Nuggets of News Blog 

A good rule of thumb that most prospectors agree on is to look for placer gold on bedrock and within crevices in the bedrock. This simple principle makes sense— placer gold is heavy and dense and therefore settles at the lowest point as it is pushed around by flowing water. However, gold isn’t always going to make it all the way down to true solid bedrock at the bottom of all gravels. Instead, in certain conditions, it will be found ABOVE bedrock. When these conditions exist, gold will collect on “false bedrock.” For example, a clay layer in streams can act like bedrock and yield more gold than the true bedrock below it. 

Another situation where gold cannot make it to bedrock is where the streams and gullies have “caliche.” Caliche is a form of cemented gravel often found in desert areas. The gravel is deposited by water flows, just as it would be in any other stream. The difference is that the water contains dissolved calcium salts, and as the water dries up in the streambed, the calcium salts turn into calcium carbonate or calcite. This material gets deposited on the gravel a little at a time and eventually the calcite glues it all together into a solid mass. The solid mass then acts like false bedrock and any new gold flowing across it is stopped in its downward movement by the caliche.

Residual placer gold is formed near the source of the gold and doesn’t really have a chance to work its way downward. Hillside placers are residual placers that are sliding and making their way down the side of a hill into a stream drainage. Gold generally is distributed all through these types of gravels and is not concentrated in any one place. A hillside placer often will be located up above a stream, making it difficult to determine it from a bench placer. Old benches of river gravel can be good places to prospect because they are virgin ground, but because the river used to flow at this location, it’s highly likely that the best gold will be right on bedrock or in crevices of the bedrock. The best way to tell the difference between hillside and bench placers is the shape of the rocks in the gravel. If the gravels and rocks are well-rounded and smoothed, then it’s probably an old river bench. If the gravel is angular, pointy, and sharp, it’s probably a hillside placer that hasn’t yet made its way into a stream.

Another type of placer—the windblown placer— concentrates on the surface, just exactly the opposite of what you would find in a river or stream. The lightest materials such as sand and silt are blown away by the wind. Heavy materials like gold remain behind on the surface. These types of placers are marked by desert pavement, which is a concentration of small to medium-sized rocks that cover the surface and prevent continuing wind erosion. They occur in dry regions with flat terrain, and are often favorite locations of metal detectorists who find nice nuggets at shallow depths.

The next time you find yourself in an environment with well-washed river gravels, you know that the gold will most likely be on the bedrock. But if you find yourself in other types of environments, especially in the desert, consider the possibility that the best gold may actually collect ABOVE it.  Good luck!

Historically, California has been known as the land of the big nuggets. After the Gold Rush began in 1849, some of the biggest nuggets were discovered there because so many more people were out looking. For example, in 1854, miners working underground in the Morgan Mine at Carson Hill in Calaveras County pulled out a 195-pound mass of gold. It was 15 inches wide and four inches thick!  In 1859, a gigantic nugget was taken from ancient Tertiary river gravels on the slopes of Sawmill Peak near the West Branch of the Feather River and the small community of Dogtown. That nugget weighed 54 troy pounds. The spot where it was discovered was a hydraulic mine on the Willard claim that had a history of producing large nuggets in the past, including a 96-ounce nugget.

Plenty of stories abound from California, but plenty of big gold has come from other states as well. Colorado's biggest nugget weighed in at 156 ounces (13 troy pounds). It came from the Gold Flake mine located on Farmcomb Hill in Summit County, Colorado in 1877.  It's easy to see why Montana's nickname is the "Treasure State" since it has produced a few big nuggets, too. One weighed 53 ounces and was displayed at the Paris World Expoition of 1889. The largest in Montana was over 170 ounces and was dug at a depth of 12 feet in Snow Shoe Gulch on the Little Blackfoot River. Nevada's largest nugget was taken from the diggings of the Osceola District in 1878. It weighed 24 pounds (but eight pounds of that was quartz). The old Spanish miners found plenty of big gold in New Mexico, including one nugget in the late 1890s that weighed over 65 ounces.

