The Quest for Maine Gold

[triple d]

Ore cart not sure. But I wonder if N.H Mines. Closed at about the same time. I think the amount of ore they where getting. Wasn"t enought to pay the bills. And I think they where hoping to find more gold. Where i live i think is like. Where you live. Its an old volcanic area. With some faults and two lead mines. I have found some small amounts of gold. And of course lead and silver go together. But then again its on privite land. I wouldn" give up. You Have the equipment. When your up to it. I do some poking around.

 

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[OreCart]

Well I found gold, that has been confirmed, but how much, and how easy it will be to extract will be another thing.

With any good fortune, the gravel pit will have some gold, but that would just be too easy. My fortune does not go that way typically. My life has been more like, "Plowing granite", as I often say! (LOL)

I have been checking on things, and I really like the looks of this wash plant for hard rock mining. It looks to be a about the size I would want, though I am afraid to ask for a quote on the price. Typically when you are afraid to ask, the price is three times higher than you thought it would (or should be). It looks like it would be a good off-the-shelf wash plant though.

https://www.911metallurgist.com/equipment/gold-processing-plant/

 

[OreCart]

Not exactly mining, but I have whined for awhile about a logger (a guy I went to school with), who came onto my land a year ago, clear cut some 70 acres of wood, and lit off with the wood and the money.

It worked its way through court, but in August he was ordered to pay full restitution. He had until today to pay me in full or his fine would be 10 times higher. He failed to do that, and so went back to court today. He did not have all the money he owed me, but gave the court $2500 towards what he owes. The court also set a fee of $150 a week until it is paid in full, which will take awhile, but after a year of going through court, I finally got something for my stolen wood.

So, it was a little good news on the home front.

 

[Johnnybravo300]

Stole yer dam wood! That's some 1860's chit! He outta hang for that alone!

 

[triple d]

And we wonder why we do things the right way.

 

[OreCart]

Stole yer dam wood! That's some 1860's chit! He outta hang for that alone!

Yeah back in the old days we used to burn them at the stake, but realized this being Maine, it used up wayyyyyy too many BTU's that could be better used to heat our home so we began to tar and feather people. That was great for awhile until the price of oil went up. I mean, it took half a barrel of tar, and at $42 a barrel...well you do the math, so we have not done that in this town since last month. It was kind of unfair for the chickens and ducks to be naked too with the cold snap we have been having. That kind of leads to me mention all the snow out there, so it would have meant a lot of shoveling to run the guy out of town on the ole rails. Sadly enough he lives in the same town as me, we were old school mates even, and he dated my sister at one time, so running him out of town on the rails does kind of sound appealing...after the snow melts of course.

All joking aside, I was the first to take him to the authorities, but it opened the floodgates for the Maine Forest Service, as other landowners heard I had reported him, and then in turn reported him as well. He had basically stolen wood for the past three years, not only from landowners, but from his truckers, his employees, timber brokers...everyone.

In the end it comes down to addiction, Gambling Addiction specifically. I feel bad for the man, but maybe this will show that he has a real problem, and needs some help?

 

[triple d]

Maybe you can show him. A wood lot over by the quick sand. Accident"s happen.

 

[OreCart]

Maybe you can show him. A wood lot over by the quick sand. Accident"s happen.

He actually was committed to a mental hospital for awhile...suicide attempt I guess.

It is hard to say though if it was an actual attempt, or if he was just playing the game of dodging the law by going to the looney bin. It was right after the court gave him a $1800 a month restitution verdict; the highest ever given in the county, in my case versus him. The finance companies had just swooped in, and repossessed all his logging equipment. Kind of hard to pay $1800 a month with no equipment to log with.

But ultimately that was the problem, no one said anything about him being a thief because the people he owed money to, wanted him to keep working so that maybe eventually they would get paid.

Me, I hated to see more landowners get taken. It takes a long time for trees to grow, and as is, what he owes me is sadly only (1) year in property taxes. A person can no longer have a forest and have it pay for itself anymore. Property Taxes have eclipsed what a forest is now worth. Sad days indeed.

 

[triple d]

Sorry it caught up with him. But he has made a lot of other people suffer also. And we have lost enought farms already.

 

[Johnnybravo300]

He sounds like someone you need to "take shooting". (Wink wink)

 

[OreCart]

I was pretty lenient with him, when he was here I loaned him $2000 to get his feller-buncher repaired, then explained to him how to better manage his logging business, as well as life-pointers as well; like working 7 days a week, and the dangers of addiction.

Even after I had got my attorneys involved, and he was unable to pay due to a lack of money, I was giving him sound legal advice. That made no sense on my part because it was counter-intuitive to my best interest, but jeesh the guy needed someone to advice him. So I was very fair with him considering 72 tractor trailer loads of wood rolled off my farm without being paid for it.

