen for the India position at some point I will try to find a mountain stream to play around in, assuming that is allowed. If I am still in the U.S.A. then I will be all over hill and dale just enjoying being out there and as early in the year as possible. 'Right now' the Sierra Nevada mountains do not have that much snow in them, actually I'm hoping there will be more as the State needs the water. Ma Nature makes the choices on this!

Both of us need to do the important things this winter, me I'm traveling to Idaho this week to attend a Wedding but no, not my own. Then I will take care of the rest of what I need to do so as to be prepared for whatever comes my way. Take Care Lanny..............Herb

 

[Lanny in AB]

Nice time out with your son, how wonderful the fever has been passed on to him and of course wonderful "Lanny" writing! Noticing clues is so ever important, I suspect when I was out last year the warmth but mostly the hard work of clearing a trail had gotten to me so I missed going over and looking at what a vaguely recall having seen when I was there. Of course, thank goodness for having taken a picture while there which allowed me to notice the clues later on.

And yes I will be back out there this year IF I'm not in India teaching engineers all about extruding tubing, which might happen. IF I am chosen for the India position at some point I will try to find a mountain stream to play around in, assuming that is allowed. If I am still in the U.S.A. then I will be all over hill and dale just enjoying being out there and as early in the year as possible. 'Right now' the Sierra Nevada mountains do not have that much snow in them, actually I'm hoping there will be more as the State needs the water. Ma Nature makes the choices on this!

Both of us need to do the important things this winter, me I'm traveling to Idaho this week to attend a Wedding but no, not my own. Then I will take care of the rest of what I need to do so as to be prepared for whatever comes my way. Take Care Lanny..............Herb

Hi Herb,

Clearing trail is a zero on the fun scale! That would desensitize me to missing some things while out prospecting for sure.

I'm glad to hear that you've still got the urge to chase the gold, and to spend time in the wilderness as spending time in the wilderness for me is sometimes better for charging the human batteries than anything else I've ever tried. So, I hope you get a chance to chase the gold wherever you wind up.

On a related note, I've got a mining buddy that bought a river claim. To get down to the river to work, he's had to build quite the trail on the mountainside; the trail in itself is a master work by how he found a way to cut it so that he could make it wide enough to get his ATV down and back (cribbed with logs in places, rocks in others, etc.). In addition, he's built a cable tramway to get supplies, fuel, equipment, etc. down and back from where his wash-plant is.

Many years ago, I stumbled upon a tramway, not unlike his, in a deep, cold, deadly quiet moss-covered canyon. I had a terrible time getting into the canyon on foot, a bit of a nightmare actually, so I could see the need of the cable, but I have no idea who installed it or when, but it was still hanging, so that was something, and there was no way I was trying it.

While in that canyon, I noticed a spot by the river on the same side of the bank, but downstream from the cable about a quarter of a mile where there was a pile of classified cobble. Mixed in with the cobble were some decayed bits of rubber, and of course, that always gets the gold radar up and running. So, I looked around to do a little detective work, and because of that, I noticed some small areas of the same classified cobble showing in little piles running up the cliffs of the mountainside! What?

I worked my way up the canyon wall to see if I could find the source of the cobble, and I mean, it was tough sledding, lots of vertical, but I kept following the cobble until I came to a large fissure in the cliff face. In front of the fissure was another pile of cobble. I had to work around curves to get into the crack, and then it opened up. Inside the opening, I could clearly see where someone had dug a mine! There was cobble everywhere, and this was fifty feet above the stream-bed. Whoever had done the work had gone through the bedrock in that fissure and hit an ancient channel. (There was no external sign of a channel visible anywhere on that slope, only solid rock.)

Did I mention how spooky that canyon was? Moss all over the walls, cold, supernaturally quiet (no animal sounds, birds, etc., at all), and it was dim to dark down there. The light didn't really get into that part of the canyon, no direct light anyway.

