flour gold?

[Coolcoyotes]

I was out scouting couple of creeks near my house yesterday for panning possibilities and I noticed the ground and stream bed were glistening like.... um.... gold? So, I scooped up some of the dirt and took it home for a closer look. I'm new to panning, but it looks like very tiny bits of gold and gold flakes. When I get a piece of it on my finger, it smears almost like thick chalk. The dirt sample I brought home is full of it.... is this what they call flour gold?

Thoughts?

Cathy

[south fork]

Sorry but that's not gold. Sounds like mica Or a similar mineral.

[Coolcoyotes]

Thanks - I'll keep looking. Heading to South Mountain area in NC in a few minutes. Gonna be 60 today.

Cathy

[silvervortek]

a quick way of knowing if u have fools gold is hold the sample in one hand and shade it from the sun light with the other, gold will continue to have that nice yellow colour where fools gold will darken down and wont gleam.

if you could pick up a used desert fox it would help you a lot for running small samples through as it will only bring heavier materials up to the centre cut like gold /lead bbs/black garnets.

or get your self one of those plastic mini sluices that you can pour water on to seperate gold from black sand, even if you had to buy some placer gold and get familiar with it it would give you the confidence that the equipment your using is working.

when i started off i was using all kinds of home made sluices and contraptions and i was getting nothing and thought it had to be be the sluices i had werent working but in fact i was digging in washes with no gold.

as soon as i moved to a different area and got a few small flakes of real gold i never looked back.

good luck hunting.