Find the gold one. Where and how to look for gold nuggets. Methods for extracting gold from river beds

Hello, dear readers! I propose to continue searching for places where a person thirsting for gold should go. These include ruslarek - natural.

Let's reveal the secrets of how to find gold in the river: where to look, how to mine it, what equipment to use. And most importantly, let’s name the rivers and streams in which the richest reserves of gold grains, and even whole nuggets, lie.

Experts classify river gold as secondary deposits, which were formed as a result of rock destruction under the influence of natural factors (mainly temperature changes) and washing away by water flows.

Scientifically, such placers of Au are called alluvial deposits, which are divided into three types:

• terraced;
• bottom;
• oblique.

To find terraced gold deposits, sometimes it is enough to get close to the bank, which is rich in the natural form of the precious metal. They are often found in river beds, both in deep streams and at the site of dry arteries. A “terrace” is a bottom that rises above the shore level.

Bottom deposits arise in the bedrock channel, that is, in the valley where river flow passes during periods of low water. The chances of finding them are higher in areas where the bedrock is shallow. And deposits of the third type should be looked for on a river spit, be it pebbly or sandy.

Is it possible to find gold in an ordinary river?

Particles of precious metal are scattered almost everywhere in Russia. You can look for them in any river that carries water from highlands to lowlands. Theoretically, in order to practice searching and find precious grains, there is no need to leave the Moscow or Leningrad region, much less the Caucasus or the Urals.

But in practice, the number of grains found will be negligible in monetary terms, unable to justify the expenditure of effort and time. If the task is to look for significant prey, you will have to go to the Far East or to the eastern part of Siberia - closer to the gold mines.

Life hacks for prospectors

Some tips on how to mine the yellow metal from the river to extract more:

1. The largest accumulations of Au are located in natural traps - near large boulders that block and sharply slow down the flow of small mountain rivers and streams. The lower such a “golden trap” is downstream, the more metal can be found, and the purer it is.
2. It is also profitable to look for gold in other places where the water flow slows down - at the mouths of mountain streams and rivulets, at turns (bends) of the riverbed.
3. The precious metal accumulates near any obstacles in the path of water - in holes and whirlpools under waterfalls, on shallows and spits, near fallen trees, ledges and other irregularities.
4. Bottom gold can be found not only in genuine bedrock, but also in false, representing a bottom of dense clay.

In other words, we must remember that gold is much heavier than water, streams do not carry it away, but drag it slowly along the bottom, and on the river you should look for places where it is easiest for grains of gold nuggets to freeze and settle.

Yellow metal satellites

The minerals most often found in rocks adjacent to the yellow metal are silver, quartz, galena, lead, and pyrite. The first is usually found with gold in some nuggets. The latter is especially often confused by newcomers with the sought-after value due to the shine and yellow color it possesses.

I note with regret that even having found these signs of presence, one cannot be sure that the location of the noble metal is also here. But even unremarkable pieces of minerals should be checked for the presence of a yellow sheen, the hue and color of which does not change when light is refracted. It indicates the presence of Au inside. If you notice such shine - congratulations, you managed to find gold!

Extraction technologies

Three main methods of extracting gold from the river, used by enthusiastic miners:

• dredge or minidrag;
• gravitational differentiation;
• metal detector

Dredge

The dredge pumps out the rock from the bottom, moves it into a special chute and washes it, separating the gold. Her Negative influence the environmental impact is offset by the convenience for the gold miner.

Gravitational differentiation

Gravity differentiation is the process of grinding rocks containing gold. This is an industrial method of extraction, which is suitable for developing primary deposits, but is not suitable for private individuals.

Metal detector

The equipment of a gold miner includes a metal detector (metal detector) and a mini-dredge or a tray for washing rock.

You also need full equipment for going to the area where you are going to search and mine gold.

How to wash by hand

To wash gold with your own hands using an ordinary tray, you need a round or rectangular trough up to 40 centimeters in size and a sieve. If, after washing, at least one grain remains in the sieve, the miner can be congratulated: the placer has been found. If not, you need to try further. Of course, washing this way requires enormous patience.

The operating principle of the mini-dredge is the suction of sand and small particles of pebbles from the bottom with mechanical separation of gold from the rock. The disadvantage of using this device is that it creates a lot of noise, attracting the attention of conservationists. To mine precious metals in this way, I strongly advise you to first purchase a license, otherwise you will face problems with the law.

TOP 10 Russian rivers rich in gold reserves

Prospectors with experience have compiled a truly golden top ten watercourses, where the treasure of the same name is most abundant - that’s where it’s worth looking for:

1. basin of the Siberian Lena River;
2. river length Bom;
3. Jalon Creek;
4. Millionny stream;
5. Unakha River (all in the Amur region);
6. the Bodaibo River in the Irkutsk region (the city of the same name with gold mines is even mentioned in Vysotsky’s “thieves’ lyrics”);
7. Bolshoy Chanchik River, a tributary of Bodaibo;
8. Alekseevsky stream in the Kamchatka region;
9. the Talga River in the Khabarovsk Territory;
10. the Sanarka River is the only one not in Siberia or the Far East, but in the Urals, in the Chelyabinsk region.

There are quite a lot of large grains on Bodaibo and in the Millionny stream; nuggets can still be found in other streams.

Conclusion

No matter how long and successfully industrial mining is carried out in places where gold deposits are located, it never sweeps away all the gold, leaving a healthy “catch” for private miners.

It is reliably known that there are large reserves of gold in the rivers of Russia. Anyone can receive them. However, to do this you need to learn how to look for gold in reservoirs.

In ancient times, the Russian people often hunted for gold in streams or rivers. People caught the valuable metal weighing more than one kilogram, as can be seen from historical records. To do this, they had to work with a sieve for several hours.

Today, searching for gold in reservoirs requires special knowledge and effective equipment.

Choosing a promising location

For the search to be successful, the treasure hunter must choose the right search location. Experts believe that mountain streams are the most promising. Special attention those whose length is only about 15 km are worthy.

Gold has a high density, so it is not washed out like rocks and is not transported from place to place by currents. The precious metal seeps through the pebble and sand layer, forming a scattering or, as experts say, “nests”. These are the areas that are attractive to search engines. “Nests” indicate that there are precious rocks underneath.

Pay attention to quartz

When looking for gold, you can’t focus solely on “nests.” They are not easy to find. Signs that can lead to a large catch play an important role. For example, quartz pebbles. Quartz is not difficult to recognize. These are white and light gray rocks.

If a jewel hunter manages to find quartz, then this is a sure sign that there is a gold source somewhere nearby. The fact is that the source of the precious metal is a quartz vein. Over time, it breaks down due to being in water for a long time. Thus, the gold particles are released and end up at the bottom. Then all that remains is to find them and the most trained search engine will be able to do this.

Washing with a sieve

Using a sieve, gold was searched for in ancient times, but this method is still relevant today. To ensure the presence of gold particles, washing with a sieve is necessary. This must be done away from the source of the reservoir. Preferably at a distance of about 200 m. The presence of gold particles, at least one, is a sign to continue your search.

Should you use a metal detector?

The metal detector is standard tool for detecting valuable metals. However, it is worth considering that it is completely useless at depth. This obliges us to search only for those “nests” that are close to the surface. For example, on the banks of mountain rivers.

This happens because streams often change their course and precious sands and rocks underneath can remain on the banks that were previously part of the river. You should also pay attention to mountain crevices. In this case, a metal detector is indispensable.

Of course, this tool can be used underwater, but it is ineffective. Even if you manage to find nuggets, it will be very, very difficult to get them.

How to look for gold?

Yes, a metal detector is not the most effective tool with which you can search for gold deposits under water. However, this does not mean that there are no other ways at all.

Minidrags

Many experienced detectors argue that it is more rational to use minidrags than metal detectors. These are devices whose operation resembles a vacuum cleaner. Minidrags draw in water, sand and pebbles, and then the gold particles are separated.

Minidrags are different. They differ in size and technical characteristics, but have almost the same structure from:

• flushing chute;
• buoyancy systems;
• injector;
• motor;
• breathing systems under water.

Gold samples

These are devices that operate using electricity. They are effective due to their tentacles with sensitive sensory devices. It is with them that they explore the bottom of a river or stream. When “nests” containing jewelry are detected, the device signals this through a sound and a lighting lamp.

Gold probes also let you know about false signals by changing the sound and color of the light bulb. This is very convenient, because the tentacles can actually accidentally find magnetite instead of gold.

Trays

Progress has not stood still, and now the trays are equipped with special rectangular or round gutters that catch gold. Today, plastic trays are the most popular because they are easy to use and do not rust. Both novice treasure hunters and veterans of this business turn to them.

Finding gold is hard work. Sometimes months of fruitless efforts and research pass in search. Russia is far from being the last among the countries that have deposits of this precious metal. Moreover, in recent years it has ranked 5th among gold-mining countries.

Geologists advise looking for precious metal only where it can be found, and for this there are a large number of ways to find metal in the form of flakes, nuggets, gold sand and placer gold. Precious metal may be found in areas where mining companies have operated.