The workings were caved, and there were bits and pieces of common items scattered around, items found around any mine. Furthermore, it looked like the workings had been deliberately closed, but there was one cool thing.

In a recess I noticed some cement work done in a square shape, and when I worked my way over to take a look, there was a steel/iron strong box bolted to the concrete. Sadly, or naturally, it was empty, but it was very strongly built, and it had a large hasp for a lock, so someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure they had a safe place to store something precious.

The records kept in that mining area are very poor to non-existent, all the way from the 1800's up through the 1930's, and those workings were old, so I'm not sure how I'd ever track down the story in full, but whoever did the excavation sure had a sure-fire plan backed by some capital, and all of it driven by lots of willpower and mind-numbing work to get everything needed up (from the river bottom) or down (from the mountain) into that mine.

What's intriguing is that somehow they'd figured there was a bench deposit up on the side of that canyon, and they'd figured out that if they tunneled down (that tunnel went straight down!) through the solid rock on the side of the canyon that they'd be able to cut their way into it. (Never underestimate the knowledge or intuition of the old-timers.)

Cool place to visit, but definitely one that will remain a mystery nonetheless.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[bcfromfl]

Hi Lanny --

Thanks again so much for taking the time to share your golden adventures with the rest of us! You live in such an awesome place!

-Bruce

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hi Lanny --

Thanks again so much for taking the time to share your golden adventures with the rest of us! You live in such an awesome place!

-Bruce

Many thanks for your appreciation for the stories, and you're sure right about B.C. being an awesome place, incredible really.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Friable Bonanza And An Unexpected Surprise

I’d been granted permission to check out some old workings located in an area that had once been extensively hydraulicked. It’s an area that today still bears the scars of the early mining efforts, solid rock cliffs with gigantic fingers made of stubborn clay studded with rock and stone. The early placer hydraulic process involved running untold miles of ditch above the workings to gather water from spring runoff. The ditched water then served a dual purpose with part of the water channeled over the edge of the slope to start eroding the high material while the other part was piped and successively reduced to produce the necessary pressure for the hydraulic mining carried on below.

However, in the hydraulicking process, lots of good ground composed of ancient material was buried downslope. So, from the 1930’s onward, placer miners had leased and worked these areas to get at the buried channel, but they did so with the use of mechanized equipment. In the process, they were able to carve off the hydraulic overburden to get to the top of the old placer channels that had been buried by the use of those big water cannons (monitors). The exposed original gravels and natural overburden had covered the bedrock with twenty to forty feet of material, with the best pay located in the last couple of feet and in the bedrock itself.

The day I chose to hunt was hazy, due to the forest fires, but nice and warm. Tall mountain peaks rose on both sides of the canyon, their slopes covered with pine and fir, with scattered stands of aspen and tamarack completing their green canvas. Two noisy hawks made lazy circles above me as they rode ghostly thermals. Honey bees busily worked the mountain flowers, their legs heavily weighted with precious yellow pollen. Large grasshoppers, intent on their drunken aerobatic flights, made rattlesnake sounds as they racketed through the lazy summer air. Tiny blue butterflies with orange spots paused to drink from hillside seeps. Nature’s majesty was on display.

Working my way down into the old placer area, I noticed some standing pockets of water, which is always good for panning, but most of the ground was dry, which is easier for detecting. (Now, don’t think nuggets can’t be found underwater with the detector, they can, but it’s a whole lot easier swinging a coil above dry ground as there’s no force pushing back with each swing as there is when you’re trying to find gold underwater.)

I always walk in to my detecting areas with a five-gallon plastic bucket as it makes a great tote for my scoop, bars, chisels, small sledge, crevice tools, magnetic wand, bottles of water and my lunch. It also finds use as a bailing bucket when I do detect gold underwater in a shallow trough or small pool that I need to empty. Furthermore, I’ve used it plenty of times for a high and dry seat while panning or for a more comfortable seat than a rock when I’m eating my lunch.