But he owes so many other people that might not be so nice. I talked to one guy who was going to hunt him down, and convinced him in a 4 hour conversation to better settle things in court. They are just trees, they grow back, so nothing worth killing a guy for (or on the loggers part, worth committing suicide over). Yes, it was the equivalent of a claim-jumper stealing a half a pound of gold off a rightful owner granted, but even then...to kill?

My heart goes out to the area Amish who got taken as well. Because of their beliefs, they will not take a person to court, but my beliefs differ then theirs. In this case, it is not between my farm and his logging company, it was outright theft, no different than if a person was to steal a person's pickup. In that case a person would not think twice about reporting the theft to the police. In Maine, timber-theft is reported to the Forest Service. That is what I did. I never sued the logger, the state determined a crime had been committed, and so it was the State of Maine versus the Logger in court.

The Amish, all they want to talk about is how he stole wood off them, and cannot seem to get over it. That is not me at all. I just want the money from my wood, and that is in God's hands.

 

[OreCart]

The Forest Ranger told me that his investigation had gone back 3 years, the limit of the Statue of Limitations and no landowner had ever been paid. That is a lot of wood considering he was logging 3 truck loads of wood per day. A truck load of wood is worth around $1600 or more.

 

[OreCart]

Have you ever found great ore potential in a spot you REALLY did not want too?

There was an outcropping of rock way up in the woods that I knew would be uncovered by snow, so rather than sit on a computer, I figured I minds well go looking for it. I have always wanted to blast this side of the mountain off and use it for aggregate, but it is so far out there, that it makes the middle of nowhere; look nearby. It is a good mile and a half from the nearest road, and for me, a two-mile hike in. I like building roads, but a mile and a half in?

I felt like I was hunting for Gold in the Klondike. Suffering snot balls; halfway there I was thinking I should have taken my skidder, but ¾ of the way there I realized I would have had that thing stuck.

I had snowshoes on, but they were bear paws, and I needed sheets of plywood; the snow was 4-1/2 feet deep on the Northeast side of the hills, and I was sinking in by a foot. But just as the stampeders made it up the Golden Staircase, I made it to my ledge rock.

(To be continued)

 

[OreCart]

I was hoping the rock would not have promise so I could eliminate it and hone in on areas closer to the house, but it looked really good. There were veins of quartz all through it, and they were quite voggy. Then in one vein I found a thick vein of Galena along the contact zone.

I chipped away at it and thought I saw some shiny. Two tiny inclusions, but they were in the Galena and that does not hold much gold typically. So, I went to chip some more, and there was quartz. The vein of quartz dipped and so the two gold spots were in the contact zone of the quartz and galena. I blunted my chisel breaking that section of quartz out, but I brought that home to be assayed.

I typically try to get a second opinion on it before I call it as such, but there is no question what I saw today. Overall, a pretty good day of prospecting in the cold, snowy Northeast.

 

[OreCart]

At the base of the ledge rock outcropping there is a pretty good sized stream, and while it was flowing, this summer I can go back and pan it and see if there is any gold in it. I am not too hopeful, we logged it 8 years ago and to get wood out, carved it up pretty good with the bulldozers. We twitched wood right up the ravine as you can see, which at the time seemed right. Wood pays pretty well too, but I think we might have ruined some of the digging.

I got pictures, but the close ups of the rock did not show on the camera was I was seeing, and I am some blind, diseased, overweight chump.

 

[OreCart]

Here is a picture looking up the ravine, the skidder trail is to the right, and the stream is to the left (but snowed in this section).

This is the midway point of this woodlot, and we had to twitch 1-1/2 miles away to get the wood on a truck. Then the truck had to navigate 4-1/2 miles of logging road to get it to a paved way. If prospecting is hard, sometimes logging is too, especially when the twitching has to be done uphill.

 

[OreCart]

But everyone wants to see the rock. Here the country rock is on the left, then the Galena, and then the quartz, the Galena having been eroded over the years exposing the quartz veins.

 

[triple d]

Very interesting. The stuff in the pocket. Looks very much like the stuff. I have been crushing. I find some gold in it. But I really haven"t really crushed that much either.Just finished crushing a gallon of ore. And if it looks good. May send a sample out to be tested. And gelena is silver. So hopefully there a lot. In that ledge.

 

[arizau]

Galena per se is a lead mineral. However, Argentiferous Galena is a silver bearing ore still mostly containing lead. "The typical specimen of galena is about 86.6% lead and 13.4% sulfur by weight. However, some specimens of galena contain up to a few percent silver by weight. They are called "argentiferous galena" because of their silver content.

 

[OreCart]

I was not sure at first if I had Galena or Graphite.

In Monson, Maine their slate is on the blackish side because of all the graphite in the rock, but here our slate is more blueish in color. So I was not sure until the report from the local mine said they found Galena and no mention of graphite.

This Galena threw me off because all the Galena I ever saw was cubism looking, and mine is not that way, but after reading up on it, galena can have a lot of different cleavage forms I guess. It passed all the other tests so I am pretty sure it is Galena, but I am not sure what silver content it has. Silver was found nearby, so maybe it has quite a bit in it. There is always hope.