Anyone here do any gold panning or mining? recently found out that there is an old gold, silver, and sapphire mine in the family and was planning on checking it out this summer.
All i will tell you guys is that its in montana, there are old stream beds, but no flowing water on the property.
looking for advice and guidance on how to go about this
>>717919
I know who you are.
>>717964
Who is he?
>>717964
>>717919
bumping for interest
>>717965
Well he sure is a jew , we know that much.
I pan but don't understand what you want. If you have a hard rock mine then, as a hobby, your going to need rock hammers with picks and a small rock crusher. The rock crusher has a small Honda engine and sits on top of a 5 gallon bucket. You pick the rock from the mine, use a hammer and smash it up to 1/4" sized rocks then put them in the rock crusher. Then you pan that. You can also pan dried up stream beds. Just try and dig down to bedrock if possible.
>>719286
ok, so with a dry creekbed, where would my best chance to find something be? i would assume it would be where the creek bent and deposited stones and such. how will i know ive hit bedrock if i start digging?
>>717919
Get two totes, a shovel, a chair, a vial, and a pan
Watch a tutorial on how to use the pan. Fill one tote with water and shovel a bunch of the stream bed into the other. Sit down in your chair and do what the video says while enjoying nature
>>719386
>i would assume it would be where the creek bent and deposited stones and such.
Yes, it can also be higher up on the banks of the creek/stream/river as if an imaginary water line is created when flooding occurs which would wash gold down to the creek etc.
>how will i know ive hit bedrock if i start digging?
Bedrock is hard rock underneath overburden/dirt/sand. Overburden in my area is a forest with trees that grow and die then decompose. It's like shoveling store bought brown top soil for gardening. After you dig down far enough you just start hitting rock. The pic I posted is kinda what I mean by bedrock. It's just a solid wall of rock under overburden.
Also don't get hung up on one area, even if you get some gold keep doing test pans all over. Sometimes you can find out where it's coming from, maybe a small feeder stream.
