The Cochise County Rock
Monthly Newsletter of the Sunsites Gem & Mineral Club
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"Finding and Grinding Rocks in Cochise County, Arizona since 1967"
April 2012
This issue edited by Don Hammer
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The next General Meeting of the Sunsites Gem & Mineral Club is on the third Monday April 16, 2012 at 7:00 pm at the Sunsites Community Center. The program will start at 7:00 pm and Bill Burton will tell us "Where to Look for Gold". He gave a very interesting and informative talk to the Club a few years ago.
General Meeting Minutes, March 12, 2012
President Diane Dunn welcomed everyone to the monthly meeting and stated that the meeting would be held after the program. She asked Don Hammer to introduce the speakers. Don gave a little background on Dr. James Callegary and Mr. Saeid Tadayon, hydrologists who are with the US Geological Survey Water Science Center in Tucson. Their program was entitled, "An overview of water use in Arizona with an emphasis on the hydrology of the Willcox and Douglas Basins."
Meeting: The business meeting began at 9 PM. Diane welcomed two new members, Mitch & Banetta Chriswell.
Field Trip for March: The field trip is to be held on Saturday, March 17th, an excursion to Wood Canyon, behind "W" Mt. in Willcox, hunting for geodes. Many of them are filled with crystals & others are filled with chalcedony or agate. ( i.e. "ugly outside, pretty inside.") Although geodes may be found in float, bring along pry bars, chisels, etc., as well as chairs, lunch, etc. High clearance vehicles are strongly suggested. Meet at Willcox Safeway, 8:15 AM.
Minutes: The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as published.
Treasurers Report: Walter Sigel has a balance of $6522.05 in the General Fund as of today. His monthly report was accepted as read.
Hospitality: Cherie Robb thanked Joan Hammer, Ilsa-Rose Edgett, Zoe Schnabel & Nadine Wirshing for providing refreshments for members and guests.
At 9:10 PM the meeting was adjourned.
Misc. Note: Jim Robb brought geode samples from Wood Canyon that were on the back table. All were easily broken displaying crystal filled interiors. Jim had cut a large one which displayed beautiful agate swirls.
April Field Trip
We will go a few miles east of Willcox to pan for gold. Meet in the Willcox Safeway parking lot at 7:45 am to leave at 8 am on Saturday April 21. High clearance is needed. We will be digging sand and gravel out of the wash and panning it. Cracks in rock outcrops may also have gold that dropped into the cracks. There is no water in the wash so we'll have to haul water to use for panning. Bring tweezers, a small vial or pill bottle, small paint or toothbrush, small screwdriver, pry bar, hammer and chisels, spade, gold pans, a ¼ inch screen, a wash tub or other large tub to pan in, old towels, a small magnet, water for panning (a large bottle or tank if you have one), bags or pails, lunch, lawn chairs, drinking water and sun protection.
March Field Trip
On Saturday March 17th, 22 members assembled in the Willcox Safeway parking lot departing at 8:30 north along Circle I Road and thence on ranch roads into Wood Canyon. Geodes were abundant all over the hillside and most members got all they wanted from the float. A few tackled the geodes in a large outcrop and broke out some nice specimens. Some geodes were huge and I think some others that were broken up may have been larger. Pieces of red and white agate (formerly the interior of a geode) ranging up to a foot in diameter were found as were smaller pieces of a very nice brown and white agate. Due to the size of some geodes our vehicles were much heavier on the way out. And the wind held off until shortly after noon. We thank Henri van den Bos and Jim Robb for arranging an excellent field trip to a very productive area.
Club Website
The address of the Club Website is on the masthead of this newsletter. The Website has past newsletters, photos from almost all of our field trips and other Club information.
Lapidary and Silversmith Classes
For the rest of this spring we will be holding lapidary sessions by appointment at 9 am on Tuesday in the lapidary lab behind the fire station. If you're interested call Don Hammer 384-3105.
Rocks and Minerals for Sale.
Gary Mattausch formerly had a rock shop in Cascabel. He has moved to Benson and put all of his rough rocks and many mineral specimens up for sale. If you're interested in some good prices call him at 520-507-4931 and make arrangements to visit him. He works different shifts so call ahead. His address is 882 S. La Mesa Circle in Benson.