It can be on the surface layer, in the middle of mountain streams or on a raft, in bedrock, or rock cracks. But you shouldn’t look where searches have never been carried out; the likelihood of finding precious metal there is almost zero. When a person finds even a small pebble of gold, he understands that his labors were not in vain, so he should not be discouraged. Great luck, geological knowledge and a good tool will increase the likelihood of a find many times over.

Basic signs of gold

It is very easy to confuse gold with another mineral if you do not know some of its features. Everyone knows that it is yellow and shiny. But, besides gold, pyrite and chalcopyrite have such characteristics. Nuggets can be yellow with red and greenish hues.

The natural material is malleable and can be forged. It does not oxidize, but dissolves in hydrochloric or nitric acids. If you look for gold in ores, you first need to focus on the fact that the metal grows together with other minerals. It will not crystallize clearly like pyrite and chalcopyrite. The noble metal is often found fused with quartz, appearing like a grain or plate.

Alluvial gold is characterized by grains in the form of hooks or wires. In this form, natural material is found in the form of small grains and various kinds of nuggets. If we consider its dimensions, we can distinguish the following categories:

• finely dispersed (up to 10 microns);
• visible (0.01-4 mm);
• nuggets (from 5 g to 10 kg).

To distinguish it from pyrite and chalcopyrite, you need to pay attention to the color. The pebble is viewed from different angles. From any angle, gold will not change its original shade. Pyrite will give itself away by changing its color. Its bright yellow will turn gray upon inspection. Gold can be checked with a knife; it will not crumble like pyrite and chalcopyrite, but it will leave grooves or lines on it.

If doubts have not been dispelled after the procedures, you can test the metal using sulfuric acid. Gold's color will not change, but pyrite and chalcopyrite will change it. Pyrite in areas of impact will turn black, and chalcopyrite will turn red.

Precious metal deposits

There are many places where you can find gold. But to a greater extent, gold ores are formed in mountainous and watery places. Near the mountains, in depressions, young gold deposits are found. Gold veins accumulate in places of faults and cracks in mountains, rocks, and are located along the line of mountain rivers. They come from the bowels of the earth through special channels (fault zones and igneous rock dikes). The total length of such veins can reach several hundred meters, and sometimes reach up to 2 km.

In search of gold, prospectors find pure deposits of gold veins and complex places of formation of non-ferrous metals. In the second case, placer deposits of gold are formed due to the properties of the precious metal to dissolve and oxidize under natural conditions. Gold can come into contact with other minerals and form where sulfides and granitoids come into contact with limestone. Vein deposits are located at different depths, so they are divided into 3 categories:

• low temperature;
• medium temperature;
• high temperature.

If there is a placer gold deposit nearby, then there are also vein channels in the area. The precious metal is sometimes an integral part of the gold-polymetallic zone, then silver, zinc and lead are combined with it. In Cretaceous sedimentary formations, in depressions and conglomerates, gold-bearing veins are found in places of faults and large cracks.

In these zones, the metal is found in generations with different types of quartz, sulfides and other minerals. But the largest areas for extracting priceless metal are stockwork areas. Gold, along with sulfides and quartz, is scattered in areas of large cracks in the form of inclusions or veins in the rock. Such deposits can be very long and large. Therefore, in such zones, metal mining is organized industrially, where ordinary miners can search for gold quite effectively after completing all the work.

Types of metal deposits

The most common gold deposits are quartz veins, created by nature over many years. Over time, these veins were destroyed under the influence external factors, both quartz and gold were washed away by sediments into rivers. At the bottom there was a constant movement of stones, which crushed and rolled around the metal. Due to the fact that the noble metal is heavier than other minerals, it was deposited in certain areas of the ducts. With just one glance at the size and degree of rounding of a sample, specialists can determine its travel history and the location of the main vein.

You can successfully search for gold near a river only if the map has marks on the main places of deposits, which can be both at the bottom of the river and near it. Near the river there are residual deposits formed due to the weathering of the vein. Some pieces of vein and nuggets moved a certain distance from the main location, but did not fall into the pond. These formations are called eluvial. When looking for terraced metal deposits, you can find formations above the water level (old bottom) and at a great distance from the current riverbed, sometimes they are found even high in the mountains. The last place where gold is formed is the bottom of the river, where the metal was washed away by water from the main vein.

Gold is several times heavier than other minerals, so its movement along the bottom occurs only under the strong influence of water masses over short distances. The movement occurs in the area of ​​the river that is between the bends. Large stones become an obstacle to gold, so it is better to look for gold under them at the bottom of the river. As the river widens, the flow speed decreases, so gold can settle in such areas.

Gold content of quartz

Quartz is the most common mineral and forms in veins with many metals and minerals. In the search for the noble yellow metal, it plays a major role because the appearance of quartz can reveal the location of the gold. To correctly read quartz, knowledge of the properties of the gold-bearing sample is necessary. This mineral comes in a variety of colors and shades; it can be transparent, black, white, or gray. You can search for gold in quartz in several types:

• corn;
• nest;
• veins;
• germination;
• invisible dispersive.

If ore minerals were in quartz, but were leached, then the quartz has signs of sponginess. When in a gold mine the process is underway sulfide decomposition, quartz crystals acquire yellow, cherry-red or shades similar to them, which indicate the mineral’s depletion. If a prospector in search of yellow metal sees banded quartz with powdery layers or with the inclusion of tourmaline and sulfides, it means that representatives of low-temperature or high-temperature layers are somewhere nearby. Such zones may contain gold.

Yellow metal satellites

Some prospectors, in search of wealth, focus on the companions of gold, and there are many of them. Quartz, adularia, silver, pyrite, galena, platinum - all these minerals are found with gold. The only problem is that the presence of one of the gold satellites in the ore does not always indicate the presence of a noble metal in it. Sometimes gold ores consist of fused quartz, lead and gold, sometimes gold, quartz and antimony, and sometimes a combination of gold, silver, quartz and feldspars.

Even about silver, the most common neighbor of gold, it cannot be said that it always indicates the presence of the yellow metal in ores. But when a nugget is found while searching, it is almost always mixed with silver. In some cases, the share of silver reaches significant figures, but sometimes this part is negligible. The ideal ratio of gold and silver in ores occurs mainly in volcanic zones. They can be in Kamchatka or any other Far Eastern region.

Rich places in Russia

Russia is rich in different types deposits, so you can search for gold in almost all its areas. Skarn, hydrothermal deposits and gold-quartz formations are scattered in different areas RF. An approximate list of areas and types of gold deposits:

• Siberia (Olkhovskoe) - skarn type;
• Ural (Berezovskoye), Transbaikalia (Darasunskoye) - gold-quartz-sulfide formation;
• Pacific ore belt - volcanogenic hydrothermal deposits;
• Transbaikalia (Baleyskoye, Taseevskoye) - gold-quartz-chalcedony-sulfide formation;
• Northeast Russia (Karamkenskoe) - gold-silver-quartz-adularia formation;
• Yakutia, Magadan, Transbaikalia, eastern Siberia - alluvial placers;
• Chukotka, Ural, Magadan, Bodaibo, Amur and Taksimo are golden nuggets.

Many geologists are constantly in search of minerals; they skillfully use geological knowledge and can find gold even in places where an industrial base has been operating for many years, and then also miners. Where, it would seem, everything has already been dug up and dug up, people have almost reached the magma, but still 50 g or 100 g of gold can be found.

How to choose a place?

Before starting to look for gold, experienced trackers study a map of the area. It is necessary to examine the geological composition of the area: what fossils were found, their location and the search method. Gold in Russia is found in different types, but if there are gold placers in the surveyed area, then the place is suitable for survey. This can be either an industrial area or a non-industrial area.

It should be noted those areas where industrial bases have worked or where quartz is present in this area. It is necessary to consider the valleys that form the tributary of the river. The valley is divided into 3 parts: upper, middle and lower. It can be noted with greater confidence that gold will have to be looked for in the upper part of the valley, but there have been cases when gold-bearing places were located both in its middle and lower parts.

It is easier to search for gold based on the characteristics of the deposit when the bedrock is not under sediments and sediments. For example, quartz gold-bearing veins appear as ridges and ridges on the surface of the surveyed area. Quartz can also be in the form of placers, blocks and fragments of a characteristic white or brown-red color. If you look for gold in elongated depressions or clearly defined troughs, you can find stockwork ore deposits. When conducting a survey of a steppe area, the search for gold should be carried out in a place where there are the most thickets, or in a place where there are the least amount of them.

Necessary tool

Attentiveness, geological knowledge and a metal detector can help in the search. This equipment is quite expensive and will quickly pay for itself, but not all models will cope with the task. Moreover, you need to know how to use and set up a metal detector, since it is very sensitive to the soil, which itself will create interference. The metal detector detects large nuggets at shallow depths (up to 1 m), and the smallest ones at a depth of up to 15 cm.

A special feature of working with such products is its excessive sensitivity, which is caused by a large amount of minerals and iron in the soil. The device should not be configured for a specific type of metal; it must be operated in the mode of detecting all metals without exception. Iron, like gold, produces the same sound, so it is better to stop and test the ground rather than continue searching for gold to no avail. You need to listen to the soil using headphones, so you should be extremely attentive to changes in noise.

