Panning practice. Black Friday paydirt.

[Kenmitch]

Was looking around for some paydirt on Black Friday as I live too far from promising gold bearing ground for a quick 1 day trip. Needed to satisfy the craving till next year when I plan to take a couple 1 week trips up north.

Here is the paydirt. The pan is 10" and the tiny object in the center is my little rolly polly piece of lead.



Crazy me panned all that material in one shot down to basically gold only with just a tiny amount of black sand left. Too while to work it down.

Here is the results of the adventure.



The bulk of the gold along with the pickers was retrieved on the initial panning. The group of 5 to the right of the pickers was retrieved from my safety pan in about 5 minutes after I emptied out the water. The single piece under the group of 5 was retrieved by panning the material another time a couple spoons at a time. There is some micro gold left in the material still. I need probably a 100 mesh classifier to retrieve it. I save the dirt for later anyways.

Paid $40 for the dirt. Got 1.14 grams so far. Not too bad but was hoping for more gold.

Got one more batch to play around with still.

 

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[kcm]

I want very much to get some paydirt and get some hands-on this winter. Problem is, it gets SO cold here in winter than we always have to bring lots of freezable stuff into the house before winter, and it's not a big enough house!!

We're having a heat wave right now: +3°F!!

 

[DizzyDigger]

With the current gold price, you've got $30+ of gold for your
$40 investment. Not bad, considering!

Since you don't live close to a possible source, keep a 3 gal. bucket,
a 1/4" classifier and small shovel in your car. If ya drive by a spot with
a creek or potential, then jump out and classify up a half a bucketful.

No, you're not always gonna find gold, but it's great practice and
if there's gold you'll find a new mining spot..

 

[Kenmitch]

I want very much to get some paydirt and get some hands-on this winter. Problem is, it gets SO cold here in winter than we always have to bring lots of freezable stuff into the house before winter, and it's not a big enough house!!

We're having a heat wave right now: +3°F!!

Dang that's COLD! Here we sometimes get down below freezing once in a while.

With the current gold price, you've got $30+ of gold for your
$40 investment. Not bad, considering!

Since you don't live close to a possible source, keep a 3 gal. bucket,
a 1/4" classifier and small shovel in your car. If ya drive by a spot with
a creek or potential, then jump out and classify up a half a bucketful.

No, you're not always gonna find gold, but it's great practice and
if there's gold you'll find a new mining spot..

I'll have to keep that in mind. Very little gold was found around my area I think. Kind of live right next to Lake Perris. Pretty much eat, sleep, work these days with little time to do other things. Gets dark too early this time of year!

 

[kcm]

Dang that's COLD! Here we sometimes get down below freezing once in a while.

...Was -16° last night, so this really is a sort of heat wave. Will get down to -40° at some point during the winter - that's a given!

Ok, weather report over - we now return you to our regularly scheduled program!

 

[DizzyDigger]

I'll have to keep that in mind. Very little gold was found around my area I think. Kind of
live right next to Lake Perris. Pretty much eat, sleep, work these days with little time to
do other things. Gets dark too early this time of year!

"Freezing" is just a little blip on the thermometer as the mercury travels
downward. It's warmed up to freezing here at the moment, but it won't
last long, with heavy snow expected the next 24 hrs.

Lake Perris? There's gold all over that area! You see a highway crew digging a ditch
and it looks like there's gravel in the dirt, then stop and beg for a bucketful. Every
dry wash has potential....get out and look, and you'll at worst find somewhere local that
will at least give up small gold.

 

[kcm]

Sounds like a nice area!!

 

[Kenmitch]

"Freezing" is just a little blip on the thermometer as the mercury travels
downward. It's warmed up to freezing her at the moment, but it won't
last long, with heavy snow expected the next 24 hrs.

Lake Perris? There's gold all over that area! You see a highway crew digging a ditch
and it looks like there's gravel in the dirt, then stop and beg for a bucketful. Every
dry wash has potential....get out and look, and you'll at worst find somewhere local that
will at least give up small gold.

I'll have to do some research and poking around the area to see. The hills and small mountains around here and surrounding areas do look like they've been stripped down to bedrock. Might just be natural erosion?

 

[DizzyDigger]

I'll have to do some research and poking around the area to see. The hills and small mountains around here and surrounding areas do look like they've been stripped down to bedrock. Might just be natural erosion?

If you find a dry wash on land you can access, get yerself a short-handled
sledge and some rock chisels, plus a few different scraping tools (like for
crevices) and a couple brushes. Find that cracked, exposed bedrock and
start busing it out, sweeping every bit of the pebbles, dirt and dust you
get under it into a container.

If there was ever gold in that creek, and the bedrock can be busted up,
there might be some nice gold down in it.