I need help please

[Dirk=Gem]

Hi followers
Need some professional help in equipment selection for finding gems and Looking for people near canberra who could take me out and teach me the ropes

Any help would be awesome

Cheers
Dirk

 

[Westaus]

Hi Dirk and welcome to the forum, sorry I can't help with taking you out nor expert opinion. However from what I have seen most of the Gem guys just use simple household tools from the shed, and perhaps a good classifier to start with, and a bucket.

The rest just grows from there. Start looking a what your local geography is like.

Like here as a basic start - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Australian_Capital_Territory

or look around here - http://www.ga.gov.au/meta/ANZCW0703002017.html

Best of luck.

 

[SWright]

G'Day Dirk

First of all - there is a new prospecting shop in fyshwick (Detect a Den at 1/74 Townsville St, Fyshwick http://www.detectaden.com.au/ They should have, or can get some equipment and will know how to help you with some research.

What you will need is as Westaus has said - some basic equipment such as buckets, shovels and hand spades, a gold pan and good set of nested sieves. I am a gold person so maybe some others can help with gems. You can often find gems when paning for gold, but as we generally sieve our material prior to concentrating it, most of our gems are very small. The nested sieves are the way to go - just throw away the very large (non-gem stones) and fill the gravel into the top sieve - wash the clay out and then gently while holding the sieves under water bounce them up and down off the tips of your fingers quite fast and rotate the sieve set around. This will need to be practiced. This will leave you with a heavies round concentrate in the middle of the sieves on the bottom of each sieve. All you then have to do is to separate the sieves gently. Don't shake them or tip them off flat and then flip the sieves over quickly onto a table - a card table is best and scoop off the heavy area to see if you have any gems. The sieves are large and made generally of bamboo - ask the blokes at Detect a Den.

As for gems around Canberra we have plently of smallish zircons in most granite areas and sapphires at Grabben Gullen near Crookwell, Sapphires near Wee jasper and at Tumbarumba but you will have to do some research and maybe some others here know of better places.

Araluen

 

[Dirk=Gem]

Thank you for your help I will go to fyshwick and see how I go thankyou yes I think as you said normally there is gold in the same places so I will set my self up with gold pans too thankyou for your guidance this is awesome.