MA/VT/NH Panning

D

dvdtharaldson

Full Member
Sep 19, 2012
246
178
Massachusetts
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Hi ,

This is the first time I have posted on this website. I live in Western MA and am planning a trip during the last few days of September to Vermont to try my luck panning. I was going to try Buffalo Brook and Five Corners in the Bridgewater area. Does anybody know how far down you ordinarily have to dig to hit black sands in those areas? Any comments on whether you have to dig deep or just stay on the surface? I was thinking Irene probably deposited alot of flood gold on the surface. Does anybody know if some of the small brooks high up in the mts. north of Bridgewater contain gold? All I ever hear is Buffalo Brook and Five Corners. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. As you probably could tell I am new to panning for gold.

Thanks,

David
 

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E.MassAuMan,
Hopefully you watched the advanced series of videos by Doc, where he is panning black sands. I just realized he also has some real basic panning videos on his website as well.

I haven't made it up to Rte. 2 at all this year. I am hoping to get there this fall. It seems whenever I plan a trip I get greedy and decide to go to Vermont. Speaking of Vermont, I am going up to Jamaica State Park in a couple of weeks. I plan on trying the Rock River. I hear that there are some streams with greenstone in the area.

Good Luck,
David
 

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Steven332,
You may run into some high water this week. It has been raining here for over a week straight. I would be happy to show you what I know, it wouldn't take long, because I don't know much. Where you from and what's your definition of NW Mass?
 

dvdtharaldson
i went up today water wasnt too bad found a little stream to pan in. i'm 90% sure i found a pocket with a massive amount of gold in it. if that is the case i will be returning on thursday (you are welcome to join me could use some help). am going to post a thread with the stuff i found and see what turns up will update you after.
 

Steve I am going up Friday to Bethlham to check out some rivers. That is some nice rock pieces. Did you sluice around that area to test for heavies. This might help to ID what you might be onto.
 

i put my hands in the water under some large stones and hand shoveled into my pan thats what i got plus some dirt. looked like lots of gold but i have no idea how to pan so i think i washed all my gold out buy there was a bunch of see through red/purple stone at the bottom
 

Greetings Fellow E. Mass Prospector

First of all welcome to the Forum.

Without Divulging your "spot", were these rocks local to you or did you go out west to the Berkshires to prospect?
I know that there was a working Gold Mine in Sheldonville and reports of Gold in the Douglas Ma and adjoining part of Rhode Island.

I want to say you have Mica or Fools Gold there in those rocks, the only way to tell is to pick some of it off the rocks and examine it closely under magnification,
get a small probe and see If the material flakes apart when you apply pressure to it or if it 'dents', if it flakes apart it is not Gold. If it dents then you may have found something
interesting.

Good Luck ,I may be heading out to Leyden or Charlemont on Friday, weather dependent, with all of this rain it is tough to hit a good spot and get your sluice set up properly.
 

Checked the pics and i agree. Its just schist. I remember when i first started prospecting i thought every rock would make me rich too. Savor this feeling but if you really want to get some gold you need to hone in on the very smallest and heaviest particles you capture.

Use classification. This is key!! I know its hard but at this stage rocks bigger than 1/8" are of no use to you. Dont waste time looking at them.
Learn to pan this material well. Use BBs in your pan if you think your loosing gold.
Process lots and lots of material. Remember. One gram of gold in one yard of material is considered super rich dirt. Thats 40 Five gallon buckets!! Your chances of finding that fist size nugget are well... Play the lottery your odds are better. However i have found that there is gold in almost every river containing glacial till. This is good! The northeast is covered in it!
 

grizzly know any spot i could hit up tomorrow to try and score some gold? either in central mass or ri?
 

steven332,

I agree, it looks like schist to me.

Like grizz says classification is the key. I made all my own classifiers, its easy just staple a piece of hardware cloth(start with 1/4 inch) to a frame made of wood. All I did is nail 4, 3.5 inch wide boards that were 7 inches long together to form a rectangle, and staple the hardware cloth to the bottom of the rectangle. When your classifying just put the classifier into a large dishpan which is half full of water, fill the classifier with gravel, and vigorously shake it. Do this streamside and take back all the stuff (cons) that fall through the holes in the hardware cloth to pan out later. Make sure you check what's inside the classifier for nuggets, then throw away the material.
You should also make another classifier out of 1/8 inch hardware cloth and repeat the procedure.
Hardware cloth looks like steel screening and is available at Home Depot.

As far as panning goes I learned how to do it by watching videos on the web (Youtube). The idea is to stratify the material in your pan. Blonde sands on top, then red sands(garnet) underneath that, followed by black sands(magnetite, hematite, chromium, etc), and on the bottom hopefully gold. Just so you know,most of the gold you find around here will be smaller than a grain of sugar, unless your moniker is grizzly, he finds nuggets. Personally I think he buys them from out west and displays them as his own.

Good Luck,
David
 

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My new AM Recon sluice showed up today and I can't wait to head north on Friday after the fireworks at the lake... Packing gear for the weekend...
 