Unlike many Western states, the largest nugget in Alaska was found rather recently. In 1998, the Alaska Centennial Nugget, weighing 294 ounces, was mined along Swift Creek near the town of Ruby. This area is well known for its past production of large nuggets. A big nugget was also found in Anvil Creek near Nome which weighed 182 ounces.

North Carolina's claim to fame is the Reed Gold Mine located in Cabarrus County. It was the site of the first documented discovery of gold in 1799. For years, that 17 pound nugget was used as a doorstop because no one recognized what it was! At the time, it was worth roughly $4,000 (when the price of gold was $20.67 for an ounce). The Reed Mine actually produced a lot of big gold, including some weighing 28 pounds, 17 pounds, 16 pounds, and 13 pounds. Two different nuggets came from this area that weighed eight pounds each and another two nuggets were nine pounds each. Several more nuggets have been unearthed that weighed five pounds and less.

These examples of where large nuggets have been found are by no means exhaustive. A Google search will provide lots of fun stories about past and present finds across the United States. But no matter who has found what, the big question remains: Where do you hunt for big gold these days? Generally, big nuggets occur in places where rich gold-bearing fluids flow through the same pathways for a long period of time, allowing continued deposition of gold that lead to the formation of large pieces. These bigger pieces form where a change in geology allows a gold-bearing waterway to efficiently drop gold all in the same place. The same type of geology that produces rich pockets of ore with lots of visible gold are often the same areas where big nuggets are found. The really big nuggets are parts of pockets that have so much gold that they hold together as a single piece even after tumbling around in a stream.

The simple answer to where to hunt for big nuggets is to hunt where they have been found in the past. Past finds of big gold indicates these locations have the right geology for their formation. Big nuggets in a stream environment will work their way to bedrock very fast and stay put. They will often be lodged in deep crevices. Keep in mind that big nuggets are also worth more than their actual metal value. The fact they are so rare adds to their value. If you haven't found your big gold yet, keep looking! And if you can't wait to own your own shiny stuff, buy gold nuggets here.

Nugget of News Blog

Browse the show floor to find the latest and greatest gold mining and metal detecting equipment, attend free seminars, ask questions of the pros, and enter to win thousands of dollars in door prizes—metal detectors, sluice boxes, Gold Cube, and MORE! Also on the show floor are panning troughs for both kids and adults where you can learn new techniques— keep all the gold you find!

Saturday show hours 10 am - 5 pm and Sundays 10 am - 4 pm in these cities:

Tucson, AZ  February 17 & 18, 2018
Pomona, CA  February 24 & 25 
Ridgefield, WA March 24 & 25
Las Vegas, NV April 22 & 22
Boise, Idaho  May 5 & 6

Visit the GPAA website for details and to buy your $5 adult tickets online. Adult admission is $10 at the door; kids 12 and under are FREE and so are active duty military and veterans with ID.

Did you know... there is actually more gold to find today than the old-timers found way back in the 1800s gold rush era? Gold prospecting and treasure hunting has become a very popular and family oriented hobby, and these Gold and Treasure Shows are a great place to start in your search for that elusive shiny metal. See you there!

NOTE: Unfortunately, the ICMJ Gold Prospecting and Mining Summit usually held at the fairgrounds in Placerville, California has been cancelled for 2018. ICMJ is exploring other venues for April 2019.

Nugget of News Blog

Given a choice, most miners prefer using water to wash and run material, but in some dry, remote areas that  is just not feasible. If you focus on the natural conditions that exist in desert regions and work with them, you can maximize fine gold recovery. The number one rule is that the drier the soil, the better. Damp soil conditions are very much a hindrance for drywashers. Beyond that, learning the different soil types you may encounter in the desert and how to deal with them can increase your gold recovery.