Dues are due.
Dues are $15 for individuals and $25 for a family. Bring your dues to the next meeting or mail your check to Sunsites Gem & Mineral Club, PO Box 87, Pearce, Arizona 85625. Unpaid members will be dropped.
Club Calendar:
April
16 General Meeting
21 Field Trip
May
3 Board Meeting
14 General Meeting
Field Trip
June
2 Picnic
Officers for 2012
President: Diane Dunn 520.826.0278
V-President: Jack Light 520 824-4774
Secretary: Zoe Schnable 520 826-0100
Treasurer: Walter Sigel 520-826-1009
Deleg-at-Large: Carl Schnabel 520.826.0100
Hospit Coord: Cherie Robb 805.660.0074
Field Trip Crd: Henri van den Bos 384-0288
Past Pres: Paul McKnight 775-434-8395
Panning for gold.
From www.goldgold.com/gold-prospectinggold-panning-instructions.html
The main thing to remember about the use of a gold pan is that while it is very effective as a gold-catching device, it can only process a limited volume of streambed material. For this reason, the gold pan is normally not used as a production tool in commercial use, other than in the most remote locations where it would be very difficult to haul large pieces of equipment, and where there is only a small amount of streambed material present -- which is paying well enough to make the panning worthwhile.
Gold Panning Procedure: Panning gold is basically simple, once you realize that you are doing the same thing that the river does when it causes gold to concentrate and deposit during flood storms.
The process consists of placing the material that you want to process into your pan and shaking it in a left to right motion underwater to cause the gold, which is heavy, to work its way down toward the bottom of your pan. At the same time, the lighter materials are worked up to the surface of the gold pan where they can be swept away. The process of shaking and sweeping is repeated until only the heaviest of materials are left-namely the gold and heaviest black sand.
Once you are out in the field, you will notice that no two people pan gold exactly alike. After you have been at it awhile, you will develop your own little twists and shakes to accomplish the proper result.
Here follows a basic gold panning procedure to start off with which works well and is easy to learn:
STEP 1: Once you have located some gravel that you want to sample, place it in your gold pan-filling it about 3/4 of the way to the top. After you have been at it awhile, you can fill your pan to the top without losing any gold. While placing material in your pan, pick out the larger-sized rocks, so that you can get more of the smaller material and gold into the pan.
Step 2: Choose a spot to do your panning. It is best to pick a location where the water is at least six inches deep and preferably flowing just enough to sweep away any silty water that may be washed from your pan. This way, you can see what you are doing better. You do not want the water moving so swiftly that it will upset your panning actions. A mild current will do, if available.
It is always best to find a spot where there's a rock or log or stream-bank or something that you can sit down upon while panning. You can pan effectively while squatting, kneeling or bending over, but it does get tiresome. If you are planning to process more than just one or two pans, sitting down will make the activity much more pleasant.
STEP 3: Carry the pan over to your determined spot and submerge it underwater.
STEP 4: Use your fingers to knead the contents of the pan to break it up fully and cause all of the material to become saturated with water. This is the time to work apart all the clay, dirt, roots, moss and such with your fingers to ensure that all the materials are fully broken up and in a liquid state of suspension whithin the pan.
The pan should be underwater while doing this. Mud and silt will float up and out. Do not concern yourself about losing any gold when this happens. Remember: gold is heavy and will sink deeper in your pan while these lighter materials are floating out and away.
STEP 5: After the entire contents of the pan have been thoroughly broken up, take the pan in your hands (with cheater riffles on the far side of the pan) and shake it, using a vigorous left and right motion just under the surface of the water. This action will help to break up the contents of the pan even more and will also start to work the heavier materials downwards in the pan while the lighter materials will start to surface.
Be careful not to get so vigorous in your left and right shaking that you slosh material out of the pan during this step. Depending upon the consistency of the material that you are working, it may be necessary to alternate doing steps four and five over again a few times to get all of the pan's contents into a liquid state of suspension. It is this same liquid state of suspension that allows the heavier materials to sink in the pan while the lighter materials emerge to the surface.