Next, I started to set up my detector, and on this day, it was the Gold Bug Pro as I always search new bedrock with the light little VLF first, cleaning out the gold close to the surface. (Then I make a trip out to get the heavy Minelab to check for deeper gold that hides from the Bug Pro.) I checked the battery, and it was down, so I replaced it with a new 9-volt. (There’s no way I want to walk over gold because I’m trying to save money by getting the last bit of juice out of a battery!) Next, I checked the tightness of my coil wire at the control box. (I’ve had to help more than a few rookies with this simple yet necessary check because if the connection is not tight, the detector keeps falsing, and that will drive anyone crazy after a while.) Then, I ground-balanced to a likely looking spot, and satisfied with the results, off I went to chase the gold.

Before I continue with my story, I’d like to elaborate on the location a bit: the bedrock had a trough on the left that dropped about three feet, and the trough ran about half the length of the excavation. In the middle of the pit, there was a rise in the bedrock where it crowned. To the right the bedrock rolled down, then up again, so there was some water trapped in the low spot, as well as two pools of water near the upper end. Most of the bedrock was extremely hard, and it was easy to see where the miners had hit any softer bedrock as they’d been able to cut down into it. There were three zones of rock: a soft, grayish mud-stone(?); a fair portion of iron-hard bull quartz, and a section of friable rock (numerous little plates of black bedrock that stand vertical to the run of the other bedrock) up by the two pools of water.

Working my way toward the twin pools of water, I scanned the bedrock, carefully checking any transition zones and any lower spots that looked like they still held small amounts of original material, all the while scrubbing the bedrock with my super-magnet whenever the detector sounded off. However, what I found instead of gold was what I’ve come up with many times before: my super-magnet on my extendable wand was doing a first-class impression of the hairdo of a hedgehog albeit it with hair made of bits of steel and iron along with a healthy percentage of magnetic black sand and chunks of magnetite to boot. So, at least the black sand and pieces of magnetite told me I was running over bedrock that had held super-heavies as it’s been my experience that when I’m finding chunks of magnetite and black sand tight on the bedrock that I’m likely looking in the same place where the nuggets were running.

I kept at the process of scanning and scrubbing with the magnet for ferrous pieces and eventually wound up at the twin pools. The first pool was about two-feet deep at it’s lowest point, and about ten feet across, but the only signals I recovered from it were ferrous. So, I climbed out on the northern rim and hit a section of friable rock. The first sweep across those perpendicular plates of bedrock and I had myself a nice mellow tone that was pinned in the honey zone on the meter. A quick bit of pick and scoop work, and I had the target in the scoop, and with some reduction work, I soon had the target on the coil, a sassy two-gram beauty. That built a fire under me! I kept at the friable rock and put a nice collection of nuggets in my poke (that little bottle was heavy), but everything was under two grams after that. Nonetheless, it weighed up nicely. In addition, I worked out a bunch of material from the friable rock and panned it, and there sure was a lot of flake gold in that dirt that I sucked up in my sucker bottle, lots of fun.

I finished with the friable rock and worked my way up to the other pool where I actually recovered one nugget from underwater. Now, if you’ve never chased a nugget underwater to recover it, you’ve not quite lived as the time invested to recover the nugget is many times that of getting one out of the ground. Added to the time hunting the target is the fact that every time you disturb the signal, the signal drops, and you start to understand some of the insanity.

Finished with detecting the pool, I climbed out on the upslope side of the pool and scanned some transition zones where different types of bedrock met, and I liberated a few more nuggets. But the best bonanza of the day came from the friable rock, with one exception.

As it was getting dark, I had to gather up all of my equipment to get ready for the hike out. (Being down in an excavation in the late evening in grizzly bear and cougar country is no place to be when it’s dark in the mountains.) However, on this particular evening, I did something I usually don’t do. I didn’t pack up my detector. I kept my headphones on and kept swining my coil as I worked my way over a rising patch of bull quartz on my way out. Now, I didn’t think there was much chance of finding anything as I was moving a lot faster than my normal detecting speed, but I was mistaken. The detector let out a howl that stopped me in my tracks. I backed up quickly and scanned to find the spot again and was rewarded with another loud target response.

