QNCrazy
Hero Member
I"ve been working an area that has been averaging about 1/2gram per hour. On Saturday, I decided to try dredging with Minny using my 2 1/2" suction nozzle for my Keene Highbanker. I was a little skeptical that this would work
. I had to split the water supply off my pump to run the fluid bed as well as the suction nozzle. So we got everything hooked up and fired up the pump and set it to half idle where Minny ran best. I opened the valve controlling the fluid bed then manned the suction nozzle. There was suction, but very little. I had my dredging partner kick the pump up to full throttle and that did the trick, we were off and running, but I had to adjust the valve on the fluid bed as there was way to much pressure and all the material would have been blown out.
Manning the suction nozzle again, I started moving material, a lot more than I would have shoveling, and a lot easier.
Early on we had a couple of set backs with the water supply hose for the suction nozzle but we were close enough to the hardware store to get what we needed to fix it. We ran until the first tank of gas ran out and did a clean out. The gold was there but wasn't as much as I was hoping for.
I figured that since we were trying something new, it was all in the fine tuning and maybe we had the fluid be set too high and were loosing some gold.
I made a couple of adjustments, refilled the tank, and we were off and running again. This time, after about 15 minutes, I checked the fluid bed and realized there was not enough waterflow in the fluid bed as the material was building up and not moving out. So I made another adjustment and waited for the fluid bed to clear out before running more material. We ran for about an hour and checked the fluid bed again, to my surprise, there was a lot less material than I had expected.
I was concerned we were blowing out the gold. We continued running this way until we ran out of gas again and did our final clean out. Again, not as much gold as I was expecting. After cleaning everything out, we recovered about 1 gram for the days work. I was disappointed in our results. I was 100% positive we had blown out several grams of gold.
Yesterday, I went back out there with Minny to run the tailings. I worked for about two hours running all the tailings within a 3 foot radius. When I did my clean out, shocked again, as there was minimal gold, maybe 10 colors at +50. My disappointment in the operation Saturday changed to delight to know that dredging with Minny worked almost flawlessly.
Here is a short video I took early on in the day.
Stay tuned for more adventures with Minny.
. I had to split the water supply off my pump to run the fluid bed as well as the suction nozzle. So we got everything hooked up and fired up the pump and set it to half idle where Minny ran best. I opened the valve controlling the fluid bed then manned the suction nozzle. There was suction, but very little. I had my dredging partner kick the pump up to full throttle and that did the trick, we were off and running, but I had to adjust the valve on the fluid bed as there was way to much pressure and all the material would have been blown out. Manning the suction nozzle again, I started moving material, a lot more than I would have shoveling, and a lot easier.
Early on we had a couple of set backs with the water supply hose for the suction nozzle but we were close enough to the hardware store to get what we needed to fix it. We ran until the first tank of gas ran out and did a clean out. The gold was there but wasn't as much as I was hoping for. I figured that since we were trying something new, it was all in the fine tuning and maybe we had the fluid be set too high and were loosing some gold. I made a couple of adjustments, refilled the tank, and we were off and running again. This time, after about 15 minutes, I checked the fluid bed and realized there was not enough waterflow in the fluid bed as the material was building up and not moving out. So I made another adjustment and waited for the fluid bed to clear out before running more material. We ran for about an hour and checked the fluid bed again, to my surprise, there was a lot less material than I had expected.
I was concerned we were blowing out the gold. We continued running this way until we ran out of gas again and did our final clean out. Again, not as much gold as I was expecting. After cleaning everything out, we recovered about 1 gram for the days work. I was disappointed in our results. I was 100% positive we had blown out several grams of gold.Yesterday, I went back out there with Minny to run the tailings. I worked for about two hours running all the tailings within a 3 foot radius. When I did my clean out, shocked again, as there was minimal gold, maybe 10 colors at +50. My disappointment in the operation Saturday changed to delight to know that dredging with Minny worked almost flawlessly.
Here is a short video I took early on in the day.
Stay tuned for more adventures with Minny.
The pump is a HF 2" clean water pump. I went cheap using a pool hose for supply line on the suction nozzel.