Clay is generally known as a great gold robber, making clay-bound gravels the biggest difficulty to overcome. In most of the placers directly derived from weathering lode deposits, the placers are in ravines, gullies and hillsides with sometimes very little gravels and mostly decomposed fragment of rock and fine silt from the decomposing host rock. Host rock containing a lot of feldspars are most problematic. As feldspar breaks down, it creates some difficult clays and silts that bind fine gold to small rocks and sand with the clay and silt particles forming larger clods.

Loamy or sandy conditions are much easier to process with a drywasher than clay-bound material due to the absence of clods and clumps. But if dirt clods are giving you grief, break them down with a large hammer on a canvas tarp, or use a mortar and pestle (dolly pot).

Once you are set up to run material, process in short runs before cleaning out the riffle tray (perhaps after every three 5-gallon buckets). Frequent clean ups minimize the amount of fine gold that may creep or walk down the riffle tray with the tailings. This method uses your dry washer as a form of a classifier to screen off larger material while getting rid of much of the fine silt and lighter weight material.

Re-running tailings can aid in the recovery of lost gold— especially small gold dust and flakes. The second pass through is usually much quicker than the first time because the material has already been classified. With some placers, especially flat, fine gold, rerunning material can be very lucrative. In places where gold is more coarse and angular, very little gold will like be recovered by running the tailings a second time.

You may want to experiment with adding a second layer of cloth to a portion of the riffle tray. Doing so reduces airflow by almost half in that section. In addition to the riffle tray, the void under the riffle tray can collect a sizable amount of really fine gold mixed in with fine silt.

No doubt there are going to be losses of gold when using a drywasher to recover fine gold (20 minus mesh down into the 200 minus gold), but the end goal should be to limit those losses as much as possible and these tips should help.  Good luck!   Learn more about Gold Buddy drywashers here.

Nugget of News Blog

You might have heard the term “flood plain gold” and are wondering what it really means. A very simple definition is “fine-sized gold flakes carried or redistributed by flood waters and deposited on gravel bars as the flood waters recede.” When this “redistribution” occurs, it is usually after heavy winter storms that churned up rivers enough to turn part of the bedload over and move the river bar gravels from one place to another. Within these gravels is fine gold that was previously deposited there.  When waterways flow way up and above their normal banks, they generally drop the heavier gold in the front of the bar, and as pressure decreases, the finer gold starts dropping into the mixed gravel. Over time, some of this finer gold will work its way down to bedrock, but generally it stays on the move.

How did the gold get there in the first place? There are many classifications of placer deposits, and their definitions can provide the answer. Among the most well-known is stream placers. Streams carry gold from eroded veins and concentrate them in various ways. Modern streams refer to present-day gold-bearing waterways that are the most common sources of gold for today’s prospectors. Tertiary and intervolcanic channels are rivers buried from mud and volcanic flows that existed prior to our modern-day waterways. High benches were created as rivers cut their way deeper into the bedrock and could be located hundreds of feet above today’s modern rivers. Desert placers are generally the result of torrential flash flooding and not a constant water flow. Glacial stream deposits are created by melting glaciers that can concentrate gold if the water flow is sufficient. Marine or beach deposits can come from wave action against cliffs, from off-shore currents bringing in gold-bearing material from under the ocean, or even from gold-bearing streams that flowed into the beach area eons ago.

Since there is a strong possibility that gold can get moved around during storms, it’s now important to know WHERE to find this “dropped out” gold. The secret is to find that drop point and to capitalize on its accumulation. Fine gold looks fantastic in a pan or box, but its weight can be deceivingly light. It takes a lot of fine gold to be equal to a larger piece and to have enough weight to make the recovery effort worthwhile. Some of the best areas to look for flood plain gold are where the stream or river widens out, or levels out, or changes direction. The inside of a bend is good. Rocks and weeds and small shrubs are also potentially good collection spots. When checking out collection spots, be extra careful. Calm water on the surface can hide swift currents underneath.

Keep in mind that the effects of heavy winter rains and snow will not be the same on all waterways. Redistribution might occur to a larger degree on larger rivers. Or it could be the opposite where you live and prospect. No one hopes for an especially “bad winter,” but if Mother Nature makes it so, this information could be the silver lining— a way to turn lemons into lemonade come spring when you can get out and take advantage of any gold redistribution that occurs. Good luck and be safe!

