Will's Hard Rock Prospecting

03/06/2024

01/10/2024

Panning micro gold is it worth the trouble! How to pan micro gold! Panning micro gold is a slow process but can yield a surprising amount of gold if there is lots of micro gold present in the material you are panning, the biggest problem with catching micro gold is normal panning techniques do not work that good for micro gold, this type of gold requires the panner to slow down take their time, now first thing to forget is swirling your material to see your gold it will just wash away with the material your trying to get rid of. Why because micro gold is so fine that it will move with very little water flow passing over it when you swirl a pan it makes the water move fast. First start with 1 cup of material and cover with about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of water shake the hell out of the material in your pan shake back and forth and side to side round and round do this for as long as you can, just before you stop slow the motion done make smaller and smaller movements with your pan. Next shake your material side to side again very fast and slowing the movement until stopped while tilting your pan slightly forward the same way you would pan any material, but you are trying to just get all the material into the top of your pan. Now try to make a wave by rocking your pan forward and back very slowly remove the light material off the top and wash it to the back of your pan, you want an even wave meaning that your wave hits the material at the same time on both sides, and then wash this material out of your pan, repeat process add water (don't add too much water or your wave will hit with so much force that it will wash a big hole in the center of your material) shake it side to side and tilt your gold pan away from you until you have everything in top of your pan again and back wash again until you hit sulfides/black sands. Now you will start to see micro gold popping out of the corner of your material if you have any micro gold, this is caused by the wave you have being making it pushes your micro gold up when the wave hits and when the wave go out or back it carries the lighter material you can watch this happen in real time while you are panning with this method. Now you can start tapping the top of your pan while holding at 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock with your other hand keep the gold under water and slightly tilting your pan back towards you your gold should form a line in the top of your pan. And begin back washing a few times and tapping a few times. Try tap hard and light slow and fast when you get it right your gold will jump up and waste material will go down. Good luck with your gold hunt your fortune might be waiting for you never know!

01/10/2024

Chapter 4 You think you have found gold! Just a note before we continue, prospecting in Ontario can only be done on open ground( Not claimed or closed to mining for any reason.) Will first did you actually find gold, I will not get into this deeply because there is so much info online about this, ok gold is heavy very heavy and does not like to move in your pan, now I am not saying that gold is so heavy no matter how you pan your material the gold will stay in your pan. Gold will move in a pan, it will sometimes have a hard time sinking to the bottom of some materials, especially when you trying recover fine gold. So you have been lucky and found gold will now it is decision time do you want to claim this deposit or just have fun and hobby pan your spot. If you decide you want to claim this area, you have to realize that holding a mining claim can cost money and time, everything must documented, you have to get permission for the powers that be to do just about anything and permits are required. You will need get your Prospector's License and you will have new rules to follow. But by claiming the mineral deposit you will have sole access to this claim. If you decide to hobby pan this spot just remember a prospector can claim this spot and you will no longer have access to the deposit you find. You decide to claim the area now what do you do. Start by mapping out the deposit you have found, this means taking as many samples as you can and document everything you do and find, do this in as many places as possible and don't just document the places where you find gold, document the places that don't hold gold also. Now this will be surface sampling so do not expect gold to be underground also, this involves diamond drilling and is very expensive. But this will give you a way of knowing if further exploration is warranted. So good luck on your gold hunt, your fortune might be in a mountain nearby!

01/06/2024

Chapter 1 of 3 Hard rock gold prospecting. I have been hard rock prospecting for about 10yrs now in Northern Ontario and have found a few decent gold deposits. When I started my gold hunt, I checked every river I could find and mostly found a couple little specs, soon enough I realize gold in rivers and creeks where I live was not a good bet to find gold, I had given up on finding gold. One cold winter day I was watching a video on YouTube and this guy was finding hard rock gold. I started thinking I was surrounded by hard rock gold mines and maybe I have been looking in the wrong place all this time the gold was not in the rivers and creeks but maybe it was in the rock, so I made the decision to try hard rock gold prospecting, waiting for spring that year felt like forever but when spring came, I was out door and in the bush looking. It was harder than looking in creeks and rivers in some ways, had to learn about how rock is formed and how gold gets in the rock, most places had no water so I had to bring water to pan, had to find a way to crush quartz, I also had to learn new panning techniques, had to always keep an eye out for loose (rocks that can fall off a mountain side or rockface) but I started to find gold, and I did this with very little money and learned to make my own equipment like doll pots and rock crushers, times were tight for money back then, finally after looking for years I was actually starting finding gold and was surprised by the amount of gold I was finding it sure wasn't like when I was looking in rivers and creeks only getting a few specs to a couple 5 gallon buckets material. The more I looked, the more I learned making it easier to find gold bearing quartz. I will be sharing what I have learned in these 10yrs prospecting for hard rock gold to make it possible for you to find gold too, were to start looking, what tools you need for basic testing, what to look for, how to sample, how to tell when you have found gold, what to do when you find a hard rock gold deposit, how to remove gold locked in sulfides, what equipment is needed to start recovering your gold and more! Like and follow my page to get updates on my new posts. Good luck in your hunt for gold and don't give up! Your fortune could be out there waiting for!