The number of false signals coming from the ground depends on the sensitivity level setting. When the sensitivity of the metal detector is low, a person hears deeper sounds of ground testing. The result of the work also depends on the ground balance setting. Ideally, the headphones will display background noise as the metal detector probes the soil, the sound may decrease or increase.

To adjust, you need to turn the knob responsible for ground balance. Every 5-7 m you will have to adjust this function, since the mineralization of the soil may be different. Search for gold large sizes on fairly strong mineralized soil, it is necessary to set it in the negative direction, which will reduce the sensitivity of the metal detector to small nuggets. And, conversely, when searching for small nuggets, the adjustment is made in positive side. The best tuning method is a small sample of gold or lead.

When listening to the soil, the metal detector coil should be kept as close to the surface as possible. When a signal occurs, listening is carried out in all directions from the possible location of the nugget. If gold is present, the signal will be heard in all directions, and if the signal is only triggered in a certain direction, then it is not gold. The last step of the test will be to raise the coil above the intended location. If the sound suddenly fades away, it means the signal is false, and this place does not even contain metal.

Tray - equipment for beginners

Washing trays are used for taking samples, but those miners who have not yet mastered all the intricacies of searching use the tray as a means of extracting gold. Professionals work with a metal detector because up to 100 g of gold can be collected in a week of panning. But they are still used today. The efficiency and speed of work depend on the choice of tray.

It is inconvenient to look for gold with a metal tray. There are greasy hand marks on it; they can only be removed by annealing the tray. The metal is corrosive and cannot be tested with a metal detector or separated from magnetite and gold. All the negative aspects of a metal tray are completely absent from a plastic product, and the green tray is ideal remedy, in which the gold flecks are very clearly visible.

In searches, trays with a diameter of 15-40 cm are used, but a tray with a diameter of 40 cm in operation will weigh approximately 10 kg. Therefore, the best option would be a tray with a diameter of 35 cm. In addition to the trays, you need to purchase a plastic sieve (mesh size 12 mm). Rinse should be 300-500 m higher from the river mouth. A good sign If at least 1 piece of gold gets into the tray, but if nothing is found during washing, this is not a sign that the stream is hopeless. If there are large nuggets in it, then there will be very few small gold pieces.

In gold production, Russia has shown a steady rise in recent years, becoming one of the five countries that are the main producers of this precious metal. About 700 gold mining enterprises in the country annually produce about 170 tons of gold. Approximately half of the gold is extracted from ores, and half from placers.

There are a lot of non-industrial placers in Russia that no one is working on yet. Non-industrial placers mean placers that do not have reserves for industrial production, i.e. gold mining using industrial equipment (excavators, bulldozers, dredges, etc.)

These are primarily placers from which industrial reserves have already been extracted. However, there is still a lot of gold left in them. Often a lot of gold remains at the sides of pits, since existing legislation does not allow the enterprise to go beyond the boundaries of the pit. Gold remains in the washed rock dumps. Besides, in Soviet time During exploration, many small placers were found in remote areas, which cannot be considered industrial in terms of gold reserves (several kilograms). Of interest to amateurs are also the spit placers, where flake gold is deposited after each flood.

If you intend to start prospecting for gold, first of all you should decide on the place where you will work. Where there is no gold, you will not find it. You should study the relevant literature, collect materials from old and new mines, find out where nuggets were found and where there was only fine gold (the metal detector does not respond to it).

Where is gold found?

One of the sources of gold on earth are quartz veins containing gold. These veins were formed hundreds of millions of years ago and have since been weathered by heat and cold, plants and animals, rain and wind, snow and ice. As a result, rich gold-bearing veins collapsed, and quartz rock with gold was washed away into the rivers. Powerful streams of water during heavy rains create a continuous movement of stones, breaking and rolling them and sorting them by size, shape and density. Gold, being significantly heavier than many other materials, tends to be deposited in certain places along the flow. Such deposits are called alluvial.

Finding and mining such deposits requires an understanding of where heavy materials will accumulate as they are transported by water flow.

Directly in the vein, gold is in crystalline form. Once in the river, it often separates from the quartz and takes on a rounded shape. Experienced geologists can tell quite accurately how long a nugget has been rounded and how long it has traveled along the river and where the main vein may be located.

There are several types of gold deposits resulting from the weathering of veins.

1. Residual deposits I. These are pieces of vein that were formed as a result of chemical and physical weathering of a gold-bearing vein and are located in close proximity to it.

2. Elluvial deposits. They consist of these pieces and individual nuggets, which, under the influence of the forces of nature, have moved from the vein, but have not yet moved into the river. Fragments of vein destruction are often located along the mountainside below the original vein.

3. Terrace deposits. Upon reaching the river, gold is deposited at the bottom. The river cuts deeper and deeper into the earth over time. As a result, the old river bottom ends up high above the water level. These are the so-called terraces. Often the terraces lie low above the water level. However, some terraces are found far from the modern river. Sometimes these are the remains of ancient rivers that flowed millions of years ago before the formation of the modern river system. Sometimes such terraces appear on mountain tops, in deserts, etc. As a rule, ancient terraces have a high gold content.

Most surface gold mining operations today involve the development of terrace deposits. The reason for this is that the presence of old sediments is evidence that no one has ever mined them. Any gold that was deposited is still in place.

4. Bottom sediments. In order to discuss what happens to gold when it enters a stream of water, we first need to understand two concepts - raft and sediment. Many millions of years ago, when the earth cooled, the outer surface hardened into solid rock. Subsequent layers of sand, gravel, and stones on it are called sediments or sedimentary rocks. In some places the sedimentary rocks are hundreds of meters thick. In other places, especially in the mountains and on the coasts of the seas, bedrock volcanic rocks are often completely exposed.

Rice. 45. Transferring gold from a weathered vein to a river

The bottom of rivers consists of stones, sand, gravel, clay (sedimentary formations), which lie everywhere on bedrock (raft).

Heavy rainfall in mountainous areas usually causes very strong flows of water that wash sediment down to bedrock. This leads to gradual erosion of the bottom and deepening of the river bed over a long period of time. In addition, streams of water from the mountains wash away more and more gold into the river, where it mixes with other materials. At the same time, gold, being heavier than these materials, in the process of moving gravel and sand along the river, quickly goes down to the bottom, where it is retained by the irregularities of the bedrock.

Since gold is 6-7 times heavier than other materials surrounding it, it requires disproportionately more effort to move it down a river compared to stone material. Therefore, even during heavy rains, when the water in the river rises and with greater force begins to erode sediment at the bottom and carry stones and pebbles, gold nuggets lying on the raft often remain motionless.

In the case where the force of the flow is sufficient to move gold, it can be deposited in another place where the force of the flow weakens.

Gold traps on a raft

Bottom irregularities play a big role in the accumulation of gold. Currents of water capable of moving gold usually wash away clay and sand from these irregularities, leaving room only for gold.

Some rock types create a large number of irregularities, providing numerous traps for gold. Cracks and projections located perpendicular to the flow are especially effective.

Obstacles in the flow path, such as a large rock, slow down the flow and can allow gold to be deposited in front of or behind it.

One of the most common places in a river to look for gold is where a raft forms a drop-off into a deep body of water. Any place where a fixed volume of water suddenly flows into a significantly larger volume of water, or a place where the flow rate slows down, is a trap for gold, which can accumulate in these places in large quantities. So a waterfall can have a significant accumulation of gold, but not always. Sometimes the water creates such strong turbulence that any gold that falls into the hole under the waterfall during the flood will be washed away. On the other hand, there may be large boulders in the hole that protect the gold from being washed away. In this case, you will be very lucky.

Rice. 46. ​​Irregularities in the river bottom - traps for transported gold

In some cases, gold washed out of a hole under a waterfall may settle immediately behind the hole, where the current has not yet gained sufficient speed. Sometimes in hot weather the streams become shallow and the hole under the waterfall contains little water, allowing nuggets to be raked out of it.

Rice. 47. Catching gold in a hole under a waterfall

Another common place where gold can be deposited is where a stream flowing down the side of a hill suddenly emerges onto a plain. Such places may also contain large quantities of gold.

Rice. 48. Deposition of gold when a mountain stream passes to the plain

Paths of movement of gold

Because of its gravity, gold moves along the river along the path of least resistance. In most cases, this is the shortest distance between large bends in the river. It is deposited on the spits of the inner bends of the river. If there are large rocks in the way of gold, gold may accumulate under some of them. It may not be there under other stones.

Rice. 49. Depositing gold on river spits

Rice. 50. Depositing gold near large boulders

When a river or stream suddenly widens, gold can also settle there as the speed of the water decreases sharply. Large stones often end up in this place for the same reason.

Ancient rivers

About 2 million years ago, the river system was very different from today. Ancient rivers eroded gold-bearing veins and accumulated rich sediments. But the topography of the earth was changing. The beds of some rivers ended up on the tops of mountains, others - in the modern desert. Only a few rivers remain close to the modern drainage system.

Most of the gold in modern rivers is gold from the sediments of ancient channels through which the rivers now flow.

Sediments of ancient rivers contain a lot of gold. And where modern rivers cross such sediments, there is also a lot of gold.

