How long can a gold bearing Quartz seam be?

Would gold be in spread along the length of a Quartz seam say 2Kms long
Or is it just one lump in the quartz

Hi Shelby23. Some quartz veins can carry gold along their length for kilometres. I know of many in NSW like at Hill End and Hobbys Yards south of Bathurst that are only 20cm wide but had traces of gold along their length.
In NSW many faults and quartz veins have a North-South trend/direction/strike

The gold is often concentrated in areas that may be where the main vein meets cross veins, faults or the vein thickens or thins out in width. Often there are offshoots and cross veins and these were some of the richest spots in some cases rather then the main vein itself. (based on records from the 1800's)

The main thing to remember is most veins are dipping near vertically and erosion may have removed many tens of metres of the vein over millions of years as the land surface was lowered by erosion. The erosion releases the gold and although the section of vein you see outcropping now may have little or no gold in it, a gold rich section that was above it may have eroded away and the gold is downslope (maybe some distance) from the outcropping vein that appears to have no gold in it.

Following likely veins with some old timers activity on them (but some distance down slope parallel to them) is a favourite detecting situation for me
Tributer

I have found a quartz seam that enters under a high mountain and out the other side, as a quartz out crop on the same level according to my GPS. this is on my property and is a gold bearing quartz seam
I have seen mine shafts in to the side of mountains in Victoria when I went gold paning with my dad when I was young
I was told they flollowed the seam digging out the gold bearing quartz deep into the hill

Regards Neale

The quartz out crop has a small creek running down the hill from it and I am going to pan the creek and detect the area soon.
This seam runs North to South when I checked it on Google Earth and run a ruler line over the seam.

Hi all
I stretched out the ruler Due North from a gold bearing quartz seam 10 kms to where it crossed a road and marked the spot on my GPS.
I drove there and had a look around and there, I found old dig sites and areas of quartz lying around the area.
I will have to get my back pack out and hike the 10kms back and see if it runs along in a strait line.
The Ruler has a direction indicator so it was easy to run it north or at any direction and you can make it wider or different depths.
I have found this to be a handy tool for me to use, as there is digs and works in my area.
I have found very little written down information so I have to work it out for myself walking the ground and GPS marking every thing then plotting the information on Google Earth.
The markings are starting to form patterns for me that I can not see on the ground.
Lately the marks I put on my GPS years ago are giving me some surprising results.
The Height of the Quartz seam is a constant 106 meters on my GPS, so it gives me a good indication as I go over mountains where I will see the main out-crops of quartz jutting out.
This is where I detect down stream from the washed away quartz seam has been in the past.
I have seen the prospectors from the Past have had the same idea, in one spot the creek has been cleaned to the creek bed and dumped on to the side of the bank for 100 meters down stream; no one works that hard for no-reward
I have put a photo of the last 1.7 gram piece of gold found on my property a few months ago with a GPX 4500 I am hoping to have a GPX 5000 soon.
I love to watch gold detecting movies on You Tube I will set this up for myself.
There have been a lot of good subjects raised in this forum making great reading for me.
But as I have read on this site it getting the coil on the ground that is the only way to go.
I must admit I am getting very excited at the moment with prospecting with Google Earth and GPSs and Gpx gold detectors the modern day prospector has great tools the old time prospectors could not have dreamed of.

Regards Neale

shelby23 wrote:Would gold be in spread along the length of a Quartz seam say 2Kms long
Or is it just one lump in the quartz

how long is a piece of string? No pun really, if you find a reef of Quartz 50 miles long with gold at one end, it would be feasable to think that gold could be found anywhere along its length.