STEP 6: As the shaking action causes rocks to rise up to the surface, sweep them out of the pan using your fingers or the side of your hand. Just sweep off the top layer of rocks which have worked their way up to the pan's surface.
Don't worry about losing gold while doing this, because the same action which has brought the lighter rocks to the surface will have worked the gold deeper down toward the bottom of the pan.
When picking the larger rocks out of the pan, make sure that they are clean of clay and other particles before you toss them out. Clay sometimes contains pieces of gold and also has a tendency to grab onto the gold in your pan.
Note: Working the raw material through a classification screen into the gold pan during Step 1 or Step 3 will eliminate the need to sweep out larger rocks in Step 6. This will also allow you to pan a larger sample of the finer-sized material(which contains all the gold you will find in a pan sample).
STEP 7: Continue to do steps five and six, shaking the pan and sweeping out the rocks and pebbles(if present), until most of the medium-sized material is out of your pan.
STEP 8: Tilt the forward edge of your pan downward slightly to bring the forward-bottom edge of the pan to a lower position. With the pan tilted forward, shake it back and forth using the same left and right motion. Be careful not to tilt the pan forward so much that any material is spilled over the forward-edge while shaking.
This tilted shaking action causes the gold to start working its way down to the pan's forward-bottom edge, and continues to work the lighter materials to the surface where they will be more easily swept off.
STEP 9: Carefully, by using a forward and backward movement, or a slight circular motion just below the surface of the water, allow the water to sweep the top layer of worthless, lighter materials out of the pan. Only allow the water to sweep out a little at a time, while watching closely for the heavier materials to be uncovered as the lighter materials are swept out. It takes some judgment in this step to determine just how much material to sweep off before having to shake again so that no gold is lost. It will just take a little practice in panning gold before you will begin to see the difference between the lighter materials and the heavier materials in your pan. You will develop a feel for knowing how much material can be safely swept out before re-shaking is necessary. When you are first starting, it is best to re-shake as often as you feel that it is needed to prevent losing any gold. When in doubt, shake! There are a few factors which can be pointed out to help you with this. Heavier materials are usually darker in color than the lighter materials. You will notice while shaking the pan that it is the lighter-colored materials that are vibrating on the surface. You will also notice that as the lighter materials are swept out of the pan, the darker-colored materials are uncovered.
Materials tend to get darker (and heavier) as you work your way down toward the bottom of the pan, where the darkest and heaviest materials will be found, they being the purple and black sands, which are usually minerals of the iron family. The exception to this is gold, which is heaviest of all. Gold usually is of a bright and shiny metallic color and shows out well in contrast to the other heavier materials at the bottom of the gold pan.
One other factor to keep in mind is that the lighter materials sweep out of your pan more easily than do the heavier materials. As the heavier materials are uncovered, they are increasingly more resistant to being swept out of the pan, and will give you an indication of when it is time to re-shake.
As you work your way down through your pan, sometimes gold particles will show themselves as you get down to the heavier materials. When you see gold, you know it is time to re-shake your pan.
There is another popular method of sweeping the lighter materials out of the top of your pan which you might prefer to use. It is done by dipping your pan under the water and lifting it up, while allowing the water to run off the forward edge of the pan, taking the top layer of material along with it.
STEP 10: Once the top layer of lighter material is washed out of your pan, re-shake to bring more lighter materials to the top. By "lighter materials," I mean in comparison to the other materials. If you continue to shake the lighter materials to the top and sweep them off, eventually you will be left with the heaviest material of all, which is the gold. It does not take much shaking to bring a new layer of lighter material to the surface. Maybe 5 or 6 seconds of shaking will do it, maybe less. It all depends upon the consistency of the material and how much gold is present.
Continue to pluck out the larger-sized rocks and pebbles as they show themselves during the process.
STEP 11: Every few cycles of sweeping and re-shaking, tilt your pan back to the level position and re-shake. This keeps any gold from being allowed to work its way up the forward-edge of your pan.