Ancient terraces, as a rule, contain a very gold-rich lower layer. This layer is usually dark blue in color - it is characteristic feature ancient riverbed. Ancient blue pebbles usually oxidize and turn rusty red after being dug up and left in the air. Often the gravel of ancient terraces is very hard and dense.

Most of the high terraces are the remains of modern rivers. They were formed from 1,500,000 years to 10,000 years ago. They are usually developed using hydraulic monitors. Dredges are used to develop bottom sediments. In both cases, only 30-40% of the gold is captured. The rest of the gold, along with the waste rock, is lost, going into dumps, where it is available for artisanal mining using metal detectors

Equipment for finding nuggets

Abroad, searching for and mining gold using metal detectors and mini-drags has become a fashionable activity since the late 70s, when the price of gold rose to $800 per ounce.

Unfortunately, conventional metal detectors have difficulty detecting native gold. Therefore, all leading companies have developed specialized metal detectors for searching for gold. Large nuggets can be found at a depth of up to 1 m, and small ones (the size of a pellet) - at a depth of 8-15 cm. Such devices can also be tuned from medium-sized iron, which is found in large quantities in the mines, and from black magnetite sand, characteristic of gold deposits.

Rice. 51. Finding nuggets using a metal detector (website www.kladoiskatel.ru)

1. Gold Master and GMT (White's company).

2. Lobo Super Track (Tesoro company).

3. Gold Bug 2 (Fisher),

4. Stinger (Garrett).

If the soil is highly mineralized and the indicated devices do not allow effective operation on it, then it is recommended to use Minelab devices - SD 2000, SD 2200, GP 3500, GPX 4000. These devices are more expensive and heavier, the detection depth is the same as that of the above devices , however their main

The advantage is that they almost do not react to the ground. Although the metal detector is quite easy to use, it takes some practice to effectively use it to find gold.

Features of using a metal detector when searching for nuggets

Finding nuggets is different from finding coins. The device detects a large nugget without difficulty, however, unfortunately, most nuggets are small in size, often smaller than a match head. They cause only a slight change in the threshold background, which you should catch. Despite the abundance of metal debris in the mines, the search should be carried out in the “All metals” mode, i.e. without discrimination. This is due to the fact that the electrical conductivities of iron and native gold are almost the same, and when you move away from iron, you also lose gold.

Secondly, you should work with headphones. Only with their help will you be able to detect small and deep nuggets, especially where the soil is mineralized and creates disturbing noise.

The sensitivity should not be too high. Otherwise, there are many false signals coming from the ground, which you will waste your time checking. Less sensitivity gives deeper penetration into mineralized soil.

One of the most important factors when searching for nuggets is setting the correct ground balance and maintaining it as you work.

Without proper ground alignment, you will not find the nugget. Set the device to medium ground. When the threshold is correctly set, you hear a soft background sound. This must be done before adjusting the "ground balance". Then, as you move the coil closer to the ground, the threshold hum may increase or decrease. This indicates that the "ground balance" needs to be adjusted using the appropriate knob.

In the mines, as a rule, the mineralization of the pound often changes and the device must be adjusted again every 5-6 m. If the noise increases during your movement, then the soil has become less mineralized. If the noise subsides, then mineralization has increased. Over time, you will learn to determine the moment when it is necessary to adjust the “ground balance”.

Sometimes better results are obtained if you adjust the "ground balance" to a positive angle. This gives increased sensitivity to small nuggets when searching in areas with little mineralization. In practice, this means a louder threshold noise as the coil approaches ground. This cannot be achieved simply by using the threshold adjustment knob. It is necessary to rotate the "Ground Balance" knob.

When working on highly mineralized ground, try to adjust the "ground balance" to the negative area. This will reduce your sensitivity to small nuggets, but still allow you to find nuggets that you otherwise wouldn't find.

Rice. 52. Stone brushes in the river bed are ideal gold traps (website www.kladoiskatel.ru)

While working, keep the coil as close to the ground as possible. Once you receive the signal, scan the object in different directions. If the signal is heard only in a certain direction of movement of the coil, then it is definitely not a nugget. If the signal suddenly disappears when the coil is lifted above the ground, then it is also not a nugget or metal at all. The signal from the metal fades gradually as the coil is raised.

Pay special attention to very weak signals, as they most often indicate the presence of a nugget.

The reels should be moved at a slow speed, much less than when searching for coins.

Hot stones

In addition to metal debris, when searching for nuggets, so-called hot stones are very annoying. These are pieces of rock whose mineralization is very different from the average mineralization that your device is set to. Therefore, they give a sound signal similar to the signal from a nugget. Hot stones can come in different sizes and colors. The signal from such stones quickly fades when the coil is raised, unlike the signal from metal. Also, the signal from metal is clearer, whereas hot rocks produce a more "smeared" signal when you pass the coil over it. Often, stones give a signal when the coil is moved only in one direction, while the signal from a nugget is heard whenever the coil is moved over it.

Finally, by lowering the sensitivity of the device, it is possible to achieve that the signal from the stone will disappear, while the signal from the nugget will still be audible, although weakened.

So, with practice, you will learn to identify most hot rocks and not waste time digging them out

On-site search for hydraulic monitors

When searching for gold with a metal detector, perhaps the most productive places are those places where gold was once mined by eroding the rock with a hydromonitor. Often the rock is washed away down to the raft. This allows you to use the device to explore all the cracks and other gold traps, which often gives remarkable results.

During such searches, pay attention to the color of the dirt, which is characteristic of areas with gold. Often it has a certain color, and then you can find such places only by the color of the soil and then check them with a metal detector.

Search on dumps

When extracting gold using a dredge, only relatively small rock was used to extract gold, and large pieces the size of a fist or more went to the dump. Large nuggets often went into the dump along with them. Those nuggets that were on the surface have already been found, but in the dumps you can find more nuggets at a depth of 50 cm using a metal detector. If possible, the dumps can be cut off with a bulldozer. checking the soil with a metal detector after each pass.

Wash trays

Whether you're looking for gold with a metal detector or extracting it with a mini-dredge, a gold pan is still one of the most useful tools used by prospectors today. The primary purpose of the tray is to sample gold in different locations until you hit upon an area where you can operate your equipment effectively. In addition, for the layman, a pan is the main gold mining tool, along with a metal detector.

There are many different types of trays on the market. In general, you can use a small basin or frying pan to wash gold. But the best results are obtained from special plastic or metal trays with gold-catching grooves. Trays can be round or rectangular. Iron trays have a number of disadvantages. Firstly, they need to be annealed from time to time to remove the fat from the hands. Secondly, they are highly corrosive. They are magnetic and therefore difficult to separate the magnetite from the gold using a magnet. In such a tray it is impossible to check for the presence of a nugget with a metal detector. But you can cook food in them.

Rice. 53. Washing gold-bearing rock with a tray (website www.kladoiskatel.ru)

Plastic trays are lightweight, non-magnetic, corrosion-resistant, and do not respond to a metal detector. Green color plastic allows you to better see the sparkles of gold. Grease can be easily removed from your hands with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol or gasoline.

The sizes of large trays range from 15 cm in diameter to 40 cm. A tray with a diameter of 40 cm weighs about 10 kg when fully loaded. Therefore, it is better to use a tray with a diameter of 35 cm. It allows you to work faster. To work with the tray, it is advisable to use a plastic sieve with a mesh size of 12 mm.

In Russia, rectangular wooden trays made from larch burned from the inside have been used for a long time. The grooves formed during firing successfully trap fine gold.

Trays are not used for professional gold mining, since they can be processed in a day a small amount of material, but for amateur mining and for taking samples when searching for the most gold-rich places, the tray is a very useful tool. In general, quickly washing sand in trays is an art that anyone can master over time.

Trays allow you to work without water, although this requires a lot of practice. This is especially useful when working on old riverbeds or in the desert where there is no water nearby. As a rule, using a tray in a week of work you can wash from 30 g to 80 g of gold. But some are luckier.

Minidrags

Minidrags are a device that works like a vacuum cleaner, allowing you to suck up sand and pebbles from the bottom of the river along with gold, if present, and separate this gold from the waste rock

Minidrags vary in size and design, but they all contain 5 main components - a system that provides buoyancy to the installation, an engine that drives a centrifugal pump, an injector, a flushing chute that ensures the separation of gold from waste rock, and an air supply system for breathing under water. For small mini-dredges that operate in shallow streams, the latter is not required.

The operating principle of the installation is shown in Fig. 54. Water under high pressure flows through hose A into the injector. This creates the Venturi effect, which means that water is sucked through the injector pipe, picking up sand and pebbles from the bottom, and flows onto the flush trough grid. The smallest minidrag weighs 24 kg. The pump is driven by a 2 hp two-stroke engine. The diameter of the suction hose is 50 mm. Productivity - about 100 kg of material per hour.

Rice. 54. Operating principle of the minidrag

The larger minidrag weighs about 90 kg. Hose diameter - 100 mm. Under ideal conditions, it can process about 1000 kg of material per hour. In reality, such ideal conditions are very rare. In practice, you have to move large stones, loosen bottom sediments, etc.

Rice. 55 Minidrag

Abroad (in Canada, the USA, Brazil, New Guinea), such mini-dredges have gained great popularity and are successfully used for gold mining in shallow reservoirs.