Nugget of News Blog

It takes years and years for nature and its elements— dirt, rock, water, and sand— to smooth a rock's surface. But a rock tumbler can get you those same results in considerably less time. Although you should always refer to the owner's manual for the particular rock tumbler you own, if you're just getting interested in the hobby of lapidary and are wondering how a tumbler works, below are general tumbling instructions from Lorton, Inc., a leading manufacturer for the last 50 years.

STEP 1: (coarse grit) Fill the tumbler barrel 2/3 to 3/4 full with properly graded and sized stones. If the barrel is not full enough, you won`t get the proper tumbling action in the later steps. Add the necessary amount of coarse grit to the stones in the barrel. After adding the grit, slowly add water until the water level is just touching the bottom of the top layer of stones. Do NOT overfill because too much water will inhibit the tumbling action. Run the tumbler for 24 hours, them open the barrel to release any slight gas build-up during the coarse grind. If the slurry appears pasty or very thick, add a small amount of water. Let the tumbler run for an hour and recheck, add water as needed.

The First (coarse) grind is the most important step and will take 7 to 10 days - be patient and don`t stop too soon. Note: If the stones are not all smoothly rounded, it is necessary to repeat the coarse grind step using a charge of new grit. The original grit will have broken down too much to provide additional shaping. After the 1st grind, you must clean the barrel and stones thoroughly to remove all traces of the coarse grit slurry. Do not pour slurry into your plumbing system, it will settle in the pipes and harden like cement. There should be no visible grit or slurry left on the stones, you are now ready for step 2.

STEP 2: (220 grit) Place the cleaned stones in the barrel, inspecting them as you go, and removing any that need more coarse grinding - if you have less than 2/3 barrel full of stones add plastic pellets to make up the additional volume. Add proper amount of water and grit according to table, reseal the barrel, and let it run for 2 to 3 days before checking stones. On the 7th day, they should have a smooth matte finish over their entire surface, if not run for additional 2 to 3 days. Plastic pellets will float to the top, remove and clean them as they can be used again. Use the same cleaning procedure you used in step 1.

STEP 3: (pre-polish) Place stones into the barrel, following previous instructions. Run for about a week, checking progress ever other day. Clean and inspect stones for final polishing stage.

STEP 4: (polish) Gently place the stones into the barrel to avoid any scratching or chipping. After charging the tumbler with water and polishing compound, add plastic pellets to increase volume to 2/3 - 3/4 full. The pellets will help carry the polishing compound and that will cushion the stones. Polishing should take 5 to 7 days. At the end of the this time, remove and inspect several stones. If they look the same when dry as they do when wet, your batch is finished. If, after 7 days, your polished gemstones appear to have a slight film on them, it can be removed and extra shine and luster added by burnishing step. Before burnishing, be sure to thoroughly clean the barrel and stones and recover the plastic pellets.

Burnishing: Place your stones into the barrel, add the same plastic pellets and proper amount of powdered soap (do not use any liquid detergents, dishwasher powders or any products that contain bleach or additives as these products will damage the barrel and ruin the polish). Add water as in previous steps and run for at least 4 days.

Whether you're just getting started in the hobby of lapidary, or you've been polishing rocks for decades, you'll find the rock tumbling equipment and accessories you need here.

Nugget of News Blog

For those of us with a strong dose of gold fever, the price of gold doesn't make much difference. Most prospectors seem to get much more pleasure from the process of finding the gold rather than selling it. It's the thrill of the hunt! Plus, gold remains a sound investment over time as a hedge against inflation and instability.

You might recall when gold peaked in August 2011 at $1890 per ounce. That was a very exciting time in the news— media hype always follows whenever gold takes a strong rise or dips. Over the last few years, the price has come down and is averaging around $1200 per ounce. But you might be wondering where the price is going from here. If you take a look at the chart of gold prices, it can be an indicator of what's to come.

