The Adventures of Fred and Chris

The Storm Proof Hammock Shelter

These are plans for a DIY shelter that will work well in almost any weather. The tarp cover can be poly but is easier to store if it is waterproof nylon.The inner envelope is breathable nylon. An old pup tent would work nicely. The bug netting can be open or closed at the bottom. Velcro can be used to close the bottom to allow the option of having it draped or completely closed for convenience.
The inner envelope and bug net slide along a second support line below the tarp line. They are attached at the foot and slide independently to the head for optional use.
The mummy bag is cut at both ends and drawstrings sewn in so the hammock runs through it. That way when lying in the hammock the insulation is not compressed, providing maximum protection. Drawing the ends of the mummy bag closed around the hammock seals the bag.
The envelope and bug nets are similarly fitted with drawstrings or velcro to maximize protection. The envelope reduces air flow keeping body warmth in the enclosure.

The entire setup need not be dismantled to store in a stuff sack or duffle bag. Keeping the tarp attached provides protection to keep the bag and hammock dry while storing. Similarly, one end can be attached to the vertical support (tree) and drawn out without ever exposing the insides to the elements.
Setup takes only a few minutes.

The only weather event this may not be siutable for is high wind because of the possibility of falling branches. Careful selection of the support trees and location can mitigate some of the problems. Selecting a site on the lee side of a hill in respect to the winds reduces the amount of wind the camp is subject to. Since the setup is extremely mobile, moving to a suitable location is not much of a problem.

Prospecting, Gold Panning, Rock Hounding and Hunting, Collecting, and Mining - Index 

The following links are a series of articles containing stories, experiences, opinions, tips, tricks, and some of the fundamentals of: Prospecting, Gold Panning, Rock Hounding and Hunting, Collecting, and Mining.

These articles are intended to be read in the order presented in this index. You can return to this index or proceed through the articles using the links provided.

           INDEX 

Part 1
Prospecting; Gold Panning, Rock Hounding, and Rock Hunting
http://chrisisasavage.com/blog/?p=561

Part 2
Prospecting Experiences

http://chrisisasavage.com/blog/?p=565

Part 3
Rock Hounding and Rock Hunting

http://chrisisasavage.com/blog/?p=568

Part 4
Pictures of Rocks and Stuff

Click on the pictures for the full size view.

Favorite haunts with those I love.

Collections for future processing

Interesting Rocks. Click on the pictures for full size and read the captions.

A very unique twisted geode, disturbed several times during formation.

Return to INDEX
http://chrisisasavage.com/blog/?p=598

Part 3 

Rock Hounding and Rock Hunting

Another outdoor activity my kids and I often engaged in is hunting for rocks. We would search through literature, study mineral distribution maps and compare findings with topographical maps, plan excursions, and wander through the hills looking for the telltale signs of mineralization looking for gemstones and crystals and the coveted geode.

I have been interested in rocks since I was a kid. The tools available today are vastly superior to what was available in the past. There are internet sites with information about identification of materials, topographical map programs, GPS, and newly developed field assay tools that make identification of materials far easier.

Going out in spring to explore freshly eroded stream bottoms and banks, or hillsides, and newly fractured rock faces increases the chance of discovering previously hidden deposits.

Successful rock hunting requires a fundamental knowledge of mineralogy and geology, as well as geography, a good deal of observation, walking and probing, and diligence.

Read the literature first. There are many websites that provide various levels of information. There is plenty of information about where to look and what to look for. That’s a good place to start but remember that if the location is published it will likely be more heavily picked over. Exploration for undiscovered deposits and finds could yield the highest potential value. Then again, even in areas highly searched, undiscovered deposits could be just beneath the surface.

There are many sophisticated tools available to identify potential deposits beneath the surface such as ultrasound, radar, x-ray, metal detectors, and other imaging and detection instruments. Equipment with the best potential for success is more expensive.

Then again, a lot of what sophisticated equipment detects can be detected using simpler methods. The most common tools are a shovel, a hammer, a screen, a pan (and/or a bucket), a chisel, a magnifying glass, and a pocket knife. There are other useful tools for sampling, sorting, identification, carying, and recording finds and locations but in my travels the tools listed above are the tools I have found I use most frequently.