Gold sampler

This is a different type of electronic gold detecting device than a metal detector. It is a probe, at one end of which there is a sensor device that senses the presence of gold in the soil, and at the other end there is a handle and an electronic unit with controls. When the probe is stuck into the ground and its touch sensor comes into contact with gold particles, the device's speaker emits a specific sound signal and the light comes on. When magnetite is present in the soil, the sound tone changes and the light signal changes color.

Unlike conventional metal detectors, the sensor of this device must be in direct contact with a gold particle in order for a positive signal to appear, indicating the presence of gold. Gold particles can be very small, which are not detected by a conventional metal detector.

Rice. 56. Gold sampler. Rice. 57. Finding gold using a probe

The device is adjusted so that it gives characteristic signals for gold, platinum, mercury and magnetite sand.

In some cases the device is very useful, in others it is impossible to use (dense soil, stones). However, it allows you to find areas with signs of gold. Can be placed in water. The kit includes an additional extension 120 cm long.

The main problems in amateur gold mining in Russia

Despite the huge number of non-industrial placers, legal extraction of gold from them by amateurs is currently impossible. The reason is that Russian legislation does not provide for the development of non-industrial placers. Here is what B.K., Candidate of Geological and Mineral Sciences of JSC Irgiredmet says about this. Kavchik:

“A clearly non-industrial placer cannot be put up for competition, therefore, it is impossible to obtain a license for it, and if there are no approved reserves, then gold mining cannot be legal, since only explored and approved reserves can be mined. In general, all Russian legislation is against licensing "Before the rules for the preservation of gold, it is focused exclusively on industrial deposits. And since, by definition, there are no industrial reserves in non-industrial placers, the entire chain of Russian laws turns out to be inapplicable."

Due to the existing legislative “hole”, a huge number of non-industrial placers are currently not being developed. The remains of gold are sometimes buried for the purpose of reclamation of disturbed lands, and spit gold is carried out to the sea. Some developments of non-industrial placers are carried out secretly, bypassing the law...

Currently, the Union of Gold Miners of the Russian Federation has raised the issue of revising legislation on precious metals and has given specific recommendations for changing legislation. It is proposed to provide for the issuance of licenses for the extraction of gold from non-industrial placers, which would allow combining the search for enriched gold nests with their legal mining.

Read and write useful

Gold-bearing regions of Russia.

The most promising areas for searching for gold nuggets can be found by looking at the results of gold mining in the Russian Federation in Table 1.

Structure of gold production for 2004: - 43.8% was extracted from placers, 50.3% from primary deposits, associated gold from complex ores - 5.9%. License for gold mining in 2001 owned 639 enterprises, by 2004 - 558. Large enterprises with production of more than 1t/year of gold are 30; their total production covers more than 65.0% of the all-Russian one; small enterprises, with production of less than 100 kg/year - about 35% or 200 enterprises, the total production of which is 15.0% of the all-Russian one.

GOLD OF THE URAL.
Let us dwell in more detail on the Urals and its eastern and western slopes. There are significant reasons for this;

• The climate is a longer average annual warm period. Absence of permafrost in the middle and southern Urals.
• Geographical location - not far from the European part of Russia. Availability of places for gold mining, developed communications - road, air and railway.
• Availability of local infrastructure for supplies and accommodation.

The Urals are one of the main and oldest gold mining centers in Russia. Official date The discovery and beginning of gold mining in the Urals is considered to be 1745. However, long before this, the tribes and peoples who inhabited it already knew and mined gold. By the beginning of the 20th century, more than 300 mines were operating and the Urals ranked third in Russia in gold mining, with an average annual volume of about pounds. Currently, the main production takes place in the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, occupying 8-11th place in Russia among gold-mining regions. The source of gold is not only the gold ore bedrock or alluvial deposits themselves, but also gold-bearing complex ore deposits, from which gold is extracted as an associated component. Thus, in 1992, out of 19 tons of gold mined in the Urals region, including Bashkiria and the Orenburg region, 12.7 tons (66.9%) came from complex deposits, 3.7 tons (19.4%) - from placers, and only 2.6 tons (13.7%) - to primary deposits.

Primary deposits.

In the Urals, based on the combination of geological position, morphological characteristics of ore bodies and technical and economic indicators, they are divided into two geological and industrial types: vein and mineralized zones (veined-disseminated). Vein deposits are represented by quartz veins 0.5-5 m thick (rarely up to 10-15 m), containing disseminated sulfides (from 1-2 to 40-50%) and belonging mainly to the easily enriched technological type.
The productivity of quartz-vein gold mineralization is mainly associated with the presence of native gold particles in the ores. The latter, as a rule, are enclosed in aggregates of sulfide minerals or deposited in quartz microcracks. Sulfides, like gold, are unevenly distributed in the veins. Their number can vary from 1–2 to 40–50%. Ore bodies in vein-type deposits are, as a rule, quartz veins themselves, but have high gold contents (up to 0.5 g/t, rarely up to 3 g/t). The most common and early sulfide minerals are pyrite and arsenopyrite.
Native gold associated with sulfides in vein deposits has an average and high standard(Au content in native gold, expressed in parts of 1000) – more than 850. The main impurity component in it is silver.
There are more than 150 gold deposits and ore occurrences in the Orenburg Urals. Gold reserves are associated with quartz veins in black carbonaceous shales, with placers in deposits of ravines and rivers, with “iron hats” - products of weathering of rocks from copper pyrite deposits.
The Kirov gold deposit is located 3 km from the village of Beloozerny, Kvarkensky district. The deposit is mined in a quarry; ore is processed using heap leaching. The Aidirlinskoye gold deposit of quartz vein type is located 5 km east of the village of Aidyrlinsky. The deposit has been mined from the surface; unmined ore has been preserved at depths of more than 100-120 m.
Blaki gold deposit of quartz vein type is located near the village. Blak in the Svetlinsky district

Placers.

The main polygenic placer deposits are concentrated in the axial part of the Urals at the junction of the Tagil-Magnitogorsk and East Ural structural-geological zones, near the cities of Krasnoturinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Nevyansk, Yekaterinburg, Polevsky, Verkhniy Ufaley, Karabash, Miass, Verkhneuralsk, etc., as well as on the eastern slope of the Urals and on the Trans-Ural Plain around the years. N. Saldy, Rezha, Asbest, Plast, etc. Almost all the predicted resources of placer gold are concentrated here. The placers of the Central Ural zone, along the rivers Pechora, Vishera, Velsu, Ulsu, Vilva, Vizhay, Mezhevaya Utka, and the upper reaches of the Ufa and Belaya rivers, are of lesser importance.
The most promising for gold are the upper reaches of the Suunduk River in the Orenburg Urals. Alluvial gold deposits are located on the left slope of the Suunduk River from the Bezymyanka River to the Baituk River. The deposit has been mined from the surface, and deep, watered gold-bearing layers have been preserved. Since 2003 gold mining has begun from the “Berezitovy Uval” and “Mechetny” spoon gold placers in the Yasnensky district in the Orenburg region.
Sources of placer gold are products of chemical weathering of bedrock ores, including those with relatively low metal contents, as well as the collapsing upper parts of gold deposits. The mechanism of gold concentration is the erosion of loose gold-bearing formations of weathering crusts by surface watercourses, accompanied by gravitational differentiation and transport of eroded material.
The basis of the raw material base of placer gold mining The deposits are Krasnooktyabrskoye, Sosvinskoye, Vagranskoye, Chakinskoye, Kamenskoye, Serebryanskoye, Nevyanskoye (Sverdlovsk region), Velsovskoye, Ulsovskoye, Promyslovskoye (Perm region), Miasskoye, Kochkarskoye, Bredinskoye and Gumbeyskoye (Chelyabinsk region).
The base of proven reserves of alluvial deposits is:
a) overvalued previously mined placers of the Middle and Southern Urals along the rivers Salda, Neiva, Pyshma, Miass, etc.;
The predominant genetic type of placers in the Urals is alluvial; spoon type placers (alluvial-deluvial or deluvial-proluvial) are less common. Alluvial placers were formed with significant transport of clastic material and gold. These are deposits of river valleys with their terrace, valley and channel morphological types. In alluvium, pebble material and gold are well rounded, characterized by a varied composition of pebbles and distinct layering of sediments. In colluvial placers, the clastic material is transported close to the bedrock source, so the roundness of gold grains and pebble material is much weaker than in alluvium. Such placers are formed on mountain slopes. Proluvial placers are located at the foot of mountains when temporary flows of clastic material wash away their slopes. The clastic material of the proluvium is weakly rounded and poorly sorted. Gold placers consist mainly of coarse material - pebbles and boulders, cemented by a clay-sand mass. Quantitatively, light minerals predominate, primarily quartz, which is the most stable in the processes of physical and chemical weathering. The content of clay minerals is significant.
The sizes of gold placers are different: their length in most cases ranges from several hundred meters to 1–3, less often up to 5 km, and only a few of them can be traced at intervals of tens and even hundreds of kilometers (the Sosva, Tagil, Neiva, Miass). The width of the placers is usually 20–60 m, less often 100–300 m or more. The depth of occurrence of gold-bearing layers is varied: 1–3 m (“podderniks” or “upper areas”), most often up to 10 m, in some cases up to 40–60 m. Gold is distributed unevenly in them. As a rule, it is contained in the first hundred milligrams per 1 m3 of sand and is most concentrated in well-sorted sand and pebble sediments, where its content can reach several grams per 1 m3 of rock. The size of gold particles in placers varies from less than 0.1 mm to nuggets. It is calculated that the average metal size in the Middle Urals is 0.60 mm, with individual placers varying from 0.23 to 1.00 mm. In the placers of the Southern Urals it increases to 0.86 mm (from 0.45 to 2.00 mm), and in the Northern Urals – to 1.11 mm (from 0.35 to 3.85 mm). The average sample in explored deposits was calculated, which varies in the range of 780–960. For individual parts of the region, it is: Southern Urals - 948, Middle Urals - 900, Northern Urals - 910, Subpolar Urals - 891.