01/06/2024

Chapter 2 Hard Rock Prospecting Were to start?
Lets start with were, first you need a little info about the area you are in 1. Has anyone found gold in your area 2. Are there any hard rock gold mines in your area. If you answered no to any of these questions don't worry this does not mean you can't find gold in your area it just means no one has already found gold there. Next not every area has gold bearing rock. If you answered yes to these any of the questions you hunt will be a little easier but not guaranteed. Finding gold is not easy for everyone, some people pan 1 sample and find the mother load. But in most cases, you will sample and sample and sample some more until you find gold, it's all about not giving up and keep sampling. Ok now what to look for, you will be hunting quartz veins this is where you will find gold. I have added 2 pics, each pic looks just like just a plain rock face in the bush. In the next pics this the same rock face but now up close you can see the quartz veins clearly. You have to get close to rocks sometimes to find these quartz veins so when looking get up as close as possible and have a good look. Not all quartz will contain gold, very few quartz veins will actually contain any free mill gold at all and free mill gold is what you are trying to find. How to tell what quartz might contain gold, look for dirty looking quartz, rusty, yellow staining, rust staining the more mineralization (sulfides I will cover sulfides in a later post) the better the chance the vein will contain gold. I have also added pic of a of what looks like a rockslide in front of a cliff, this is actually a big quartz vein that has been weathered out over many many years, in the very last pic this is the same rockslide but now you can see the stained quartz the red dirt that is under the bigger rocks. This is good material and does contain free mill gold and gold ore which I have added a pic of some of the gold I have recovered from that spot. So, look at as many places as you can and sample when you find quartz that you think might contain gold. If you find clean quartz white just plain white, no mineralization should you sample, it is possible it might contain gold but in my experience, I have had no luck sampling clean quartz. My next post will be on taking samples and checking to see if you have found any free mill gold.

01/06/2024

Chapter 3 How to sample for hard rock gold and free mill gold!
In the last part I talked about where to find hard rock quartz that might contain gold. Ok you will need some basic tools to start a gold pan is a must, hammer, chisel, piece of thick plastic bag or similar plastic, good thick gloves, good pair of safety glasses, small shovel, and a screen 1/8 mess (stainless steel food strainers work great), and container or bucket. Ok next look at the quartz vein you have found, is there loose material laying at the bottom, if so great sampling will be easy. 1. If there is no loose material you will have to chip some off, do this in the most mineralized section of the vein you can find, be very careful to catch as much of the fine pieces that come off while you are taking your sample, (Do not breath any of the fine dust, hard rock ore can contain some dangerous minerals) you are trying to get enough crushed quartz material to pan a small sample bigger chunks should be check for visible gold and gold indicators sulfides, then can be wrapped in thick plastic placed on a hard surface and crushed up with a hammer to release more fine material, screen and pan this material and look very closely for very small pieces of free gold a magnifying glass can be very helpful to see micro gold. With this type of sampling, you will be lucky to see a couple tiny specs due to sample size you will be only test tiny amount of material, rock crushers will improve these tests by allowing large amount of sample material to be tested, I will be adding a post on the befits of rock crushers and sampling in the future.
2. You have material that has weathered out of the vein, this is good start by inspecting some of the material that is lying around for gold and sulfides ( sulfides are minerals like pyrite that indicate gold might be present in one of the pics you can the heavy amount of sulfides in the quartz) now try to gather some fine material and screen it down to 1/8 inch and pan this material to check for free mill gold and sulfides just because you don't find visible gold, the sulfides might have gold locked inside (future post will be on roasting sulfides to release gold. Also, when panning this type of material, you will be looking for micro gold, which is very hard to pan then add some sulfides some can be almost as heavy as the gold then it gets really tricky to pan. Learn to back pan, learn to tap the top of your pan to bring the gold up to top of your pan, and go slow take your time or the fine gold you do have might just get panned out and be gone and you will never know it was even there.
Next Chapter 4 will be on what to do when you find gold.