Went to the Wild AM in NH earlier this week. Stayed at the Twin Rivers campground. Had some minor surgery recently, so I was taking it slow and easy. Got a few specs. Lots of rain. Water was very high on Tuesday (compared to Monday). Here are a few pictures. Everything looks bigger and better through a microscope. :)

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I just wanted to say i signed up just for this thread!!! I live about 20 minutes from the rock river in Newfane. My girlfriend and I were at the west river yesterday trying to beat the heat when we saw some shimmering stuff in the water. We are not positive what it is but today we are going back and grabbing some samples from different spots. We are both really new to this. Have no clue what we are doing. And we are looking for some pointers.
@dvdtharaldson maybe we could meet up when u come up to the area and give us some pointers?
 

Roadtrip,

I am glad you met with some success up at the wild am. I really liked those pictures. They could be used as an aid in identifying gold versus look a likes. Thanks for posting them on my thread.

Could you tell me what magnification you used and what type of back lighting, if any, was used? I am a teacher and have access to a couple of microscopes but I couldn't get the detail in my pictures that you did. The microscopes that I used didn't have any back lighting and the objects were washed out when I put them in the sunlight. I am thinking about investing in a usb scope/camera. Thanks for any help.

David
 

maddmaxx,

I would be happy to show you what I know, and like I told the last guy who asked me it wont take long because I don't know much. I can show you how to pan and how to classify your material. I have found gold in the past but not in any quantities.

I do venture up to JSP quite a few times a year, and you are welcome to stop by my campsite and accompany me and my wife while panning. I am a disabled person and only pan for about an hour at a time. If you use my technique and stay at it for a few hours I am sure you will meet with success. The Rock River is a good place to prospect in Southern Vermont I am told. At least that's what I have read on the web.

I will stay in touch with you via this thread and keep you updated on my trip the week of the 22-26th.

I was wondering if you could tell me if the roads that lead from South Wardsboro to East Dover are still passable, you know after Irene. Specifically Goose City Rd. to North St. to East Dover Rd. I am looking for the quickest way to get from JSP to East Dover.

Thanks, and hope to see you on the Rock/West River
David

By the way are you a brook trout fisherman?
 

dvdtharaldson said:
maddmaxx,

I would be happy to show you what I know, and like I told the last guy who asked me it wont take long because I don't know much. I can show you how to pan and how to classify your material. I have found gold in the past but not in any quantities.

I do venture up to JSP quite a few times a year, and you are welcome to stop by my campsite and accompany me and my wife while panning. I am a disabled person and only pan for about an hour at a time. If you use my technique and stay at it for a few hours I am sure you will meet with success. The Rock River is a good place to prospect in Southern Vermont I am told. At least that's what I have read on the web.

I will stay in touch with you via this thread and keep you updated on my trip the week of the 22-26th.

I was wondering if you could tell me if the roads that lead from South Wardsboro to East Dover are still passable, you know after Irene. Specifically Goose City Rd. to North St. to East Dover Rd. I am looking for the quickest way to get from JSP to East Dover.

Thanks, and hope to see you on the Rock/West River
David

By the way are you a brook trout fisherman?
Click to expand...
Ok so i came back from west river and also stopped up to Dover road on the rock river. We also checked out where stickney brook meets up to the west river(dummerston). We have 10 gallons of stuff to pan through. I would imagine those roads are passable. i have not been up that way in a while. But if not i do know other ways to get around this area very well. I also have other areas we could check out that you might be interested in. If you have a 4x4 we can get you down and close to most of the places i have though or checked out.
ps i am not much of a fisherman. We also would be bringing out 2 younger kids ones 5 and the other is 4 months old. My oldest is very interested in what we were doing today.
 

David, thanks for the comments. I don't think I can give you a magnification because it's a slightly odd process. I put a small pan containing the gold directly under a stereo microscope. Scope has a 15x eyepiece and a 2x lens, giving 30x. Had a light on one side with an 18 watt compact fluorescent bulb. Camera is an older Olympus D40Z model, slightly zoomed in, white balance set. I hold the camera up to one eyepiece and shoot a few pictures. It's on auto focus and exposure. Those looked like they were a slow 1/3 second. The camera lens fits snug into the scope rubber eyepiece, so it adds some stability. I load the images into Photoshop, do "auto-levels" for color, contrast, etc. Then the images get reduced 800x600 (originals are 2272x1704). Kind of like this image....

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That's a interesting setup

Sent from the woods of New England
 

Next week I am planning a trip to the Rock River in southern Vermont. Does anybody have any personal experience prospecting in the Newfane/Dover townships? Any info would greatly be appreciated.


MaddMaxx, I don't have a 4 wheeler so I have to stick close to the main roads. As soon as I decide what and where my accommodations are I will notify you and we can make plans to meet on the river.


LostinBolton, how did you and your new recon sluice do on your trip?


Thanks,

David
 

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VTgoldprospector any suggestions for around Barre, VT? My mom's hometown were she grew up and now back there and looking to head up there before end of summer for a visit.
 

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