Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales

[Jim_Alaska]

Now I have learned something really beneficial. That trick with the sledge hammer is priceless. I can just see it now; gazing horizontally across the bedrock and watching for puffs of dust. What an adventure when you see one, along with the expectation of finding something no one has ever seen before.

Here are some pics of gold recovered from hydraulic pit bedrock.

hydraulic pit pan2.jpg

hydraulic pit3.jpg

[Lanny]

Nice eye-candy Jim, and thanks for posting the pics.

Good to see someone else that harvested some bedrock gold, and from an old hydraulic working as well.

Nicely done, and all the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

Thanks Lanny. This was an exceptionally small hydraulic operation, compared to most. It is probably less than two acres in size. I thought it must have been extremely rich to warrant setting up a hydraulic operation for such a small amount of ground disturbance.

The bedrock here is a bit unusual in that it is not flat, but rather composed of rounded pinnacles of very hard Granite. It looks like any decomposed bedrock was washed away, leaving only this hard, rounded stuff; some of it is up to 8 feet high. But it does have cracks in it. I started out just scraping around the bedrock and sweeping out some of the obvious cracks. When I saw that it was productive to do, I decided to try more aggressive methods. Cold chisels and even old hard rock drill steel were the order of the day, as were six foot bars and a gas vac. Once I started breaking cracks the work got harder, some of the cracks would break off in pieces that weighed more than I could move by hand. Then it was time for the six foot bars and even a come-along.

These large pieces exposed a lot of surface to be cleaned with wire brush, scraping tools, brushes and then vacuum it all up. I classified everything through a one quarter inch screen and then ran the result in a LeTrap sluice in a stream in another location. Pan that all out and the result is what you saw in the pics.

I found a very interesting thing in doing this. Just exposing the flat surface of the broken off bedrock and vacuuming it, did not get all the gold. The very fine gold you see in the pics was from vigorously wire brushing the flat surfaces before the final vacuum process. That fine gold has a tendency to stick tenaciously to the surfaces. But, I am a bit, or more than a bit, obsessive/compulsive when it comes to stuff like this, so I work it to death.

In the end I certainly didn't get rich doing this, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself and had a lot of fun, at a cost or a lot of hard physical work.

[Lanny]

Jim, I really enjoyed your story of getting some gold from the hydraulic pit, nicely done, and thanks for sharing a post with a lot of good information on retrieving hard to get gold.

I have a story somewhere about pinnacles of hard rock in an abandoned placer cut, so I'll see if I can locate it.

All the best, and thanks again for sharing,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Jim, to post a picture, do I have to have it hosted somewhere?

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

You can have i hosted somewhere, but it is not necessary. Although it may be easier and faster than my instructions, you can just copy and paste it from your host.

When you make a post if you look at the bottom of the post window you will see these links:

Options Attachments

Click on "attachments"
A window opens which has an option to "add files". From here you will be able to find the pic on your computer and choose "open".

If you want the picture to display in your post choose: "Place inline"

That's it, you can stop there and submit the post, or continue on writing and submit when done.

[Lanny]

Nuggets2 copy.jpg

At last, was able to get out to the placer deposits to find a few pieces.

All the best,

Lanny

P.S. Thanks for the help in posting Jim.