The method of crevicing for gold has been around for as long as men have been digging for the yellow metal. The process is simple and effective.
The careful crevicing in exposed bedrock may be more important than ever. Gold is harder to find than it ever has been before. Every year there’s a little bit less gold than before. You’ve got to think smarter if you want to be a successful prospector these days.
What is Gold Crevicing?
Crevicing is a simple process. Basically all you are doing is digging and cleaning out bedrock cracks. Assuming that you are located in a good area of course, there is a high likelihood that you will recover some gold from this exercise.
Of course, the reason that gold is found deep down in the cracks of bedrock is no secret. The heavy specific gravity of gold means that it will find itself down into those deep cracks and crevices. In some situations we are talking about millions and millions of years that have passed, allowing the gold to get WAY down in there. Using a variety of different tools you can get the gold out of there and often get a nice payday.
What’s so Special About This Mining Method?
Certainly all miners have done some crevicing from time to time. However, I should point out the importance of being thorough in the process! Taking the time to methodically clean out a gold bearing crevice is the difference between success and failure.
Often you will find that miners get so focused on moving lots of material that they don’t do a good job of working the bedrock. The problem is that they do all the work of shoveling gravel, say into a sluice box, yet they digging mostly lighter material that has considerably less gold.
The good stuff is down deep in those cracks! You will find more gold contained in just a small amount of materials from down in the bedrock than you will from the lighter material that is well above the bedrock.
The Old-Timers Didn’t Always Do It
Surprisingly, the early miners during the gold rush were sometimes used the sloppiest methods. There was so much gold readily available to them that it simply wasn’t worth their time or effort to slow down and clean out a crack. They surely knew that there was good gold down there, but at that time there was good gold everywhere!
I have seen some areas where the old timers were extremely thorough. Often the areas that were worked the hardest were places with Chinese miners. The Chinese were willing to work harder for less return than most white men during those days. As a result they would usually clean the bedrock quite thoroughly. They didn’t leave much behind!
Also Read: Explore Historic Mining Sites to Find Gold
How to Crevice Properly
Crevicing for gold is about as simple as it gets, but there are a few tools that will make things easier. Actually, having a nice variety of different tools will help immensely and definitely speed things up.
The best cracks to clean out usually aren’t the big ones… its the small ones. Find those narrow cracks, less than an inch wide that seem to go down forever. You would be amazed at just how much gold can be hidden in some of these cracks. If you find one that hasn’t been dug out by another miner, the potential can be quite amazing.
Cleaning out narrow cracks isn’t easy though, and this is why a good tool kit is critical. For starters, you want some basics like a rock hammer, chisel, metal spoon, screwdriver, and a pry bar. These will be beneficial for opening up cracks and help you get down deep.
The final stretch is the most frustrating – when you get down to the bottom of the crack and you are trying to get the last little bits of material out. This is when it’s easy to quit and move on, but you really should take your time here because the last material is the best stuff! This is where the highest concentrations of gold will be so don’t move on too fast.
This is where a good tool kit comes in. All kinds of things will work for this; wire, tweezers, little suckers and snuffer bottles, and pretty much any sort of thin wirey tool can help here. The even make special crevice tools that are really handy. The real trick is to just have a lot of different tools so you can be efficient.
Also Read: Crush and Melt! How to Remove Gold from Rich Ores
Dry Crevicing or Underwater Sniping?
You can clean out cracks that are exposed or you can do it underwater. I have always called it “sniping” when I am cleaning cracks underwater because you will sometimes see nuggets and you can actually snipe them right of the bedrock with a pair of tweezers.
Of course it doesn’t really matter where you do it, as long as there is gold there. If you are in a creek or river then you will need a nice snorkel so you can see what you are doing. This is best done in late summer when water levels are low.
Crevicing high above the water has always worked well for me. This is somewhere that other miners often overlook. They are so focused on panning and slicing that they don’t bother to look overhead. Often there are exposed benches and other locations that are even richer than the current river.
Panning it All Out!
The best way to recover the gold is to simply pan it all out! If you are crevicing properly then you won’t really have a lot of material. If you do have buckets and buckets of gravel then perhaps you will want to set up a sluice box to run you concentrates through, but most of the time you will have less than that and a simple gold pan will be more than enough.
A really like a green gold pan because the gold contrasts well and it works for my eyesight. There are also black or blue gold pans that people use. I recommend that you use whatever help you spot the gold. Everyone has different preferences.
Makin’ Wages Digging Out Crevice Gold
It have had really good success using this prospecting methods because I think it takes more patience than the average person has. People like to move lots of dirt, and some folks just want to spend the day digging in the dirt and running it through a sluice or highbanker.
Crevicing is very different. It takes a lot of time and hard work. You’ve got to spend the day down on your hands and knees slowly cleaning out those deep cracks in the bedrock. You aren’t going to move much material, but you might be surprised when your final amount of gold is considerably higher.
When comparing the amount of time invested I probably find more gold when I spend a day crevicing for gold in a productive spot than by any other method.
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