Because it was getting dark, I had to get low to the ground to see better, and I found I’d swung the coil over a pocket of material nested in the bull quartz, an oblong pocket about ten inches long, a pocket that blended right in with the surrounding rock. Scanning the pocket, I heard multiple targets, with one loud signal off to the side, and the meter was pinning in the sweet zone, but as darkness was setting in fast, I unpacked my gold pan, used my pick and scoop and loaded all of the material into the pan. I scanned the pocket, heard no more targets, and with my hands full, scrambled my way out of the excavation and had just enough light to make it back to my vehicle before it was too dark to see.

The epilogue to this story is that when I went back to my house after that week-long trip to the mountains, I took that pan of material with me for my wife to pan out, knowing that it had really lit up the detector. Well, what a surprise both of us had! There was a four-gram nugget in that dirt along with a nice collection of smaller nuggets (most in the gram to gram and a half range) and some nice flake gold to boot (the material from the pocket was obviously an ancient bedrock trap as there were some nice sized pieces of ironstone in those panned out concentrates as well). My wife was stunned that all of that gold from one pan, and so was I. (She kept all of the gold, and I was happy to let her.)

Now, I guess it was a bit of luck that I kept swinging the coil on my way out as I usually never do that when I’m in a hurry, but on that trip, it sure was the right thing to do.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Yes Lanny,
I've come across some interesting old equipment as well: a ten stamp mill on the edge of the river, large possibly belt driven wheels found in the river and way up river a Buick engine hooked to a manual three speed car transmission with a drum winch on the output of the tranny. This would have been a real work horse of a boulder mover.

This one is obvious
This one is right there though it took me a minute to realize I was looking at a lobe to a stamp mill system. Finding "signs" is always fun with some clues like cobble piles just pull your right up into the hills to see what gives.

One time I was up a tree, for what reason I do not recall, close by but in the forest I would see a large metal box. I hiked towards it, found it and then it took a bit before I realized it was a giant header box for some type of dredge or Long Tom? Fun stuff!.................63bkpkr

 

[Lanny in AB]

Yes Lanny,
I've come across some interesting old equipment as well: a ten stamp mill on the edge of the river, large possibly belt driven wheels found in the river and way up river a Buick engine hooked to a manual three speed car transmission with a drum winch on the output of the tranny. This would have been a real work horse of a boulder mover.

View attachment 1553853 This one is obvious
View attachment 1553854 This one is right there though it took me a minute to realize I was looking at a lobe to a stamp mill system. Finding "signs" is always fun with some clues like cobble piles just pull your right up into the hills to see what gives.

One time I was up a tree, for what reason I do not recall, close by but in the forest I would see a large metal box. I hiked towards it, found it and then it took a bit before I realized it was a giant header box for some type of dredge or Long Tom? Fun stuff!.................63bkpkr

Great pictures! Thanks for posting them, and thanks for your notes on some of your discoveries.

I've been amazed at some of the things I find. I remember once just turning my detector on and wandering along a road, then cutting through the forest toward a flat spot when all of a sudden my detector recorded multiple hits. I had no idea what I'd stumbled on, but after collecting about thirty targets, it was obvious that I'd come across an old camp on a level piece of ground that was so old, there were no wooden structures left as everything but the metal bits I was finding had gone completely back to nature. The tree growth gave me some idea how long ago the area had been used, but without the detector on, I'd have wandered right through the spot without realizing what I was walking over.

I remember another time when I stumbled across an entire mining camp, from the 50's, in a clearing in the forest, and a bunch of the walls were still standing, but most of the roofs had caved in, but there it was in the middle of nowhere, and there had been a good sized crew camped there.