EXAMPLES OF PLACERS IN THE URALS.

1) GOLD OF THE BOLSHESHALDINSKAYA PLACER. In 1824, mining began in the valley R. Big Shaldinka. The outbreak of exploration led to the discovery of numerous placers in the area of ​​the village, which became known as Gold Crafts(now the village fishing Gornozavodsky district). The first studies of the patterns of placer gold content in the Gornozavodsk region were carried out A.A. Krasnopolsky in 1889. He discovered that the source of detrital gold was numerous small quartz veinlets running through metamorphic shales. The described placer is interesting in that, along with gold sand, it contained ore-type gold and nuggets, which allowed the famous specialist N.V. Petrovskaya(1973) infer the proximity of bedrock sources and the destruction of the upper rich parts of the ore bodies. Loose deposits have different natures. Eluvial-deluvial loams with crushed stone and blocks of underlying rocks lie directly on the bedrock. The color of these deposits varies depending on the color of the underlying rocks. Rare, weakly rounded fragments of introduced rocks were also noted. On these sediments, and sometimes on the bedrock, lies what miners call “river river” or mature, well-sorted alluvium. It is the main productive layer. Higher up, it gives way to immature alluvium, represented by less sorted material, enriched in clay, sometimes black (marsh) due to plant detritus. Locally, lenses and layers of black (floodplain) clay are recorded, as well as proluvial deposits associated with erosion of both deluvial and alluvial sediments. Almost all sediments are gold-bearing, except for floodplain ones.

The placer contains minerals that can be attributed to the following associations. The predominant minerals originating from metamorphic rocks are magnetite, ilmenite, rutile, titanite, anatase, brookite, monazite and pyrite. Gold is represented by crystals, dendritic formations, irregular grains of varying degrees of roundness, which indicates its entry into the placer over a long period of time. (photo4)

In general, the gold is of high quality and contains only an admixture of silver, which is also typical for other occurrences of the Northern Urals.
Currently, this placer is being exploited LLC "Staratel"

2) GOLD PLACEER MOSS SWAMP. (Nepryakhinskoe deposit, Southern Urals)
The Nepryakhinskoe gold deposit, 10 km north of Chebarkul station in the Chelyabinsk region, combines a group of gold-bearing quartz and sulfide-quartz veins and mineralized zones accompanied by placers. The deposit has been known since the beginning of the 19th century and was repeatedly mined until 1960. Among the primary minerals of the ores in different veins, quartz, carbonate, pyrite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, and galena are indicated. The formation of gold placers is associated with the erosion of the weathering crust and oxidation zones of deposits reaching a depth of 50–60 m.
In the oxidation zone, the gold content is 1–10 g/t, silver – from 0.2 to 10–13 g/t, in some samples up to 50–100 g/t. The eluvial placer “Moss Swamp” is located 700–800 m southeast of the village. Nepryakhino (Fig. 1). Until 1917, 250 kg of gold was extracted from the placer with an average content of 2.3 g/m3. Later work was carried out in 1939–40. and were curtailed due to severe watering of the site and lack of electricity. In 2000, exploration and pilot industrial mining of placer gold was carried out by Ingul LLC, Chebarkul. In the western part of the swamp with traces of old work, exploration wells 5–7 m deep were drilled and a small hydraulic quarry (200 x 150 m) was laid. A placer 200–250 m wide was traced to the south-southeast for 700 m. In undisturbed areas, a layer of peat (0.5–0.7 m) overlies the clay of the weathering crust 2–3 m thick.

Rice. 1. Geological diagram of the Moss Swamp placer area

1 – sericite-chlorite schists, quartz-
sericite, graphite-quartz;
2 – chlorite, quartz-chlorite schists;
3 – serpentinites;
4 – talc-carbonate rocks;
5 – talc slates;
6 – gold veins and zones;
7 – placer of gold “Moss swamp”
8 – contour of the swamp;
9 – area of ​​the village. Nepryakhino

According to the results of the work, it was noted that there was a complete absence of rounded gold; gold was often found in intergrowths with vein quartz. For the most part "gray" the concentrates were dominated by quartz or fragments of raft rocks (up to 60–92% of the volume); V "black" concentrates contain more than 50% heavy fraction. "Gray" concentrates, in addition to quartz, most often contain feldspars. Gold concentrates characterized by a predominance of large gold (average, % mass): about 30% - nuggets (more than 4 mm); 51.5% – gold fraction –4+1 mm; 10% – gold fraction –1+0.5 mm; 8.6% – fine gold of the –0.5 mm fraction, where only 0.2% falls on the –0.25 mm fraction.
The largest nugget weighing 94 g was characterized by a length of about 7 cm and a barrel-shaped shape with protrusions. (see photo 5).
A typical concentrate of spot gold from a hydraulic section usually includes 3 small nuggets (5–12 mm), 80 gold particles (2–4 mm) and about 400 small grains. Gold nuggets bright yellow color have a complex shape with a tuberculate-pitted surface and voids from the dissolution of host minerals, intergrowths of translucent quartz and sometimes pyrite. There are nuggets that are close in shape to crystals with smoothed tops and edges.
The nuggets are practically not rounded and are aggregates of grains from former sulfide-carbonate-quartz veins. Gold fractions +1 mm and –1+0.5 mm are characterized by a varied shape, usually flattened and weakly rounded. Among gold grains and smaller grains of gold, the proportion of lighter (yellow) gold is about 5% of the volume.
Pieces of vein gold-quartz aggregates are aggregates of gold grains 0.1–2 mm with intergrowths of whitish and colorless fine-grained quartz (0.5–3 mm). The gold grains are bright yellow and complex in shape.

The gold of the “Moss Swamp” eluvial placer is concentrated during the formation of the weathering crust during the destruction of low-sulfide gold-carbonate-quartz veins; This is indicated by the predominance of large gold and nuggets with quartz intergrowths and pyrite inclusions. The predominant host rocks are metasomatic shales with small amounts of fine gold.

METHODS OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT OF PLACERS AND GOLD LOSS.

The technology used by the miners is traditional and has not changed much since the time of Odysseus (see photo above). The only difference is the use of bulldozers, hydraulic monitors and the use of metal mesh and textured rubber mats instead of sheepskin (golden fleece).
Mining at the described placers is carried out using industrial devices. Prompribor is a simple installation for gold extraction. Often made from an old body from a KRAZ dump truck, the top is covered with a screen (iron sheet with 80 mm holes). And on the sides there are steel sheets installed so that the gold does not scatter to the sides. At the bottom of the “body” there is attached a long iron box (gateway), 5-10 meters long, the bottom of which is lined with metal mesh and special rubber mats. The rock is fed to the screen by a bulldozer, then it is washed away by a jet of water from a hydraulic monitor. Everything that passes through the holes of the screen ends up at the sluice, the rest of the rock - pebbles - is washed into the dump, and it contains nuggets. With a roar, the rock, along with the water, passes through the sluice, leaving gold particles on the rubber mat. The breed that has passed through the sluice is called ephelia. They often also contain floating small, thin flake gold or gold grains intergrown with quartz and clay.
It turns out that the ephel of industrial devices ( ephel - washed rock from which gold is extracted) may also contain large gold and nuggets. Their losses are associated with gold-quartz aggregates and clay pellets. The fact is that with a significant amount of quartz, specific gravity nuggets, and even more so gold, decreases. For this reason, gold and quartz go into ephelia.
For example, it is quite possible that 10 g of gold are placed as a vein in a quartz pebble measuring 5 cm. The mass of such a pebble without gold would be about 150 g. Adding 10 g of gold to this mass gives an increase in mass of less than 10%. Obviously, when enriched at the sluice, such a gold-quartz aggregate will easily roll down and be washed down the sluice. By analogy, with poor disintegration of rock sands, with a significant content of clay and loam in it, gold particles in clay aggregates are washed away from the sluices more often into a pebble dump and less often into an ephelium dump. When surveying for gold from sluices, coarse material, including quartz pebbles, tends to be thrown into the tailings. At the same time, it is unlikely that every quartz pebble is carefully examined by tenants. It is unknown how much gold hidden in quartz ends up in the dump. In the recent past, outdated technology was used that practically did not catch gold of a class less than 0.5 mm and nuggets larger than 80 mm: according to the Russian Academy of Sciences, when using traditional methods of mining placer metal, gold was extracted with losses from 15% to 40% of the total production, and gold with a grade of less than 0.25 mm was not recovered at all. It is clear that all the metal cannot be extracted, but, according to preliminary estimates, only in technogenic deposits in Russia is it possible to annually extract 5–7 tons of gold with minimal operating costs, and organize small enterprises.

