Placer Claim Mined Out?

[desertgolddigger]

I belong to a local club that owns a claim. This club has had this claim for many years, and acquired it after the old timers had mined it previously, and others after they commercial outfits closed up.
I walked quite a bit of the 160 acre claim, and noted that just about every wash had been worked. Most of the surface nuggets has also been detected by those with gold detectors. In other words, this place has been picked over and over and over.
But I m a stubborn type of person, and I figured, just watching how people ram their puffer and blower drywashers, that some gold was just being blown through them. maybe not much, but some small stuff that never got a chance to settle behind the riffles.
I know many of you would never go to the effort of digging for three to four hours through the tailings in these washes. Again, I'm a bit stubborn, and anyway, I just wanted to have some fun locally, instead of driving 300 miles roundtrip to something that gives a little more for less effort.
I've spent the last three weeks, digging a few times a week along about 30 yards of wash, and have recovered just about a gram of gold. That might not seem like much, but I have only dug up 5 grams, not counting this one gram in almost 20 years out here drywashing in the desert of southern California.
As you would know, things always seem to go wrong. My gas powered blower motor decided it was time for the repair shop, and haven't heard from the shop in two weeks. So I purchased a WORX WG521 corded electric leaf blower to use with my Royal Large drywasher. I'm using a portable generator to provide the power. And it actually is working better than with my old gas powered blower. I have to run the blower on the lowest speed, or I just blow everything through the riffles. Results are very good, as I am getting gold specks so small that I will have to use the Blue bowl in order to recover them.
I'm not only getting a little gold, I'm having some fun, and I am getting a good workout. I've lost 10 pounds since I started. So things are going well.
I'm still digging test holes around the old time hard rock mines in the hope I will find where the gold has drifted downhill below these mines. So far just a couple specks here and there. I figure I just have to move laterally one way or the other before I get something better Of course, I' don't really know if the old timers stripped the hillsides. Even if they have, they apparently aren't as thorough as I am. I hope that I may be lucky and find a larger piece of gold that the old timers, previous placer miners, and detectorists have missed.
Hope everyone is having as much fun as I have been having.

 

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[Assembler]

As written, "approximately", so there could be tens, if not hundreds of thousands more added to the 3/4 million. In other words, this post wasn't meant to provide something even close, but to give the curious an idea of the massive number of particles involved to make just one troy ounce of gold.

PS - Somewhere I read that someone had calculated that over 1.5 million of these particles. One reason why two years into collecting such fine gold, I only had come up with 6 1/2 grams. My goals is to get 10 grams, and then melt it into a button.

Who is willing to take the time and count?
Tens to hundreds of thousands sounds close enough to me........LOL.

Hey remember the metal detector can help you locate iron and there could be some valuable colors or better next to it that you can spot with your eyes?

 

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[Assembler]

Yes, I've seen a chart similar to the one referenced. One reason for my curiosity is the fact that some of the gold particles I've recovered are so small, a loupe with greater than 5 power was needed to observe them individually. Amazing what a finely tuned sluice can recover. Based on my microscope with installed size graph, a few were as small as 800 mesh. Now I can't find that microscope anymore. Probably lost in the clutter of my storage shed.

The 5 power to maybe up to 20 power should work well to spot micro values that may lead to spotting bigger colors you can see with your eyes. The microscope may not be needed unless you are following a line in the rock that you may think is pinched out.

 

[desertgolddigger]

The 5 power to maybe up to 20 power should work well to spot micro values that may lead to spotting bigger colors you can see with your eyes. The microscope may not be needed unless you are following a line in the rock that you may think is pinched out.

I rarely find any rock that shows visible gold on its exterior. Most of the time I look for indicators, oxides, or coloration, that may mean gold is inside, or as some rock sometimes has, a thin seam of mineralization. It's slow going when you have tens of tons of material to pick through. Guess that's the fun of it.

 

[Assembler]

I rarely find any rock that shows visible gold on its exterior. Most of the time I look for indicators, oxides, or coloration, that may mean gold is inside, or as some rock sometimes has, a thin seam of mineralization. It's slow going when you have tens of tons of material to pick through. Guess that's the fun of it.

Well if one of the indicator rock in your area happens to be iron you should have no problem of first spotting it, second you may find a mineralized crusty type of zone around the iron that could have other minerals in it such as gold?
A swarm of colors is common around some iron deposits and can be spotted by your eyes in very good light.
Thin seams of mineralization is also good for spotting colors.
The hunt is the fun part no matter what the rock pile is like.

P.S. Glad to see you got your handle name back :-)