I've found large cogs and gears from huge machinery in the forest, steel cables coming out of the ground from phantom works of long ago, sections of hydraulic pipe, large wooden gate works for hydraulic use and for ditching slowly decaying back to be food for growing things, all ghosts now living quiet, undisturbed lives where once mining boomed.

There was a cool site once where there had been a red-light district in the 1800's, a little time capsule actually with beautiful hand-blown bottles with that old pink glass, and old green glass, all types and varieties of liquor bottles, as well as shrunken leather lady's lace-up boots with pointed toes and heels, old foundation pits for cabins, old out-house pits, all kinds of cans from the 1800's, including tobacco cans with the paint still intact, the works. I went to visit the site again a few years after my initial discovery, and the entire spot had been logged, the site pounded into oblivion.

Cabins, I've found them in cleverly hidden locations and only did so after finding a bit of metal trash downslope, then followed the trail of metal up the mountain side to find only the outline of the old cabins, cabins that would not have been visible unless you knew exactly where to look, that's how cleverly they were sited, cabins with hand-forged iron nails, old sites indeed.

For me, the history and its discovery is a completely different thrill I don't get from finding gold, the thrill of knowing I'm setting foot where my fellow miners stood 150 or so years previous, and places no one has visited since.

I once found an original placer claim tag from the initial claim post from where all of the other claims went either up or down the creek, and it was a big brass tag resting on a stone cairn, the original post rotted to damp residue, and I left it there. I found out later how much those are worth, but that will be one of those "if I ever pass that way again" trips, for the trip in and out was a nasty hike I'm not anxious to repeat, and it took me a 16-hour trip by 4X4 to get in, and the bugs, well, they rule the kingdom there.

All the best Herb, and thanks for dropping in,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Chasing Nuggets Underwater

I'll start this and then sort of leave it for others to add their hard-earned experience on techniques they've discovered or ones that have been shared with them on how to chase gold nuggets with a detector with the coil submerged underwater.

Now, one of the first problems (in addition to all of the crazy noises the detector makes when making the transition from land to water, and the resistance on the coil from the water, and the worry of getting your coil-box wet, etc.) is that of specific gravity when it is coupled with motion after an object is disturbed, such as a sassy nugget sitting on the bottom of a pool or down in a watery crevice, etc.

Once the object is disturbed, especially gold due to its high specific gravity vs. water, it's going to drop. Moreover, if you're chasing a nugget in a flowing stream, it's worse as the hydraulic pressure of the moving water will also assist in driving the gold as deeply and quickly as possible. (When I used to dredge for gold in fast water, I watched lots of disturbed gold shimmy and slide along the bedrock only to see it disappear the moment it found a crack to drop into.) However, if a person is chasing a nugget in a calm pool, at least the power of the motion of the water doesn't come into effect, but that specific gravity issue has to be seen to be believed, and I've seen it in action in clear water enough times, and suffered the effects of the agony of temporary loss in muddy water as well.

This past summer, and the previous summer, I chased a lot of nuggets underwater, and there was a whole learning curve involved that was in addition to what I'd learned about watching gold behave in water when I was dredging.

If I was lucky, and there was some clear water to play in (that doesn't happen very often as most of the places I chase the nuggets have a lot of clay in the environment), I was amazed that when I'd finally uncover a nugget (had removed whatever overburden was covering it on the bedrock), that the moment I did a long-arm reach to try to recover it with a scoop, at the moment the nugget was disturbed, it buried itself again in any loose material still around or in any crack or crevice I hadn't been able to see from the get go.

Here's a question: have you ever tried to scoop a nugget that's on bedrock at a distance? Getting anything to slide between that bedrock (rough or smooth) and the nugget is almost impossible, and when I'd try to use a suction gun (hand-dredge), I'd often plug the gun with gravel and drive the gold deeper into some unseen crack. Trying to slide a regular long-handled mining shovel underneath the gold was equally frustrating. (Some kind of spring-loaded grab claw on a long pole might work, perhaps? But, I have my doubts . . .)