A geologist’s hammer with a pick on one end is handy but a claw hammer works almost as well. A pick is the quickest and handiest way to probe. A better quality tool will require far less maintenance.

A shovel is necessary. A folding Coleman trenching tool with the independently folding pick and shovel is pretty cheap.

A chisel is very helpful. A lightweight hard alloy rod with a chisel end can double as a bar, and is useful for "sounding" rock faces.

A spray bottle with water and perhaps vinegar, and brush to clean samples for visual observation is handy, if not essential, particularly in areas where no water is available. A spray bottle concentrates small amounts of liquid in a small area with some force. A pint of liquid in a sprayer can last a long time. The acidic vinegar dissolves some mineralization and brushing and spraying carries sediments away. It’s quick, easy, and cheap.

As far as detecting materials and voids beneath the surface is concerned, the tools you have can be used with development of certain skills. Different materials sound differently when struck. Using the geologist’s pick can produce some audible differences as well as indication of hardness. Rocks ring, voids sound hollow. The difference is unmistakable. Practice makes perfect. A more accurate method is to put the rod at a point in the rock or formation and press your ear on the other end striking around the area with the pick. It works like a stethoscope but louder if done properly. The sound carries unimpeded through the rock and rod and is significantly amplified to the ear. The sound of the striking of the rock with the pick can be heard in a radius depending on the type and makeup of the material. Subtle differences heard can indicate what is below the surface. Again, it takes a bit of practice and experimentation to be able to pick out what the subtle differences in sound indicates. The basic fundamental is that harder substances produce a more distinct ringing. Voids have a distinctive double hollow sound. Soft material beneath the surface produces a more subtle muted hollow sound.

Conversely a sharply increased ringing sound in an area of more muted sounds could indicate the existence of a harder crystal deposit hidden beneath the surface.

In weathered or loose or consolidated aggregate deposits a listening rod pounded solidly in the soil can be used to differentiate the sounds from striking the surface with the hammer end of the geologist’s pick. The sound will be a dull sound. What you’re listening for is something different from the average sound. The difference in sounds from various conditions can be quite subtle but distinguishable if listening carefully.

Another handy tool is a compass. A compass can indicate iron content. A cheap metal detector is even better. A small detector is good for rock hounding but a fancy expensive computerized model is not necessary. A small compact detector, preferably with a discriminator to differentiate between ferrous and non-ferrous metals works fine with some common sense.

Another tool is a screen or better yet, a set of two, maybe three screens of graduated sizes to sort material by size. Larger rock can be assessed by visual examination. Screening out the finer material for further processing saves a lot of time. The screens don’t necessarily need frames if keeping weight down is a consideration. A pan with large slits to catch big rocks is called a grizzly.

A rudimentary collection of tools to assay or determine physical properties of materials can be easy to assemble. A nail, a file, a piece of glass, and a piece of fired unglazed ceramic tile for a streak plate, a strong magnifier, maybe even small bottles with eyedroppers of weak acids and dyes, a compass, and a handbook with properties of minerals and metals with photos provide most of the tools needed to identify rocks and materials. Polarized sunglasses can be helpful to in analysis. A handheld black light is necessary for positive differentiation between some minerals and makeup of various rocks. It’s not necessarily essential for questions of high probability but useful for some definitive identification. A black light is also fun to search for fluorescent and radioactive mineral deposits at night. A very small two frequency light costs a bit but miniature ones are available for as low as twenty five dollars.

Another useful tool is a gravity water separation tube described in my article about panning, or a miniature version using a clear bottle for the tube with an eyedropper to deliver the water for agitation and sorting by density.  Using a miniature version conserves weight, size, and resources. The chemical makeup of materials can be narrowed down by sorting in a mixture of materials of varying density, making it visible by dying it with a fluorescent dye. The mixture should be known quantities of several layers of various materials with known density such as aluminum chips, silica sand,  and filings, copper filings and B-B’s, stainless steel chips and filings, and lead chips and filings, dyed with different colors. If you have a black light the dye will fluoresce showing where in the stratified layers of increasing densities the material ends up after sorting. If the formation is large a representative sample can be crushed to aid in making the assessment. The crushed and dyed sample will show up somewhere in the layers. If you know how many layers the testing mixture has and what the densities of the materials are, the density of the sample being assessed can be obtained in a range between adjacent layers.

