Geology(ish) question

[Average Joe]

I'm prospecting an area at the moment that has had some mining activity in the past. I've found 8 small nuggets 0.3-1.7 grams in a gully that leads uphill to 3 drives in the side of a hill. The material around the drives consists of a conglomerate of smooth quartz and ironstone all cemented together.
My question is, would it pay to start breaking up the material that's visible above ground and washing it? and has anyone had any experience with this stuff before? How deep can these layers go?

I know ive got nothing to lose from sampling but if these cemented layers go down to china i will stick with detecting the area instead for now.

What would you do?

 

[dwt]

Did you inspect the gold to see what dirt was stuck to it, can be a excellent way to divulge its source, usually I'm to busy lying in the fetel position whilst licking the little blighters clean to have ever paid any attention to the host dirt

 

[Guest]

you would think the fine gold would be siting on the cement type layer

where we go there is a clay layer 500mm down and all the fine stuff sits on this layer with not much below it

it wouldn't hurt to try

 

[Average Joe]

The gold i have recovered has been free of any rock, gritty from its immediate surrounds but thats all. I suspected an elevated watercourse that has been cemented overtime. The smooth quartz pieces at the top of the gully that looks like it has been freed from the conglomerate by previous mining are quite large(up to 3-4kilos), and the quartz in conglomerate visable to me above ground is small by comparison. I'm thinking that the heavy layers were the gold "might" be would be underground.
Time to get the pick out

 

[Guest]

if you have found some loose stuff there would certainly be some trapped

get in there with a battery hammer drill and get some samples or even hire one

https://sydneytools.com.au/makita-d...e=4&fep=1139&gclid=CKWajrDrssICFUFwvAod_L0A9w

 

[Hunting the yellow]

I'm prospecting an area at the moment that has had some mining activity in the past. I've found 8 small nuggets 0.3-1.7 grams in a gully that leads uphill to 3 drives in the side of a hill. The material around the drives consists of a conglomerate of smooth quartz and ironstone all cemented together.
My question is, would it pay to start breaking up the material that's visible above ground and washing it? and has anyone had any experience with this stuff before? How deep can these layers go?

I know ive got nothing to lose from sampling but if these cemented layers go down to china i will stick with detecting the area instead for now.

What would you do?

well to me it sounds like you have found a deep lead meaning alluvial ground from 1 meter up to 80 meters deep if you have been in the adits and find solid rock in them well then it may be a different story and the gold could be coming from the wash/alluvial ground or the actual same rock that the drives are driven into

some pics would help but not of the area just in the addits and surrounding ground/alluvial wash layers

 

[MJB]

If the conglomerate rock looks sort of like this one...

Then I would say it is worthwhile crushing it to release its gold. I have come across this stuff and some chunks have gold and some are barren. I think I have figured out that the chunks with larger pieces of quartz in it have the gold. Small pieces of quartz and its barren. Not that the quartz has the gold but the bigger rocks were in the bottom of the ancient river bed and thats where the gold would be too.

 

[Average Joe]

Looks just like that MJB, the deeper i go the cement material takes on a real red colour. I've busted the bottom out of my dolly pot too, bugger it! :lol:

 

[grubstake]

You've got two detectors that were made for the job of high-grading conglomerate rubble, especially the lightweight AT Gold with that sensitive little coil. So why are you faffing around with a dollypot and talking about breaking up and washing conglomerate (which is typically as hard as the hobs of hell )?