Equipment for small-scale gold mining.

One of the possible ways is a method of working with gold mining at small sites using autonomous mini equipment. In places where there are no large reserves of sand for large cooperatives, you can always find small enriched areas for selective processing.
There are still more than enough small-sized but enriched areas containing tens and hundreds of kg of gold in our rivers and placers. They are not of interest for large-scale production, but for 1-2 people at minimal cost they can provide a satisfactory income. Here we can recall the domestic experience - the mining of spit gold by small teams was carried out in the Zeya district of the Amur region on a large scale before the revolution and in the 30s. On the Zeya River in 1914, 819 kg were mined from the shallows and spits of the rivers; in total, more than a ton of spit gold was mined in the Zeya region per year on trays. The method of “zolotnik” seasonal, civilian work at the mines was widely practiced in Eastern Siberia and the Far East by owners of licensed areas. In 1913 In this way, 30% of the total gold production of 1,601 poods was mined at the mines. No one knows how much was washed up by the “predators”. ( “Predators” - the name of private miners who panned for gold in new areas they discovered, using improvised means, without detailed exploration of placers and organization of work, arose in the Far East.)

Mining of small areas can be organized using modern technologies and equipment;

• Minidrag - washing of productive sands along the shallows and spits of rivers.
• Mini-sluices with finishing of concentrates on manual trays or concentrators - repeated washing of ephels on technogenic placers.
• Metal detectors – selective search for nuggets on technogenic pebble dumps and rafts of waste placers, as well as on outcrops of primary deposits (veins, nests, etc.)

Minidrags - completely self-contained units for sand feeding, washing and gold recovery. They are mounted on a pontoon on which an engine, a pump, a pulp hydraulic elevator, and a flushing sluice with mats are installed. Mini dredges have a productivity of 1.5 m3 of sand per hour, their weight is from 60 kg. Productivity is usually limited by the power of the pump for sucking sand into the receiving hopper. They carry out selective washing of sand; a sand fraction of less than 5 cm gets into the pump inlet pipe. The minidrag ejector pump can suck in material from a depth of up to 3 m. Gasoline consumption from 0.8 l/hour, cost from 2.5 thousand dollars. They are used on channel and spit placers or heavily watered areas.
Minigates– devices for washing and gravity extraction of gold. Mounted on a collapsible frame: - hydraulic screen, disintegrator, receiving hopper, washing sluice. The bottom of the gateway is lined with fleecy mats and metal stencils. The tilt angle is adjustable up to 12 degrees. An engine-driven water pump supplies water from a source with a range of up to 20 m using flexible hoses. Gasoline consumption from 0.8 l/hour. Mini-sluices have a capacity of about 1.5 m3 of sand per hour, weight from 25 kg. They wash sands with pebble inclusions up to 100mm in size. Used in dry areas near water (no further than 20m). Productivity is usually limited by manual feeding of sand into the receiving hopper. Cost from 2 thousand dollars.
- an electronic device designed specifically for artisanal gold mining to search for native gold. They began searching for nuggets using metal detectors in Australia. This is where the “Electronic Gold Rush” began in 1982, when the largest nugget “Hand of Fate” weighing 27 kg was found with the help of a metal detector.
capable of selectively detecting gold particles in mineralized gold sands. The metal detector is capable of detecting the smallest gold nugget measuring approximately 5x4x2 mm, provided that it is located up to 20 cm from the surface. The metal detector determines the location of the nugget using an audio and visual signal. The devices have the function of ignoring signals from ground minerals and other metals. In cases where technogenic metals are not found in the rocks, the device perfectly records nuggets weighing 100 mg or more. Nuggets weighing from 100 mg to 1 g. are found at a depth of up to 10 cm, weighing more than 1 gram. - at a depth of up to 30 cm. The detection limit in the soil is gold particles weighing 100 mg.

Sites for small-scale gold mining with a metal detector.

To select an area and a search site, you need to find out whether nuggets weighing more than 50-100 grams have ever been found in this area. If no one has found nuggets larger than 50 g in this area, then you should not search for them. Most likely there are simply none in the area you have chosen. Information about nuggets is most easily obtained from geologists who have been working in your area for a long time or from old-timers. It is useful to talk with local geologists, visit the library of the territorial geological fund, look at exploration reports and gold sieve analyzes there. If you have access to geological information, you can make a more reliable forecast and more accurately choose where to look for nuggets.
If as a result you find out where nuggets weighing more than 50-100 g were found in the intended area, then this is already good, useful information. This means that you also have a chance to find nuggets. Typically, nugget placers form nodes that include several placer deposits. The presence of large nuggets indicates that the place is “nugget-like”. This means that there are most likely several placers with large gold. As a rule, they are mined, but all the nuggets were not recovered during mining. Some of the nuggets remained, since the quality of the placer mining was low.

• A “good” site should have a high median gold size (preferably more than 4-5 mm).
• When the median size of gold in a placer is less than 1 mm, searching for nuggets is futile.
• With a median gold size of 1-2 mm, you can search for nuggets, but you shouldn’t expect good results. In general, the higher the coarseness, the better.

(Median fineness is the size of the sieve through which 50% of the gold mass is sifted).
Once you have learned that the gold is large and there are nuggets, you must decide where exactly you will look. There are several options for work:

• search in technogenic placers (see examples above)
• search in new areas: - entire placers and in bedrock.

Search in technogenic placers the occupation is calm, relatively reliable, you can definitely find gold here, but large production is unlikely here. If you're lucky, you might find a nugget weighing several hundred grams, but very large nuggets are rare.
Search in new areas - complete placers and in bedrock more risky. There is no guarantee here, you must find a nugget. But here you can find a “nugget nest” containing several kilograms, or maybe tens of kilograms of gold. In addition, there are a lot of objects to search for. There are countless small unexplored streams in gold-bearing areas. The search for nuggets in a bedrock outcrop can be of interest only in rare cases when there is reliable information about the location of the vein and the large gold contained in the ore.

Search for gold nuggets in technogenic placers.

In the surface layer (up to 20 cm), which can be examined with a simple and relatively cheap metal detector, there are more nuggets than on the open surface, and in a layer 50 cm thick there are even more. The best modern metal detectors provide a detection depth of very large nuggets up to 0.5 m. In technogenic placers, mining areas located closer to the headwaters of rivers are most preferable. This is due to the fact that nuggets are poorly transported by streams and remain closer to the headwaters of a stream or river. For example, the best nugget placers of a river are located in its upper reaches (no more than 2-2.5 km from the sources). The lower part of the river (for 3-5 km from the mouth) is characterized by relatively fine metal. You can look for nuggets here, but they will most likely only be in certain places. These are places where nuggets are brought in from the sides of the valley, through local indigenous sources, or from small tributaries. Finding such places is quite difficult. Therefore, the simplest thing, at first, is to abandon large valleys and look for nuggets in placers located no more than 2 km from the sources.
From such placers, it is better to choose objects with a high linear reserve, that is, the richer the area, the better. It is also possible to find nuggets on “poor” placers, but most likely there will be fewer of them than on “rich” ones.
When analyzing possible objects of work, it is necessary to take into account the availability of the raft for inspection. Nuggets are almost always confined to the lower part of the formation and depressions of bedrock. Bedrock remains on the surface after the placer is mined. Such places where bedrock comes to the surface are the most favorable for searching for nuggets. It is best to look for nuggets immediately after industrial sand mining. The raft is most fully opened at this time. It can almost always contain nuggets in the recesses and cracks of the raft. Search efficiency will be maximum here. The strength of the raft, the presence of powerful earth-moving equipment at the enterprise, and years of development play a role. Even after clearing the landfill with heavy equipment, the depressions remain untouched. A soft raft, if the enterprise has powerful bulldozers, can be excavated so deeply that no nuggets remain on it. A durable raft is more promising for work. Not everyone has a powerful bulldozer and not everyone is ready to “rip it” on strong bedrock. Therefore, on strong molars it is more likely to find raft sinks with gold nuggets.
Having considered the combination various conditions, you will find an object worth going to. It is characterized by high coarseness of previously mined gold, located in the upper part of the valley; after mining at the landfills, an exposed raft remained. The raft is durable. The placer was mined a long time ago, when there were still few powerful bulldozers, and the loss of gold was turned a blind eye. If you have such an object, then the nuggets are in your pocket. However, such ideal objects are rare. At many placers they managed to carry out reclamation - the raft was filled up. Often the waste landfill is littered with leaching tailings. Then there is no longer a guarantee that nuggets will definitely be found.
If the placer raft is closed, then the search for nuggets can be carried out in dumps of washed sand. There may also be nuggets here. In placers with large gold, nuggets fall into the heap, especially often when using scrubbers and dredge barrels with perforations less than 20-30 mm. According to geologists, in some of the mines of the Urals, out of 200 nuggets for which there are passports indicating their location, 80 nuggets (40%) were raised in pebble dumps from separate mining in the 50s. This indicates that testing pebble dumps using metal detectors can be quite effective.
Nuggets in quartz are quite common. According to some data, the vast majority of gold nuggets from placers are aggregates of gold with quartz. The presence of gold-quartz aggregates is noted in almost any report on detailed exploration of deposits. For some placers, the share of such gold reaches 10-20%. In fact, there may be more of it. Exploration underestimates the share of gold with quartz, as it uses gravity enrichment devices, in which it is only partially captured. However, searching in man-made dumps is much more difficult than in the rafts of waste landfills. There is a lot of metal waste in the dumps, which interferes with work. The best in terms of cleanliness are placer dredge dumps that have been used once.
Mostly large nuggets (tens and hundreds of grams) can be found in dredge dumps. However, such nuggets are rare, so you can’t hope for success right away. You may have to work patiently before the first nugget is found. According to experience, in dredge dumps there is on average one nugget per 600-1000 cubic meters of rock. When working with a metal detector, you can listen to 50 cubic meters in an hour. Therefore, a good nugget can be found in a day's work.