A conservative collection of tools can be assembled to fit in the small zippered compartment of most butt packs. If you're like me though, a small knapsack is necessary. I am usually overprepared but by the same token I am rarely underprepared.

In stratified layers, crystals form most frequently beneath the harder layers. The softer material erodes away leaving room for crystal formation. The crystals usually form where water can flow leaving layer after layer as the void increases. Fissures, voids, and bubbles in volcanic rock, and sandstone or limestone deposits are where crystal formations develop and sometimes eventually fill up leaving large crystalline deposits embedded in the rock.

Aside from support equipment to provide the necessities and comforts of life, the actual equipment for successful rock hounding is relatively small. The weight can be kept below five pounds if you consider the Coleman trenching tool to be a piece of support equipment and you would normally have a small hammer anyway. A knife and compass are wise things to have in the field irrespective of any prospecting activities. Many of the tools used for prospecting are normally carried in the field for hiking and packing.

Go to Part 4

Pictures of Rocks and Stuff

http://chrisisasavage.com/blog/?p=580

Or return to the INDEX
http://chrisisasavage.com/blog/?p=598

Part 2 

Prospecting Experiences

I took the kids camping a lot when they were growing up, especially the boys. The girls weren’t quite as enthusiastic. Boys have some kind of primordial affinity to primitive conditions. They love adventure and dirt. There are some outdoor activities a boy has an inalienable right to experience, such as running through the woods half naked howling at the moon, hunting snipes, skipping rocks on the water, eating knife-blade soup, peeing in the bushes, grousing around for snacks by the light of a lantern, and watching dad spitting whiskey on the fire.

Rock hounding, looking for crystals and geodes, and gold panning were some of the activities we used to enjoy extensively. Sitting on the edge of a stream on a hot day dangling toes in the water, swishing a pan full of dirt around and around, staring intently for possible treasure is an irresistible lure to a typical boy. It teaches patience, following procedures, diligence, the powers of observation, resourcefulness, geology, mineralogy, and physics, and it’s very therapeutic. Besides, there was a chance of finding something of real value. I don’t like fishing, I suck at it. We would go out every two to three weeks on the weekends for one or two nights in a vast array of camping accommodations. I could keep them in line for weeks under the threat of not going out on the next trip. Prospecting is rigorous activity involving maps, fundamental knowledge of geology, hiking long distances, camping skills, wood-lore, and organization. It has been my observation that when kids share in the responsibilities under reasonable leadership they learn cooperation along with outdoor skills.

Prospecting for gold is a broad category covering a variety of methods. Panning for gold is the most common method because the abundance of traces in a stream is the path to the source.

Panning for gold is one of the easiest and simplest means of obtaining a quick sample to check upstream for increases in the gold content. If the gold stops showing, back up to where the last sample with the most gold was found and start probing up the banks, working upstream for the source. A small auger is a handy tool for quick probing. The samples don’t have to be kept separate, as long as the gold concentration keeps increasing; the source is uphill from it, either upstream or up the banks. After determining the gold content in a sample, the concentrates can be combined in a container for further processing.

Now, I’m going to go into a rudimentary dissertation about the physics of panning and some vastly superior techniques for sampling and sorting.

The specific gravity (SG) of (times heavier than water). The SG of ordinary quartz based rocks is between 2.6 and 7.0. The SG of iron bearing minerals varies from about 3 to 9, nickel, 8.9, silver 10.6,  Lead 11.34, mercury 13.5, pure gold is 19.32 and platinum is 21.5.

Carefully agitating and swishing a pan of water with material in the bottom floats lighter materials higher than heavier materials. The lighter material can be swished out leaving increasingly higher concentration of heavier materials in the bottom of the pan. Those are concentrates. As concentrates accumulate they can be further processed to optimize concentration.

Historically, prospectors used a magnet, nitric acid, and mercury to process highly sorted concentrates.

The magnet removes iron from the concentrates. I use a strong magnet in a plastic bag. The bag makes it easy to remove the iron from the magnet.

Gold is often discolored by mineralization to some extent. The mineralization could be iron, or iron oxide, mineral leachates, or biological growth. Mineralization also makes finer particles lighter and harder to sort.

