Digging a hole like the old timers

[goldtruck59]

Has anyone stood at a diggings site and said to themselves, geez I wonder if I put down a hole a little to the left or the right would I hit pay dirt?
Seriously I have and never have actually done it. Has anyone dug a hole on a known diggings, got down to the wash, either washed it or detected it and actually found gold?
I know its romantic to think of it, but what a buzz it would be if in a 10 x10 or 8x8 piece of real estate,you actually did just that !!
Please anyone that has and I mean from scratch, please post on this forum their results or story /. It would be a great thing.

 

[Redmanti]

Much of the time that's what I do. Easiest way to hit the pay dirt.

You can see the wash layer and it always works.

 

[Outlander51]

Much of the time that's what I do. Easiest way to hit the pay dirt.

You can see the wash layer and it always works.

I have always wanted to do this too but worry about the hard yakka/payoff ratio. I want to do this near or next to a river that I have been lucky enough to find quite a lot of gold in already but I just don't know how far away from the river to do it or where I might have the best chance... So I dont do it!! But Im definately keen to give it a go if I hear some more about it.

 

[Village]

Well Goldtruck

Me, not personally but I do know of two that have. The first was about almost ten years ago, Hill End Gold decided that they want to utilise an old drive to save money to get to any area they had tested drilled with good results, but the drive was 18 inches to narrow on three faces to get the gear down, so they using small charges they were we going to expand it, after detonation, what they found was a complex series of gold veins on the north east wall for almost the entire length. The old timers missed it by what would have been anything from 3" inches onwards.

The other one is the Morning Star mine, they are currently sinking down adjunct to the old mine, currently the overburden is yielding 10gn Au ton.

Food for thought

 

[trenchfighter]

hmmmm.... im gonna need a few bags of potassium nitrate.....

 

[Goldtarget]

I'm in that process atm. But really because its a case of have to know....just waiting for someone to come along and tell me i can't. I'll keep you posted but the gains are pretty good if you are in the right place. Keep in mind the old fellas had alot harsher going than we do.

 

[Ben78]

I know a couple of lads that put in the hard yards digging big holes and they always seem to get onto good gold. Me, its a profit/payoff ratio - not that walking around for 8 hours swinging a detector is currently paying off for me....

 

[Beagleboy]

Check some YouTube videos by Darcy Cooper. He has a claim where he follows the old timers diggings. Great videos.

 

[SWright]

G'Day All

There are two general types of deposits that we are mostly considering here. Village was talking about hard-rock reef gold and there you would need to have an understanding of the vein geology. That is are there any parallel veins or offsets as a result of faulting of the system for example. That is hard work and requires blasting and drilling and you must have a lease to undertake such as exercise otherwise deep poo poo may fall on your head, as well as actual rock. Also a practical understanding of underground mining would be a must. Doing anything underground requires extensive experience and knowledge. I deal with all the time regarding alluvial mining in other parts of the world and the number of deaths from falls of ground even in shallow areas is far too common.

The other is looking for new "leads" or extensions to alluvial leads. They are old sream beds or cutoff parts of an existing stream. They can be shallow (what I think we would be interested in), and can be covered by as little as a few metres of soil and sand or deep leads under sometimes a hundred metres or more such as the large old mines in and around Ballarat or Rutherglen.

For small leads the best way to start is to walk and map out the existing old workings -a sketch map on a sheet of graph paper would do in the beginning. Have a look at your map and see if the workings look like a typical map of a modern stream - the main pattern is what is called dendritic and looks like the veins in a leaf. there are other patterns of streams and you should look to the exisitng stream pattern in the area your are looking in. Generally in a region the present patterns of erosion are keys to the past. Then have a look in likely areas for where the old steam may have been heading or came from or where there may be undiscovered tributaries. Looks for erosion areas that could give an idea of where these are or lines of obviously water worn pebbles and slight depressions that basically add to the picture of the old dendritic pattern. I would then hand excavate a trench across the suspected stream bed and have a look before anything else.

Araluen

 

[trenchfighter]

Man, if i could only HARNESS YOUR POWER SWright!

 

[SWright]

Man, if i could only HARNESS YOUR POWER SWright!

