Interesting Specimen I found lurking about the web· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $853.60
· Spot price last Gazette: $837.90 12/19/08
________________
Calendar of Events
JANUARY
· 1st New Years Day
· 15th Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday
· 19th MLK Day observed
· 20th Inauguration Day
_______________________________________
NEWS
Have the past two weeks gone by as fast for you as they have for me? During those weeks we had many things happen, and it was good that I had suspended the Gazette until after the first. We had all the usual things going on, plus my Mother came to spend a few weeks with us, and my Father-in-Law died. Last Friday when the Gazette would have gone out, we were in Longmont helping to make arrangements for a funeral, so there would have been no newsletter for you, anyway.
This week, guests have gone home and we are in recovery mode and looking forward to the weekend and some much needed rest. A secluded beach somewhere is looking really good right now, but I’m afraid we will have to wait until after Larry retires to find the time. If you are following me on facebook.com, you would have known all the other stuff going on, and since this isn’t a social bookmaking site, I’ll spare you the details about the youngest son who got sent home from the Philippines for creating a hostile work environment for coworkers by blogging about his experiences. Oh, so you don’t think that is boring? Well, don’t do it. He got fired over it.
There is TONS of stuff going on in the gold arena, and I’ll be blogging about some of it this next week. Here are the highlights: Remember John Leshy?, Climate change and what scientists are doing now to save their professional reputations, mining terminology and what it means to you and the U.S. Forest Service, and the current price of gold and your government. WAY too much information for this newsletter alone, so I’ll give you some links today, and a conversation about some interesting places to find gold in a stream or river.
Most gold finders will tell you to stay to the large rocks and boulders in a stream or river. If the waterway is depositing large boulders along its’ shores, gold will settle there as well, even if the stream “read” for a gold deposit says it won’t be there. We commonly come across this on the Arkansas River where the original riverbed is not in the usual place, but has been pushed to one side or the other of its’ natural fault line by a glacial moraine.
I particularly like the “triangle” configuration of boulders to find gold in, where three come together with space in the middle. This spot will create a large calm area in the middle of the boulders for gold to drop out into, and usually is more accessible than behind a single rock, which can have a lot of turbulence.
Another area to check out when it isn’t under water, is in a depression in a boulder that collects cobble and the material gets packed into the hole. This drop area will also collect gold in the bottom of it. You may need a whisk broom, vacuum, or something similar to get all of the material out, as you will find the depression will collect gold dust very well.
Schist and shales bedrocks along the sides of a streambed will either contain gold or catch it, as the “seams” in them act like little riffles and is a place where gold collects.
Don’t look for gold at the bottom of a fast falling rapid, but in the sand bar left downstream from it. The water falling over the rapid will scour the area, but leave the gold in the calmer water just downstream of the turbulence, either right below it or to one side or the other. Always look for the bigger rocks that are sometimes submerged under soft sand, and bedrock that runs perpendicular to the stream, like in your sluice box. It catches gold for the same reasons.
Lastly, remember that water speed and slope are everything in looking for a place to find gold, and catching it in your sluice, gold pan, dredge, or highbanker. Your metal detector won’t care about slope or speed, but where you look may.
To get your copy of Ben Parker’s blue book on prospecting for gold, you can click the link HERE.
To look for other books on gold and gold prospecting you can click the link HERE.
Panning Kits Here
Monthly Specials HERE
Here are a few links to DIY projects:
Plans to build your own equipment
http://49ermike.com/plans.shtml
Prospecting Equipment photo's
http://showcase.netins.net/web/1rowellpage/prospecting.html
Vintage Projects
http://www.vintageprojects.com/misc/dry-washer-prospecting-plans.html
How to Build a Drywasher
http://www.thunting.com/geotech/pages/misc/projects/drywasher1/index.html
Until next week…….
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley (MQS)
Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.
World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com . If the links do not work, copy and paste them into your browser.
If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until April 1st.
_______________________________________
www.hookedongold.com
www.hookedongold2.com Metal Detectors at Auction
info@hookedongold.com contact us
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Ads that you might find on this blog or on a website using ads, may use cookies or other tracking means to track your movements on the web. Please read our Privacy Policy to see how this affects you and what you might want to do to prevent cookies being used to track you.