Finer particles such as microscopic flour gold are the most affected. Nitric acid is used to dissolve the mineralization so the gold can be seen and of the proper density. Gold does not dissolve in nitric acid.

An old technique to separate fine gold from sand is to put mercury in the cleaned concentrates to pick up the gold. Mercury sticks to gold, carrying it out of the other materials at the bottom. At a high enough concentrations, the gold clumps together. The mercury is either vaporized out with heat or dissolved in nitric acid. The gold is left in a pulpy mass.

Nitric acid and mercury are dangerous materials to handle. There are better methods to achieve the same results.

I found that nested translucent buckets and a clear tube with irrigation tube are the most effective tools for concentrating materials.

A technique for determining the effectiveness of a method is to use distinctively dyed lead using thin fluorescent orange paint. Using translucent buckets makes it so you can track progress by observing the dyed lead as the heavier materials sort downwards. When the lead gets to the bottom the heavier materials like silver, gold, and platinum will be at the bottom as well.

Hunting for gold is far more productive using a translucent bucket and dyed lead markers. A five gallon bucket can process the equivalent of twenty to thirty pans in a fraction of the time. The concentrates won’t be as high but elimination of lighter materials is many times faster.

Sorting is done by filling the bucket with water and material all the way to the top in a pool deeper than the height of the bucket. The material weighs less in the water. Swishing the bucket around by the handle at the correct rate causes sufficient agitation for the mixture to liquefy and sort. Keep adding until the lead doesn’t drop anymore or you get tired. I’ve tried several methods of using water to drive the agitation. Suspending the bucket under a support or floatation device above the bottom of the water, or using a buoyant material beneath the bucket makes agitation easier. Two nested buckets with air in the outside bucket creates an air pocket between the bottoms of the buckets, making the load easier to manipulate.

A person can effectively process up to a half cubic yard of material an hour. The large 5 gallon bucket will take six hefty shovelfuls. Use the dyed lead to keep track of the density levels. Just keep skimming above the lead adding more lead with each new shovelful. Put the markers at the inside edge of the bucket so they can be seen. Different sizes of lead migrate at different rates so using several varying sizes of dyed lead is more accurate. If the lead in one layer almost catches up with the lead in the layer beneath, the technique is working correctly. It can take up to twenty loads to get a thick layer of high concentration at the bottom that needs further processing.

Concentrates can be cleaned by tumbling. This can be done in a plastic gallon bucket in a pool in a channel. The bucket will turn slowly in the current. A rope wound up the bucket like a screw accelerates the action. Don’t tumble your dyed lead or the dye will come off and you’ll have to separate the lead. This is done by heating the sample to melt the lead so it pools.

After tumbling, the cleaned sample can be further concentrated in a clear tube using a smaller irrigation tube. The water rising at the right velocity lifts the lighter materials higher than the heavier ones. The lighter materials are expelled over the top of the tube leaving increasingly higher concentrations as more material is added. Low flow does not adequately agitate particles, high flow blows what is at the bottom up into the sample, remixing and preventing concentration. Somewhere between is the optimum flow. Using the dyed lead keeps track of progress. A black layer will develop at the bottom, hopefully with a layer of gold beneath it, or lighter areas indicating the presence of flour gold. The black layer could be a variety of mixtures of several heavy metals such as nickel, copper, lead, molybdenum, silver, gold, platinum, maybe traces of mercury. The intent in the field is not to refine the gold, just to get it in a high concentration. Using buckets produces a much faster accumulation of heavy materials, including gold.

Back at proper facilities, the various materials can be removed individually. Running the sample through a clean copper pipe removes any mercury. The mercury sticks to the copper. Lead melts at one temperature so it can be removed. At a higher temperature gold melts but not silver. The remaining materials melt at a considerably higher temperature so at a high enough temperature the silver melts.

A small ceramic crucible and adequate heat are needed.

In the field though, a container of black sand can be as good as gold. There’s usually some visible. Incremental processing with increasing care produces increased concentrations of heavy materials.

I’ve carried a twenty pound one gallon bucket back to camp before.

The thrill is in the finer processing. Using a sluice and pan is used to produce the highest concentrations. By that time the concentration of gold should be high and care needs to be taken not to throw gold out with the wash water.

The next article is about different methods prospecting.

Go to Part 3