Where can you dig gold? Gold mining. How to find gold? Searching with a metal detector. Leading countries in gold production

Gold is a precious metal, the search for which began many centuries ago. It would seem that this is a completely useless metal, but it is precisely because of it that blood continues to be shed to this day. People are eager to get gold in large quantities, because this is a clear sign of a person’s well-being and prosperity.

A little history

Over the centuries-old history of Ancient and Muscovite Rus', no gold-bearing lands were found, even despite the fact that the territories of our state were quite large at that time. Pursuing the goal of finding this precious metal, the once-ruling Ivan III ordered ore miners from Italy, hoping that they would at least find something. But, unfortunately for Ivan III, according to rumors they found only a small piece of a nugget, which was only enough to make a pectoral cross.

Then Ivan the Terrible began searching for gold deposits. He even gathered an entire army and set out to conquer the territories of Siberia, but nothing was found there either. The rest of the rulers of Ancient Rus' suffered such a collapse. And only with the advent of Perth I on the throne, metal mining began to actively develop. He, as they say, went to great lengths. As history says, during his reign no discoveries occurred in this area. However, it was under Peter I that the first outfits decorated with gold appeared, and the king himself simply presented his close relatives and acquaintances with gold jewelry. Maybe historians missed something? It is not known, and it is not possible to prove now that gold mining began under Peter I.

The first person to mine gold was an Old Believer peasant named Erofey Sidorovich Markov. This happened in the Urals in 1745, when he was building himself a hut on the Pyshma River. To build a hut, he needed to dig a hole, where, in fact, he found golden grains of sand. He immediately went to show his find to the then famous silversmith Dmitriev. He confirmed that these grains of sand were golden, after which mining experts immediately came to Markov with the hope of finding a gold mine in the same place. But what a disappointment they were when they found nothing. For several years they searched for gold near this place, and only in 1947 did they mutually agree that it was necessary to dig a mine under this place. And they turned out to be right!

At the depths of the mine, a real gold mine was discovered, which served as the beginning of the discovery of gold mining.

Where can you find gold?

The question of where to find gold worries everyone who searches for precious metals. In fact, it can be found in many places, but in small quantities. Real gold mines are extremely rare. But they still exist, and if you start searching for this precious metal on your own, maybe you will be lucky and you will find that very mine. Although the likelihood of this is negligible.

Gold is present in small quantities in sea water. And according to experts, if you separate the metal from salt water, you can get approximately 10,000,000,000 tons of gold! The figure is shocking, especially considering that from one gram of gold you can stretch a wire three kilometers long, but so far no way has been found to do this.

In nature, pure gold is extremely rare; it can mainly be found mixed with other metals. Gold-bearing veins are often found in quartz beds, as well as accumulations of sulfur dioxide. Due to exposure to weather conditions (rain, snow, wind, etc.) they are destroyed. These places become “open doors” where gold can be found. Most often in such places you can find gold-bearing veins, without any impurities.

After some time, under the influence of wind and rain, further destruction of the quartz layers occurs, resulting in the formation of whole pieces of pure gold, which is called a nugget. Such a precious metal, formed by the destruction of quartz layers, can be found both in the form of fine gold dust and in the form of large nuggets, the weight of which can be enormous.

During the weathering process, rocks and veins are subjected to mechanical destruction and chemical attack, due to which they turn into loose clastic material, such as clay or sand, and the gold itself is freed from its enclosing rock. Loose material picks up the water flow and carries it down the slopes into river valleys.

There are several types of gold deposits formed due to weathering of veins:

• residual deposits;
• eluvial sediments;
• terrace deposits;
• bottom sediments.

Residual deposits are located directly near the vein that has been subjected to chemical and physical attack. Eluvial deposits consist of pieces of vein and individual nuggets that move under the influence of nature along the mountainside. They are often located near the vein itself at the foot of the mountains.

Terrace deposits can usually be found on the river bottom. Over time, the river cuts deeper and deeper into the earth, creating a “new” bottom. And the “old” bottom, in turn, often remains high above the water level and is called a “terrace”. It is the old bottom that has large deposits of gold ore, and they are located mainly on mountain tops and in deserts. Ancient terraces, as a rule, have a high gold content.

Sediments are formed in sedimentary formations at the bottom of a river. Strong rain flows in mountainous areas wash away bottom sediments to bedrock, which leads to erosion of the river bottom and a gradual change in the channel, and “supply” new portions of gold.

For example, in Austria, through the destruction of quartz layers, a nugget was found whose weight was 60 kilograms. Just imagine, 60 kilograms of pure gold! This is mind boggling!

Today, the process of extracting precious metals is identical to the methods of extracting other metals. That is, mines are dug, after which the gold ore is taken out in pieces and lifted up. Then the process of separating gold from impurities is carried out through chemical reactions, after first turning the metal into powder.