So, one technique I came up with was to use the Garret Carrot to pinpoint exactly where the nugget was underwater after I'd first located it with my regular detector, then I'd reach down with my fingers and scrape up the material with my finger tips (yes, I got cut a few times on rough and sharp bedrock; we have a lot of that). If I got the nugget that way, which happened, good. If not, I'd use the pin-pointer to find where the nugget had scooted to, then try again. (As a side note, I did get some out of cracks with the suction gun, but I buried some deeper as well, so that method works only some of the time. Moreover, if I couldn't totally empty the pool to do some hammer and chisel work, the gold is still there!)

Another technique I used was to get a light gasoline-powered pump to drain any bigger pools as much as I could, then detect the sides of the pools as the water dropped, and I liberated some nuggets I'd detected prior to lowering the pool that way too. However, in the bottom of those pools there was often a mucky sludge with lots of clay, and it was not conducive to detecting, so I tried to locate the nuggets with the detector beforehand, that is before I reduced the water in the last part of the pool to concentrate that nasty sludge.

In flowing water, issuing from springs that continually fed bedrock pools I wanted to detect, I used my irrigation skills (Ha, ha!) to make little dams to divert the flowing water, then I bailed like a maniac (gold pan or bucket) to get to the bottom of the bedrock troughs where I'd detected a signal to try to beat the water that would eventually work its way around my dam. In other spots where water was standing in bedrock pockets, I'd build a dam around the pocket where I'd got a good tone and use my sucker gun to get as much water out as possible (in the case of a larger pocket) or I'd use a cup and a tablespoon in the smaller ones, and that made it far easier to recover the targets and disturb them far less than if I'd have tried to chase them in the water.

So, I admit, I'm a green rookie when it comes to chasing gold underwater with a detector, but I'm open to great suggestions on how to make this endeavour more efficient as I'll be chasing nuggets underwater again this coming summer.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Odd you bring this up Lanny as I've been thinking about this of late. I anticipate I might be doing some water work this coming summer, at a minimum I figured I'd reshape a shovel by Pop-Riveting sides and a back on it. Yes the stuff does move around once disturbed.

Once upon a time some long time ago I realized this old place had been used as a wishing well, just past the output of this spot there was a deep pool. I made a bucket scraper, attached some sturdy electrical conduit to the bucket (thread on stuff to make the handle long but tough). I'd lower the bucket down till it hit bottom, drag it along the bottom and then bring it back up and each bucket would bring up an assortment of stuff as well as a few coins. The shape of the bucket is important or else it will drop the 'good stuff'. It was impossible to see the bottom of the deep spot but some where down there are some old silver coins! It all takes some thinking and work and maybe the use of a dim red light..............63bkpkr

 

[Lanny in AB]

Odd you bring this up Lanny as I've been thinking about this of late. I anticipate I might be doing some water work this coming summer, at a minimum I figured I'd reshape a shovel by Pop-Riveting sides and a back on it. Yes the stuff does move around once disturbed.

Once upon a time some long time ago I realized this old place had been used as a wishing well, just past the output of this spot there was a deep pool. I made a bucket scraper, attached some sturdy electrical conduit to the bucket (thread on stuff to make the handle long but tough). I'd lower the bucket down till it hit bottom, drag it along the bottom and then bring it back up and each bucket would bring up an assortment of stuff as well as a few coins. The shape of the bucket is important or else it will drop the 'good stuff'. It was impossible to see the bottom of the deep spot but some where down there are some old silver coins! It all takes some thinking and work and maybe the use of a dim red light..............63bkpkr

Thanks for the information and the input. If you have a picture around somewhere of your invention, it would be great to have a look at it, but if it's gone to that retirement place where no abandoned invention ever returns from, I'll understand.

As for your silver coins, I hope one day with your knack for inventions you'll be able to liberate them to provide them a safe, new home.

Always great to hear from you, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Somewhere on my thread, I believe I wrote about a story that has intrigued me for years.