The key to the chart is recognizing resistance levels and support levels (high and low points). When a price bottoms out, it establishes a new floor. When it breaks below that floor it is considered "bearish" and likely to drop further since it broke a supporting base price. When it breaks above a resistance level, it indicates there is strong demand which could push the price to higher levels.

Between 1978-1980, gold prices went from $172 to $830 per troy ounce. In 1982, gold prices dropped back to $328 an ounce. It was not until 1999 that the price hit the low of $253 after the peak in 1980. Never having broken that price floor, it entered a recovery where it eventually broke above the high set in 1980, pushing to $944 an ounce by February 2008. Later that same year, in October, the price hit just under $830 before skyrocketing to that crazy high of $1890 per ounce! Since then, the price has dropped from its high just as it did in the early 1980s. Gold dropped to a new floor of $1066 at the end of 2015, before bouncing back to its current levels. Since the new floor was established, it has not been broken. Instead, the price climbed to $1340 per oz. by August 2016, dropped but stayed $100 above the prior low to $1163 and has since bounced back to around $1200. If the price continues to set new highs, even if it drops thereafter and continues to set higher lows on its way up, it is considered "bullish" or positive.

Why is the price of gold so important? Maybe it's not to the average prospector, but the price of gold has a direct impact on the level of involvement in prospecting. The next sharp rise in price might bring with it additional involvement from more people. The treasure seeker in all of us might just kick in, bringing more families out to the gold fields. Good luck! 

September 1st of every year is a very important date if you own a mining claim, mill site or tunnel site. That's the date your annual maintenance fees, or your Small Miner's Waiver, are due. The following information, appropriate forms, and more details also can be found on the Burea of Land Management website.

Maintenance Fee Payment Waiver Certification (Small Miner’s Waiver)
If a claimant owns 10 or fewer active claims/sites on Federal land nationwide, the claimant may qualify for a maintenance fee payment waiver also known as the small miner’s waiver.  Form 3830-2 must be used when filing a small miner’s waiver request and must be filed or postmarked (if mailed) on or before September 1 every year. There is no processing fee to file a waiver.  By filing a waiver, claimants are certifying that they and all related parties own 10 or fewer claims and sites nationwide and that assessment work has been or will be performed, and that the proper affidavits of assessment or annual labor will be timely filed.

The maintenance fee and small miner’s waiver must be paid or filed in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) state office (in Alaska, the Fairbanks District Office also accepts fee payment) of the state where the claim or site is located.  If a claimant owns claims or sites in multiple states, a fee or waiver must be paid or filed in each state where each claim or site is located.  Failure to timely pay the fee or file the waiver in the proper BLM office will subject your claims or sites to forfeiture by operation of law.

Annual Assessment Work
Claimants requesting a small miner’s waiver from paying the annual maintenance fee, must perform assessment work and spend a minimum of $100 in labor or improvements on each claim, and record evidence of such with the BLM on or before December 30 of the calendar year in which the assessment year ended.  The same document that the claimant records with the county must be filed with the BLM.  The BLM processing fee is $10 per claim for recording an affidavit of annual assessment. The assessment work must be performed within the period defined as the assessment year.  Assessment work includes, but is not limited to, drilling, excavations, driving shafts and tunnels, sampling (geochemical or bulk), road construction on or for the benefit of the mining claim; and geological, geochemical, and geophysical surveys. Optional Form 3830-4 may be used for affidavits of assessment filed with the BLM.

Assessment work is not a requirement for owners of mill or tunnel sites; however, a notice of intent to hold (NOIH) the site must be filed on or before December 30. The BLM requires a $10 processing fee per site for filing a NOIH.

Claimants (except those in Alaska) may pay their annual maintenance fee online through the Mining Claim Maintenance Fee Payment Portal.  This site is available 24 hours a day.  The BLM payment portal provides the ability to query eligible mining claims and sites for payment through an interface with the Legacy Rehost 2000 (LR2000) public reporting database; select claims and sites to be paid; and then transfer to Pay.gov for payment of the maintenance fees for the selected claims and sites.  At this time, only credit card payments are accepted and treasury limits apply.

