Quartz vein let down - Show and Tell - Old Forum Archive - New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Fossicking

Dugau		Posted : Saturday, 6 June 2015 5:50:13 PM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Dust Groups: Registered Joined: 9/09/2014(UTC) Posts: 2 Location: Nelson Was thanked: 1 time(s) in 1 post(s)		So I have been playing in a creak in Nelson for a good part of 30 years and never had any mineralization or even quartz. I know it had been prospected 60 years ago. this vein is about two meters long 10 centimeters wide and soft like salt but with no salt taste.. lol. Had to check. It starts out so soft it can be dug out with fingers then a screwdriver and finally at the west end is hard ish. Hammer and screwdriver. The harder end I pulverized rock and panned the whole vein from top to bottom. Nada. Its weird I have never seen soft quartz. About 10 meters up the creak there is another vein but this one is only about an inch wide and vertical again nothing at all. The stuff is so clean it looks like white flour. In saying that it has a thick line of black mud as black as oil running through it. But no it didn't leave an oily sheen on the water. Edited by user Saturday, 6 June 2015 5:53:31 PM(UTC) \| Reason: Not specified File Attachment(s): IMAG0228.jpg IMAG0229.jpg

c4bb0ose		Posted : Saturday, 6 June 2015 6:30:38 PM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Nugget Groups: Registered Joined: 7/09/2014(UTC) Posts: 97 Thanks: 1 times Was thanked: 32 time(s) in 29 post(s)		Quartz veins do not always mean gold, or visible gold for that matter. Take the Waiorongomai valley for example, most of the gold cannot be seen with the naked eye and so had to be extracted via chemical means in order to make the mining worth it. If your looking for potential veins the rule of thumb I always read about is to look for rust colored quartz veins. Again there is no guarantee but if your serious about it you can learn how to assay quartz or send it off to be assayed yourself for gold content.

Dugau		Posted : Saturday, 6 June 2015 6:43:13 PM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Dust Groups: Registered Joined: 9/09/2014(UTC) Posts: 2 Location: Nelson Was thanked: 1 time(s) in 1 post(s)		Yeah I was just hoping for some love.. having never even seen any mineralization in the valley. Oh and the creak is in a queens queens covenant also so it can't really be mined even if there was colour there. I'm going to be heading to a sweet little valley south of murch in summer to find some color. I'll post some photos of I find anything.

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