STEP 12:Continue the above steps of sweeping and re-shaking until you are down to the heaviest materials in your pan. These usually consist of old pieces of lead and other metal, coins, BB's, old bullets, buckshot, nails, garnets, small purple and black iron rocks, and the heavy black sand concentrates. Black sands consist mainly or in part of the following: magnetite (magnetic black sands), hematite (non-magnetic black sands), titanium, zircon, rhodolite, monazite, tungsten materials, and sometimes pyrites (fool's gold), plus any other items which might be present in that location which have a high specific gravity-like gold and platinum.
Once down to the heaviest black sands in your pan, you can get a quick look at the concentrates to see how much gold is present by allowing about a half-cup of water into the pan, tilting the pan forward as before, and shaking from left to right to place the concentrates in the forward-bottom section of your pan. Then, level the pan off and swirl the water around in slow circles. This action will gradually uncover the concentrates, and you can get a look at any gold that is present. The amount of gold in your pan will give you an idea how rich the raw material is that you are sampling.
A magnet can be used to help remove the magnetic black sands from the gold pan. Take care when doing this. While gold is not magnetic, sometimes particles of gold will become trapped in the magnetic net of iron particles which clump together and attach to the magnet. I prefer to drop the magnetic sands into a second plastic gold pan, swish them around, and then pick them up once again with the magnet. Depending upon how much gold this leaves behind, I might do this several times before finally discarding the magnetic sands.
Many beginners like to stop panning at this point and pick out all the pieces of gold (colors) with tweezers. This is one way of recovering the gold from your pan, but it is a pretty slow method.
Most prospectors who have been at it for awhile will pan down through the black sands as far as they feel that they can go without losing any gold. Then they check the pan for any colors by swirling it, and pick out any of the larger-sized flakes and nuggets to place them in a gold sample bottle. Then the remaining concentrates are poured into a small coffee can or bucket and allowed to accumulate there until the end of the day, or week, or whenever enough concentrates have been collected to make it worthwhile to further process them. This is really the better method if you are interested in recovering more gold, because it allows you to get on with the job of panning and sampling without getting deeply involved with a pair of tweezers. Otherwise, you can end up spending 25% of your time panning and up to 75% of your time picking out small colors from the pan!
Panning Down All The Way To Gold: It is possible to pan all the way down to the gold-with no black sands, lead or other foreign materials remaining in the pan. This is often done among prospectors when cleaning up a set of concentrates which have been taken from the recovery system of a larger piece of equipment-like a sluice box or suction dredge.
Panning all the way down to gold is really not very difficult once you get the hang of it. It is just a matter of a little practice and being a bit more careful. When doing so, most prospectors prefer to use the smooth surface of the gold pan, rather than using the cheater riffles. The key is to run the concentrates through several sizes of classification screens and pan each size-fraction separately. Use of a smaller-sized pan ("finishing pan") makes this process go easier.
When panning a set of concentrates all the way down to the gold-or nearly so, it is good to have a medium-sized funnel and a large-mouthed gold sample bottle on hand. This way, once you have finished panning, it is just a matter of pouring the gold from your pan into the sample bottle through the funnel. Pill bottles and baby food jars can make good gold sample bottles for field use, because they are usually made of thick glass and have wide mouth. Plastic bottles are even safer.
Another method is with the use of a gold snifter bottle. This is a small hand-sized flexible bottle with a small sucking tube attached to it. Squeezing the snifter bottle creates a vacuum inside. Submerged gold from the pan can consequently be sucked up through the tube.
If you do not have a snifter bottle or funnel, try wetting your finger with saliva and fingering the gold into a container, which should be filled with water. The saliva will cause the gold and concentrates to stick to your finger until it touches the water in the container. This works, but the funnel method is faster.
Practise Gold Panning: If you are not in a known gold-producing location, but want to do some practice panning to acquire some skills before going out into the field, you can practice in your own backyard. Use a washtub to pan into and some diggings from your garden (or wherever) to simulate streambed materials. I recommend that you throw in some rocks and gravel along with the dirt so that it takes on an actual streambed consistency. Place a penny in the pan and following the instructions above gradually remove all of the waste material until only the penny is left in the pan.
If you can pan a penny successfully, then you will not have much difficulty panning gold (higher specific gravity) out of a riverbed. And, who knows? You may end up with gold in your pan-right out of your own backyard! It wouldn't be the first time.