Searching for gold in Russia

It is almost impossible to give an exact answer about where gold can be found in Russia. Precious metal can be anywhere, even in your garden, if, of course, you have one.

There are more than enough places in Russia where you can find gold. The most promising are the Urals, Magadan, Chukotka, Bodaibo and Amur. Large nuggets weighing from 4 to 16 kilograms were found here.

For example, in 2000, 665 nuggets were found in the Amur region near the Cuttlefish River. The largest of them weighed 6.9 kilograms. And in Chukotka, just a couple of months ago, a nugget weighing 16 kilograms was discovered!

The places where the nuggets were found, and the very fact of their discovery, are remembered for many years. Therefore, before looking for gold in a particular area, it is necessary to find out from geologists or watchmen whether this precious metal was found here or not. If such cases have not occurred, then there is no point in searching in this area. Most likely, there is no gold here, and it is worth taking a closer look at other places.

Very often the whereabouts of large nuggets are published in newspapers, so it’s worth picking up the archive and familiarizing yourself with this information. The best thing to do is contact the geological fund and look at reports there on the search for gold ore. Perhaps this is where you will find out where you can find gold in Russia, and in which nearby cities you should start active searches.

If you learn that nuggets weighing at least 50 grams were found in a particular area, then the chances of finding gold there increase several times. For example, you found out that more than 1000 nuggets were found in a neighboring area, the weight of which, say, reached 6 - 7 kilograms. But this area has very large boundaries and contains placers with large and small gold. This, of course, complicates the work, but the chances of finding metal are much higher than in another area. Since the quality of placer processing is often low, even if this area has already been previously processed, gold can still be found here.

In general, we can conclude that before looking for places where you can find gold in Russia, you should obtain data on the location of gold ore in the geological fund.

How to look for gold correctly?

It can take years to find the precious metal. You should not count on the fact that you will find it already in the first days of search work. To speed up the process, you need to study a lot of literature that tells you how to look for gold.

As previously stated, most metal deposits are formed in areas of destruction of quartz formations. Signs of such destruction are pieces of ocher quartz, the presence of cracks and faults on the earth's surface, as well as accumulations of iron hydroxides and many other signs. Gold is washed away along with particles of water, so it should be searched for in the lowlands. An ordinary metal detector, preferably with low frequencies, will help with this.

If you have already found a place where metal deposits are supposed to be located, then you can use the following method to verify the presence of gold:

• A qualitative analysis needs to be done. To do this, you will need about 50 grams of mercury and a test tube, or some other glass container. Mercury should be poured into a container and a small amount of sand or earth from the intended location of the gold should be poured into it.
• The contents in the container are mixed well, after which the mercury is separated from the sand. This operation must be performed within several hours. Gold dissolves very well in mercury to form an amalgam. If grains of gold are indeed present, then the mercury will gradually begin to change its original color.
• Next, you will need a distillation cube, operating on the principle of a moonshine still, to separate gold from mercury. The amalgam is placed in the cube and the heating is turned on. After which the mercury will begin to heat up and evaporate, and the metal itself will remain at its bottom, and it will not be difficult to remove it.

After this procedure, you can begin to carry out search work. There is another way, but it takes a lot of time. You need to take a sheep's skin and place it at the bottom of the river; naturally, it will need to be secured with something so that it does not get carried away by the current. After 4–6 months, the skin must be removed from the river bottom and burned in a vessel. The resulting resin must be treated with mercury in the same way as in the previous version of searching for gold sites.

Now you have learned how and where to look for gold, all that remains is to hope for your luck!

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. Lack 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 a medium and high standard (Au content in native gold, expressed in fractions 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. 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-bearing 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 URAL.

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 was named 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" 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. Bright yellow gold nuggets have a complex shape with a lumpy-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 flakes 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, the specific gravity of the nugget, and even more so of 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.
By considering a combination of different conditions, you will find an object worth visiting. 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 a river bed and located in the area of ​​activity of a water flow; they arise at the initial stage of formation or the stage of transformation of a valley placer. R.R. are characteristic of young valleys in the incision stage and are formed by direct erosion of a root source or due to previously formed valley and terrace placers; can be restored after mining. Of industrial importance are 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 interlayers of “empty” sediments. The thickness of the productive formation, localized in the upper horizons of channel alluvium, rarely exceeds1m, 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 a nugget carries useful information, so 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 there is a scratch, then the fragment is quartz.
A more accurate criterion for selecting promising streams is washing the rock with a tray or spot sampling. 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 in the work areas;
– 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.

Mountain streams are known to be excellent places to search for gold. After all, gold placer is washed out of the rock and settles on pebbles due to its high density.

