Reno Chris

The truth is it varies from place to place and there is no "Universal" rule that is always correct. I've been in places with almost no quartz whatsoever and found gold, and places were nearly every rock on the surface is quartz and found no gold. Yet some other places with lots of quartz I have done well and gotten good gold. I've found gold in places with lots of hematite, and I've found no gold in other places with lots of hematite. I've found gold in places with pretty much zero hematite. I've been asked this sort of question many times. A lot of guys, especially new prospectors, want some set of simple, golden rules that always tell you where the gold will be. Sorry, I've prospected and found gold all over the western USA, including Alaska, as well as Australia and Western Africa and there are no simple, hard and fast rules that always work. You cant even take knowledge of what works in most of Arizona and take that into the Sierra Nevada goldfields of the mother lode. Some stuff will work, but other stuff wont apply. Its true that normally the gold in the big quartz veins (like more than 4 ft thick) is often fine as dust. The coarser gold that can be seen by a detector often comes from smaller veins and stringers nearby. This is why a lot of gold quartz mines that produced thousands of ounces of gold have no detectable gold in the dumps - the gold is tiny particles like dust that cannot be seen by a detector.

You guys have it backwards. This is the end of the good detecting season. The other day I went and got my trailer and brought it back to the house for winter.

This month in the ICMJ (by the way, that is the right magazine), I have an article about me working an unusual nugget patch in a forest. There are no workings to follow, the nearest placer mines are a couple miles away, and no other gold is closer than that. There are no ravines to test, the patch is on the flat top of a mountain with big pines all over ( lots of little pines too). No one would ever look there, but I read in an old report that some prospectors a century ago tested the soil up there and found gold, some of it coarse. Its an interesting story for those of you who subscribe to the ICMJ. In this particular case, the gold is where you shouldn't find it.

I'll need to talk with Doc about writing for the wrong magazine.

Kyanite grades from opaque to fully gemmy transparent crystals. I have seen plenty of Kyanite that looks very much like the one in the original picture. There is a kyanite mine in Imperial County, California that produces similar material. Measuring the hardness of kyanite is difficult as the hardness in one direction is different than the hardness perpendicular to that direction - the difference between the two directions is quite large. It can be really hard to see the true crystal shape in a 2D photo.

Processing is required. Fracking sand must be of certain sizes and nothing is that pure naturally. So yes, its just sand but it does have to be sized very carefully and that does require a processing plant.

If the rock has a metallic sheen, then I'd go with pyrite. Its hard to tell from blurry photos.

I'm with LipCa - ???? - It appears to me to be a leaverite of the highest order.

I dont think its Galena. I am guessing Jamesonite because of one of the pictures. Still a lead bearing sulfide, but Jamesonite also has significant antimony.

I'm leaning toward Kyanite as what the original poster was asking about.

Although it has some angular features, it also has some very much melted features of rounding with probable bubble areas. Graphite rarely has a nice metallic surface, I think that photo is mostly a matter of photo reflection appearance. Graphite is only slightly metallic looking and also something that never looks melted. The metallic silver streak also says metal (Graphite has a steak that looks like pencil lead). In the end its impossible to be 100% sure. That's why identifying something from a photo or two is hard. The angular features could be an imprint of what it sat on in its melted form as it cooled. Also some metals will partly crystallize if they cool slowly. I'm still reasonably confident its some melted metal.

Its a piece of melted metal. If heavy perhaps Babbitt or lead, if light, perhaps aluminum. But its not a rock or a natural mineral.

They found some coarse nuggets at Rawhide, but much of the placer was deep - 30 to 100 feet down and was worked with shafts and drifts along the bedrock. The shallow head of the placer area at Hooligan Hill was mined in the pit and is gone. While the pit is not active, much of the area is still fenced off.

The obvious answer - the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada in California. Highs tomorrow expected in the low 60s here in Reno.

Those look to be 1950s or 60s vintage. They can be plenty unstable and explode without any battery or electricity. They can go off from static in the air such as comes over in a thunderstorm. Dangerous stuff to have around the house to be sure. Much like old dynamite.