It's a tale of four miners that hit a goldfield when the location was producing coarse placer gold in abundance.

The four miners had worked all summer at or right close to the discovery claim on a rich placer creek where they had excellent returns the entire season, and after their last clean-up jsut before they were heading out to beat the icy grip of winter, they decided they'd celebrate their good fortune.

So, to compliment the meat they were cooking, one of them went off and gathered some mushrooms for the feast. Little did he know that he was bringing excruciating pain and poison back to the camp as what he naively believed were mushrooms were in fact a deadly imitation that doomed them all.

Three of the unfortunates died quite quickly, but the fourth lingered long enough to bury the group's gold in a safe place (or so, that's what was believed, as no trace of their season's haul of what would have been pounds of placer was ever found). However, it is a possibility that the group had already cached their gold, and were planning to dig it up right before they left for the "outside". Regardless, a thorough search was mounted to find their gold to send to their families (many prospecting communities were closely-tied groups and looked after each other, especially when misfortune struck), but nothing was ever found except for the bodies of the four poisoned miners, the offending fungus still evident in the leftovers of their meals. The bodies were buried on a bench below the discovery claim, not far removed from the stream that had fulfilled their golden dreams.

Since it's winter, and since the land of golden opportunity is frozen rock-solid and covered by a heavy blanket of snow that just does not seem to be in any hurry to leave (I'm so sick of winter and have cabin fever brought on by a lack of being able to chase the gold!!), as a result, I've been doing some research on early placer mining, and I came across the names of two of the miners that perished from eating the mushrooms that sent them into eternity! The names of the other two are, I believe, lost forever, and this opinion I now have due to the memoir of a person that found the actual wooden headboards of the graves of the fallen miners.

The information comes from and out of print book, an autobiographical memoir of an on-and-off placer miner, one that revisited the goldfields of the early 1870's during the depression years of the 1930's when many men were looking anywhere for a means to support their families and so returned to the back-breaking labour of placer mining carried out in remote northern goldfields.

To quote from the memoir, "We and two other fellows were tracing an old buried channel [ancient placer] across country when we accidentally stumbled across those graves [the four poisoned miners]. The base of the wooden headboards had rotted, but two had fallen with the face down so we could read the carved names. One fellow named Shaw, came from New York City and had died on August, 8, 1871. The other was named Cook and he came from Hereford, England. He had died the day after Shaw [this would make him the man that had outlasted his fellow miners!]. We were unable to decipher the names on the other boards."

So, I thought it was a cool find, to finally know at least two of the names of the mysterious four.

As for those pounds of coarse gold, well, that's still a mystery.

All the best,

Lanny

P.S. I forgot to mention that I have visited the discovery claim on the river where the miners met their fate, truly a beautiful place today.

 

[old digger]

''Physics"'' Would it not solve the problem of trying to scoop an object, (towards up stream) with a container (bucket) if there were holes drilled (the top sides) to allow water to escape. This will keep water from back washing towards the front of the container, allowing material and gold escaping. Just trying to share a solution.

 

[63bkpkr]

underwater salvage bucket

Well Lanny that bucket left my personal contact a long time ago, actually another life ago, though the thought of it quickly returns to my mind the moment i push the 'replay' key. Here is roughly what the design looked like:

As I recall from the first use that evening the bucket liked to float so I add air release holes on my sketch and of course with the bucket loaded with sample and water it will be heavy to lift back up so on the handle wall some water holes could be added to reduce the weight and manageability of the bucket as it reaches the surface. Of course the water drain holes should be a little higher than the drag lip or they would allow sample to be lost. And of course, the dimensions are all in inches Cheers.......................Herb

And of course its a closed bucket except for where it needs to be open..

And old mining camps just keep coming back to my mind as well, there are at least two that have my name on them for further examination. Once I get over this 2nd flu bug, have the shoulder surgery & recover from it I will be a busy little boy! Actually, I would like to be out for three months. Lets see what happens.