Choosing the best place to search

Many people are concerned about how to look for gold in streams. First of all, you need to choose the right body of water. It is desirable that its channel be no more than 15 kilometers long. It is preferable to choose small streams for the reason that you can find nests in them, that is, small areas rich in nuggets and gold deposits. It happened that gold miners found more than one pound of precious sand in them. In addition, the depth at the search location must be more than 15 cm.

For effective searching, it is recommended to use very sensitive metal detectors. If a nugget is found, it must be measured, photographed and the coordinates of its location recorded. With this useful information, geologists can determine the location of a gold-bearing vein or nest.

Searching for precious metal in a body of water

You can find gold in streams by following these recommendations:

1. Take a small black basin with small grooves at the bottom in which gold scales will accumulate.
2. ¾ of the tray is filled with gravel and immersed in water. You should periodically shake the vessel back and forth, then to the right and left.
3. After this, you should make circular movements with the tray so that the dirt and clay dissolve. In this case, the light rock will float, and the gold, if there is any, along with the heavy rock will settle to the bottom.
4. Large stones need to be removed from the vessel.
5. Then the rock, which consists of black sand, must be separated from the gold. The basin needs to be pulled out, leaving a few centimeters of water in it.
6. After these steps, you should tilt the pan a little and start rotating it again and shaking it a little.
7. If the bowl is plastic, you can use a magnet and move it along the bottom of the bowl. The black sand will separate from the grains of precious metal.

This delicate task must be carried out very carefully so as not to confuse gold placer and nuggets with pyrite or mica.

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 clearly crystallize 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 color will fade to 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 performed, 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 by external factors, and 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 contains 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 reservoir. 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 the process of sulfide decomposition occurs in a gold-bearing vein, quartz crystals acquire yellow, cherry-red, or shades similar to them, which indicate that the mineral is fermented. 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 of deposits, so you can search for gold in almost all its regions. Skarn, hydrothermal deposits and gold-quartz formations are scattered in different regions of the Russian Federation. 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 (Baleyskoe, Taseevskoe) - gold-quartz-chalcedony-sulfide formation;
• Northeast Russia (Karamkenskoye) - gold-silver-quartz-adularia formation;
• Yakutia, Magadan, Transbaikalia, eastern Siberia - alluvial placers;
• Chukotka, Ural, Magadan, Bodaibo, Amur and Taximo 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 search method. Gold in Russia is found in different forms, 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. It is necessary 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. To search for large-sized gold on fairly strong mineralized soil, it is necessary to use a negative setting, which will reduce the sensitivity of the metal detector to small nuggets. And, conversely, when searching for small nuggets, the adjustment is made in a positive direction. 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 choice of tray determines the efficiency and speed of work.

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 a green tray is an ideal product in which 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 will weigh approximately 10 kg in use. 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 would be 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.

Primary gold deposits are associated with intrusive rocks: diorites, quartz diorites and granites. They are called intrusive or intruded because they were formed as a result of the solidification of magma that penetrated from the depths into the upper layers of the earth's crust, but did not reach the surface. Intrusive bodies formed by the solidification of magma that filled vertical or slightly inclined cracks in the earth's crust are called dikes.

The importance of intrusive rocks is enormous because they were formed from the same magma, which at the same time was a source of hot melts and solutions, during the solidification of which gold deposits appeared. In this sense, the presence of intrusive rocks serves as an indicator of the possible location of industrial ore bodies near them.

Gold is usually closely associated with sulfur compounds of non-ferrous metals and related minerals or with their oxidation products. These gold satellites are represented by chalcopyrite, pyrite, sphalerite, galena, arsenopyrite, stibnite, brown ironstone, etc.

Widespread satellite - chalcopyrite(copper pyrite) has a golden color with a metallic sheen and is very similar in appearance to gold in the rock. But even an inexperienced scout, without resorting to testing with acid, can easily recognize chalcopyrite by its higher hardness. Even harder than chalcopyrite, also similar to gold, its other companion is p i r i t(sulfur pyrite). They are valuable minerals: chalcopyrite-the main ore for copper, and pyrite used to produce sulfuric acid.

Sphalerite(zinc blende) has a black, brown or brown color, diamond luster. In quartz veins it is found mostly in the form of crystals, faceted with a system of regular planes. Scratched by a knife.

Galena(lead luster) is a silvery-white or gray mineral with a bright metallic luster, soft, heavy, almost twice as heavy as sphalerite. The cleavage is clearly expressed, and when struck with a hammer, the mineral crumbles along the cleavage cracks into regular cubes.

Arsenopyrite(arsenic pyrite) is a silver-white mineral with a metallic luster, hard to brittle. When hit with a hammer it will smell like garlic.

Antimonite(antimony luster) usually forms columnar and needle-shaped crystals or radiating, often tangled clusters in quartz. The cyst is lead-gray, metallic luster. Soft and fragile.