Search on solid placers and in bedrock.

Near the streams, there are generally three types of rich placers that are not explored, licenses are not issued for them, and they are not of interest to existing mines and artisanal mining cooperatives. This brush, channel and spit placers. They are characterized by an uneven, nested distribution of gold, with reserves of tens and hundreds of grams of gold. These placers are a desirable mining target for single miners and small teams. Brush and channel deposits are common in mountainous areas, especially in headwater streams near watersheds. Spit placers can be found in the mountains and on lowland rivers, often very far from gold-bearing areas.
TO brushed include placers with concentrations of metal in cracks in bedrock, in places where watercourses cut into bedrock. They are found at drops, waterfalls, and in the zone of the cutting edge, where the erosive activity of rivers slows down for one reason or another. The bedrock transverse ridges, which can be composed of dikes and quartz veins, are very promising.
TO channel placers productive alluvium of the channel, not covered by empty sand and pebble deposits, should be considered. They are characterized by the accumulation of gold in the raft (bedrock) and their partial dispersion in the supra-raft rocks. Characteristic features include small nests, lenses, jets, quickly wedging out tapes, etc. Channel placers are usually located next to brush placers in those areas of valleys where channel incision occurs. (CHANNEL PLACERS - placers lying in the river bed and located in the area of ​​​​water flow; they arise in initial stage formation or stage of transformation of a valley placer. R.r. characteristic of young valleys in the incision stage and are formed by direct erosion of the bedrock source or due to previously formed valley and terrace placers; can be restored after working out. They are of industrial importance. gold, platinum, diamonds, etc.)
TO spit placers include gold-bearing deposits of riverbed shallows. Contains gold of small and medium fractions. In the valleys of mountain streams, spit placers are usually composed of coarse clastic material, in the foothills of those rivers where the speed of streams decreases - gravel-sand sediments, and in the valleys of lowland rivers they are always represented by sand mixed with clay or silty material.
Spit placers sometimes appear tens of kilometers from the primary sources. In many river systems, spit placers are separated from other floodplain alluvial placers. But often both are spatially combined. They exhibit an uneven distribution of metal, both in the lateral and vertical directions. Oblique gold placers are usually characterized by low concentrations of the metal, represented mainly by its fine fractions. Within river spits and shallows, it is necessary to look for enriched areas in the form of lenses, which may be in places where the channel bends, behind boulders, fallen trees and similar obstacles .(SPIT PLACERS - alluvial placers of long-distance transport and redeposition, lying on sand-pebble, sandy riverbed shoals (“spits”) and alluvial islands, containing the most mobile small particles of useful minerals in the alluvial environment. They are represented by thin (several centimeters or millimeters ) layers and lenses enriched with useful minerals, alternating with layers of “empty” sediments. The thickness of the productive formation, localized in the upper horizons of the channel alluvium, rarely exceeds.1m, often amounts to several decimeters. Easily processed by water flow and can be displaced downstream during floods; able to recover after working out. Useful components of spit placers are gold (native), diamond, platinum (native). Their industrial significance is small, but they serve as a reliable indication of the presence of other types of placers and their primary sources in the valleys)

We start with the stream.
In gold-bearing areas, small mountain streams are a good place to look for nuggets. Gold falls into them from the slopes. Light rock is carried away by water, and gold, due to its high density, sinks through sand and pebbles, accumulates and forms gold-bearing placers. It is better to choose streams for examination that are short in length, up to 10-15 kilometers. These may also be the upper reaches of larger rivers. Nuggets are inactive and are not transported over long distances by the river. Typically, the further from the source, the finer the gold. Small streams are especially interesting because in them you can find rich areas of small size - “nests”. The nests contain not only nuggets, but also gold sand. From history, nests with several pounds of gold are known. To search for small gold nuggets in streams, you need to use metal detectors at maximum sensitivity. The appearance of the nugget carries useful information, therefore, it is advisable to measure, photograph and accurately describe each nugget where it was found. This may be useful in the future for searching for a nest or root vein.
Beneath the sand and pebbles in any stream lies solid (bedrock) rock. Geologists often call them “rafts”. Gold, sinking through loose rocks, reaches the raft. It cannot fall further and accumulates here. The nuggets on the raft are the largest. There is also gold above the raft, but the higher it is, the finer it is. Nuggets are rarely found 1.5-2 meters from the raft. No nuggets are found on the open surface.
When searching for nuggets with a metal detector, the problem is that the raft is usually located at a depth of 2-5, and sometimes 50 m. You cannot get nuggets at such a depth with any device. You have to choose places where the raft comes close to the surface. Such places along the banks of mountain rivers are found quite often in the form of bedrock outcrops. Their surface was once the bottom of a stream. Later, the stream washed out another new channel, and the old bottom remained on the surface. Promising places in the form of rock outcrops are the easiest to visually find, but they are not found in all streams. If there are no visible outcrops, you need to examine the floodplain of the stream, hoping for luck. If the surface of the rock has cracks, gold, if any, remains in them. The metal detector will find it. The entire surface of the rocks and areas adjacent to the rocks must be scanned very carefully with the device.
It is also advisable to examine the accessible surface next to the riverbed, 10-20 meters above the water. These may be preserved sections of ancient river valleys (terraces), and their surface could once have been the bottom. It is interesting to examine the underwater part of the channel; there may also be nuggets there. You can search underwater with a metal detector, although it is very difficult to pull out a nugget from under the water.

Gold's companion is quartz.
A stream can be preliminarily assessed for gold using additional criteria. If there are quartz pebbles in the stream, then the stream is more promising for gold. The presence of quartz in a stream is a good sign. The fact is that gold comes from an indigenous source - a quartz vein. The quartz is destroyed, the gold is released from it and washed down the slope into the stream. Quartz also ends up in the creek and is easy to see. Quartz is a white or light gray rock. With a little experience it is easy to see. The main difference between quartz and other rocks is that it has high hardness and scratches glass. You can take any fragment of a bottle and run a piece of rock over it. If a scratch remains, then the fragment is quartz.
A more accurate criterion for selecting promising streams is washing the rock with a tray or spot testing. Sand washing should be carried out 200-500 m above the mouth. If at least one piece of gold (sign) is caught in the tray, it’s a good sign. It is likely that there may be nuggets in the stream. But if there is no gold in the tray, then the stream cannot be considered unpromising. The tray “catches” small gold, and in the nugget area of ​​the stream the content of small gold is small, up to 1g per 1m3, and it may not get into the sample of the tray. In nugget areas you can wash 10 trays and all without gold. But if gold gets into the tray, then the stream needs to be examined first and very carefully.

CONCLUSION.

Small-scale gold mining is becoming increasingly common today. Those who want to mine gold enter into an agreement with the license holder and work on his site, on man-made dumps. The work is carried out in small teams, in other cases by single miners, sometimes by families panning for gold.
The development of small-scale gold mining is artificially constrained by legislative restrictions: individuals are allowed to mine gold only within existing mining allotments and only from technogenic deposits.
Man-made dumps have a number of advantages - they require lower costs for organization and re-development, and also have lower initial requirements for technical training of personnel.
Research conducted by specialists suggests that the predicted gold resources in dumps in the territory of the Oymyakonsky ulus of Yakutia alone amount to more than 70 tons. In some deposits, the number of nuggets during mining was twice as high as during exploration, which suggests their significant presence in pebble dumps. A preliminary analysis of the documentation of 400 deposits in the Indigirka River basin with a total gold production of more than 450 tons showed the prospects for recycling 130 deposits, which produced more than 360 tons.
The prospect of searching on old dumps has the following advantages: :
– capital and operating costs for metal extraction are significantly reduced;
– no stripping operations are required;
– the location of the sites is reliably known;
– the ability to use mobile and inexpensive mini equipment;
– lower requirements for technical training of personnel;
– relatively developed infrastructure and road network at the work sites;
– the cost of performing appraisal work is significantly lower than standard exploration methods.
The decisive factors that provide a long-term prospect for the search for nuggets are huge reserves of gale-ephel dumps, relatively low investments at the initial stage, high profitability during mining, and ample opportunities for investing in new technologies for gold mining.