Claimants who file on paper must include a document listing the claim/site name(s) and the BLM serial number(s) assigned to each claim for which the fees are being paid. Form 3830-5 (lode claims) and Form 3830-5(a) (placer claims) may be used to list claims and sites when making payments by check or credit card directly to the BLM state office for the state where the claims or sites are located.

Every prospector has his or her own opinion as to the best material to have under the riffles of your sluice box— Deep V Matting, Carpet, or Miners Moss. There is no single right answer just like there is no single right answer for which brand or size of sluice to use— the one you take to a beach for fine gold recovery is probably not the same sluice you should use in a river when shoveling in unclassified material.
 

• Deep V rubber matting is easier to clean up and you can see the gold easier, too.

• Carpet holds onto the finer gold particles when wet, making cleanup harder. To get every bit of gold, dry the carpet in the sun, then later shake it over a gold pan or tub to ensure you collect every grain of gold.

• Miners Moss is a good choice for stream sluices. It will help catch the gold and let the larger waster material run over the top and out of the box. It’s also great for collecting super fine gold. Miners Moss has two weaves— use the larger side when bigger gold is present, and use the tighter weave on the back side at the beach or anywhere you tend to find multiple sizes of gold.

No matter if you favor miners moss, matting, carpet, or a combination, using expanded metal over these materials can help create even more small pockets to help the fine gold drop out.

Fun and exercise are two great reasons to go gold prospecting, but you might as well make some money while you're at it, right? The best way to do that is to increase production rates. Assuming you are mining on a known gold-bearing claim or waterway, volume is the key to your success!

Graduating from the basic gold pan to some other form of simple equipment is the best way to increase production rates. Just going from a pan to a sluice will increase production by at least 500%, depending on how it is used. A highbanker will work about the same amount of material as a well-run sluice, though it can move the water to you instead of you bringing the gravel to the water, thereby dramatically increasing volume of production. A drywasher will produce similar results by allowing you to work without water.

A dredge or highbanker/suction dredge combo is the next step up. A dredge uses a gas motor to generate the suction that will load and transport the material to the sluice, which greatly increases volume, as well as allows you to reach gravel on the river bottom that would otherwise be inaccessible (unless the river is seasonal or there is a prolonged drought). The more material a dredger can push across the riffles, the more gold can be recovered. An additional benefit to dredging is that it also allows you to clean gold out of all the cracks and crevices in the bedrock. A shovel just cannot do that.

The size of the dredge intake nozzle is the most important factor in how much material a dredge can process, but it is not a direct one-to-one relationship. For example, a 5 inch dredge will not move twice the material that a 2.5 inch dredge can move. It actually can move much more. The surface of the hose is figured in square inches, the area (and therefore the volume) goes up much faster than the diameter and the corresponding production rates go up proportionally. A larger hose size will also clog less because more sizes of rock and gravel will pass through. Having to stop and remove clogs can significantly reduce the time you get to spend actually moving dirt and finding gold. No matter the size, you're likely to have rocks jam up the hose from time to time, but generally, the larger the hose the less frequent the clogs that slow or stop production. In most areas of the country, a 2 inch dredge is considered a "recreational" size and may not require a permit to use, whereas much larger nozzle sizes would require a permit. Always know the laws where you intend to gold prospect and mine before you buy equipment.

Beyond dredges or highbanker/suction dredge combos, you can get into some professional mining set-ups that use trommels and jigs and shaker tables and earth moving equipment. Every deposit is different, varying in size and grade and structure. Environmental conditions and access will dictate mining methods and knowing the rock types and size of the gravel is critical in determining which equipment will work best for increasing your production. Finding a suitable deposit to mine and finding a way to work it economically— to justify your time and expense— is the first step.  Then choose the right equipment to increase your recovery rate and speed of recovery and make more money.  Good luck!