Limonite(brown iron ore) - yellow-brown and dark brown in color. It is represented by a loose ocher mass or a lumpy sinter variety, often forming cubes along the pyrite. The most widely distributed mineral. Almost all quartz veins that come to the surface are mottled in color due to limonite. Often the ocher mass fills voids in quartz formed in place of decomposed pyrite and chalcopyrite. Large masses of brown iron ore are observed at the outcrops of quartz veins rich in pyrite, chalcopyrite and other sulfides or on sulfide ore bodies.

Accumulations of brown iron ores on sulfide bodies are called iron hats And. They are of interest because they themselves may contain large quantities of gold.

Quartz is the main mineral with which gold is associated. Therefore, gold can most often be found in quartz veins.

Quartz can be very diverse in color: white, gray, milky white, smoky, yellowish, etc. It also varies in structure: fine-grained, coarse-grained, confluent, banded, concentrically layered (typical of chalcedony), sometimes with voids on the walls which can be observed crystals (druze) of transparent rock crystal. Visible gold can often be found in yellow-brown quartz with ocher inclusions.

Primary (ore) gold deposits are the primary sources of numerous gold-bearing placers. The composition of gold placers is determined by the composition of the primary deposits as a result of the destruction of which they were formed.

Often in gold placers there are found in the form of impurities latina, osmic iridium, tin stone - cassiterite, wolframite, titanium ore - ilmenite, diamond, rubin. These minerals also have a high specific gravity (except for the last two), and they resist abrasion and other types of destruction well when carried in a stream of water.

Most of the gold placers belong to alluvial, i.e., river ones, formed by the transfer and deposition of fragmentary material by channel flows and confined to the valleys of small and medium-sized mountain rivers.

There are placers where the bedrock ore bodies were not eroded after destruction and remained in the form of crushed stone, sand and clay at the site of their formation. Such placers are called eluvial: They usually occur on the wide, flat watersheds of modern rivers.

Placers are also found on mountain slopes, where gold-containing destroyed rocks accumulated, sliding down the slope from the bedrock deposit located above. Such placers are called deluvial: in terms of their industrial importance, they are much inferior to alluvial and even eluvial ones. It should also be noted coastal-sea and lake placers, common on the coasts of seas and large lakes.

Other types of placers are known in nature, but they are of secondary importance.

Alluvial gold placers have the greatest value for industry. Depending on the conditions and location of placers, they are divided into channel, spit, valley, terrace and spoon.

Channel placers lie in the beds of modern rivers. These placers are characterized by a relatively small thickness of gravel-pebble sands and often a complete absence peat- deposits in which gold is almost never found.

Spit placers lie on spits, islands and shallows of modern large rivers. There is no peat on most spits. On spits, a significant proportion of gold is represented by very thin “floating” particles. A slight increase in gold is observed in the head part of the spit.

Valley placers are characterized by a greater thickness of sand and the presence of peat compared to channel placers. The total thickness is 5-10, and sometimes more than meters. Placers of this type occur in the floodplain and mostly on the first terrace of the river valley.

Terrace placers lie on longitudinal terrace-like ledges of bedrock that make up the slopes of river valleys. These placers are usually located above river level. At the same time, “high terraces are poorly preserved and are represented by narrow fragments on the slopes of valleys.

Spoon placers They lie in the valleys of ravines and small springs and rivers with intermittent water flow. In addition to gravel and pebbles, the bedrock composition contains crushed stone and boulders. Many spoon placers start directly from bedrock deposits. Placers of this type are characterized by a high concentration of metal, which must be kept in mind when searching.

The sizes of the placers are different. The largest number of them (about 60%) are no more than 3 km long; placers 3-10 km long account for 20-30%, and over 10 km - no more than 10%. Thus, the bulk of placers are usually located within the development of primary gold deposits or close to them in ravines, valleys or on terraces.

The age of placers varies greatly - from ancient to modern. The most ancient placers, as a rule, are composed of strong, firmly cemented rocks; deposits of young placers, the age of which does not exceed 60-70 million years, are usually represented by loose rocks.

For placers of all ages, the maximum concentration of gold is observed in the lowest layers of clastic (sand-pebble, often with boulders) deposits that lie directly on bedrock. In practice, the surface of bedrock underlying placers is called raft, and the gold-bearing layer is sands. Above the sands there is a practically non-gold-bearing layer called “peat”

The highest concentration of gold is observed at the very border of the sands and the raft. Particularly favorable places for the accumulation of gold are the uneven surfaces of the raft; protrusions of bedrock, cracks, depressions - pockets, funnels, etc. Along with gold, its satellites and other heavy minerals, such as magnetite, ilmenite, etc. accumulate here.