The Power is in the imagination Tenchfighter, and the gleam of the gold in the bottom of the first pan that keeps you digging way beyond when you should have stopped and taken a break. If only the Power remained to the next day when you back was so sore you could hardly get out of the chair.

araluen

 

[Village]

hmmmm.... im gonna need a few bags of potassium nitrate.....

Mmmm, black powder is good for dimensional splitting, ammonium nitrate on the other hand, will certainly achieve most desired results

 

[Village]

Hi Araluan

Hill End and Morning Star aren't really classified as hard rock. In fact I pretty sure that Morning Star was and still is classified as an Auriferous Deep Lead, referring that that it alluvial wash. I agree with you dissection about creeks and streams but I struggle on the issue of the application here in Australia. Given the geological evidence that most of the concentrated areas of Au here actually lye on what is been deemed as being sub sea floor at some point is the geological time scale, opinions differ slightly.

I think for some it may be beneficial to explain the characteristics of the other major type of deposit, which some hare chasing here, being the intrusion of Au in quartz and the convection theory behind it. I tend to leave things out, especially when it comes down to things I take for granted. May not so much on the convection , but the geological signs to look for.

John

 

[Redmanti]

In the area I have been running my Highbanker the trove database of newspaper reports states the depth of the wash layer at 4 to 6ft. That's where the wash is.

If it is a high traffic popular tourist area then probably not a good idea to dig a big hole. You can just dig the existing hole and fill up your buckets from that.

It's about 3 times as much gold as the regular creek dig.

 

[MJB]

Out of curiosity, are there any legal obligations on digging a big hole. I am only new and on reading a few books I am getting a pretty good understanding that most of our gold is still in the ground. I often think if I can dig a hole down to the wash I would clean up but fear my Vic Miners permit won't cover it.

Has any one got any ideas in this?

Very interesting thread.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[loamer]

Your Vic Miners Right would be OK - depends on how big and the criteria all holes must be filled in. I have dug a few deep & wide holes following a reef line of gold on an old diggers area. It was in a fairly remote area and it was left open for a week while I worked on it. In the end it was filled in. The area had several surface reef diggings that were probably uneconomical for the old timers. Detecting around the remaining exposed reef was good and with a big coil a faint threashold break ended up being a deep embedded 1/2 ounce piece., so down and sideways I went to follow the quartz line. It was hard work, chisels & hammers, crowbar, pick, sledge hammer etc. but very rewarding. Give it a go but hard yakka.

 

[crazyk]

I've always wanted to dig a big hole and chase quartz but I'm not sure the back could handle it!

 

[Hare_Twigga]

I know a bit about it. You can dig a hole 5ft x 2.5ft x 5ft deep in 2-3hrs approx. cleaning out the gravel another hour or so and filling it back in takes about 40 mins approx. Each ft deeper than this add at least another hour. I've found enough gold by doing this to pay for my time and effort a couple of times. The old timers saying of "Three in one hundred" has been true for me. Most holes I dig I get nothing,a speck or two.

 

[G0lddigg@]

I dug a pit o ce or twice the fiirst one was rught next to a creek I waa getting really good colour from the creek in a crevis so after studing the cliff around me I figures the crevis extended all the way along a benched area. I picked a spot and started digging ended up hitting bedrock at around 7 feet there was gold but bugger all. second time I went down throught 3 layers of quartz wash and gave up as the ground arpund me started bleeding water. good fun

 

[HeadsUp]

I know a bit about it. You can dig a hole 5ft x 2.5ft x 5ft deep in 2-3hrs approx. cleaning out the gravel another hour or so and filling it back in takes about 40 mins approx. Each ft deeper than this add at least another hour. I've found enough gold by doing this to pay for my time and effort a couple of times. The old timers saying of "Three in one hundred" has been true for me. Most holes I dig I get nothing,a speck or two.

The plus for us is while the old timers would dig down to it , very few if any people have done it in modern times

So in theory we will have 130 years of gold buildup under those gravel bars

If i had a spot close to home i would do it but you really need to own the spot "through frequent attendance"

The other question is , will 130 years of floods give productive gold compared to thousands of years of build up that the old timers scored ?