Alaskan Pay dirt

[SteveDigsGems]

Earlier this evening I decided to pan some Alaskan pay dirt that I bought from an eBay seller. I bought 1 pound for $15, and it is guaranteed to have gold, because the lady sprinkles a pinch in. I didn't get rich, but I am really happy with the experience I got out of it. I have a lot of friends that want to travel out to my local gold bearing rivers with me to sluice, but before we go, I'm probably going to have them pan some of the dirt in my backyard. It is a good opportunity for them to see how the gold behaves, and it will motivate them for the upcoming trip.





Sorry about the quality, my camera ran out of batteries, this is an iPad picture. I'll get some batteries next time I'm at the store and upload what I found.







-Steve

 

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[KevinInColorado]

Wow congrats!

 

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[Sample Pan Dan]

That's great news!

 

[Doitlaynstyle]

I'm sure excited to see you guys running again. I really enjoyed your posts from last year. So much so that I decided to build a trommel that could handle all the dirt I can throw at it. http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/383736-16-trommel-build-inspired-azviper.html

 

[elkie13]

Well its official. Plan is signed, bond is paid, and we are good to start mining! Will be moving our stuff in starting next week. Stay tuned, I'll try to have a bunch of updates for you guys soon.

Cant wait to get back to that pay streak!

 

[KevinInColorado]

WOO HOO!!! Congratulations and respect for your tenacity!

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

That's great news! Love to see some pictures once you get into full swing.

 

[jpdriver1]

great news Eliki13 -- just finished binge reading this thread, very enlightening

 

[GarretDiggingAz]

Elkie
Great news for you and us followers. Hope your season is a success. Maybe you could start sooner since no snow. Can't wait to see some pics. Wish I could get up there.

 

[Fullpan]

I would love to hear a detailed wrap-up of your experience with the regulators. As you know there have been many posts here recently relating to mining laws
which I find refreshing and very informative, but an actual account would be so much more valuable, - that is, if you find the time. Regardless, best wishes on your upcoming season

 

[elkie13]

Time to start the 2014 mining season! Had the usual first day hiccups. Had to take the big equipment hauling truck the shop for some issues we just discovered. All the atv batteries died. We forgot tools, had to make patch jobs, tempers ran high at times. The weather was absolutely amazing. I have lived in Alaska all my life and I have never seen 80 degrees in May. Never. Hoping to fire up our trommel for the first time tonight or tomorrow. We are tired, sore, and incredibly blessed.

As for the business with the forest service, it was months and months of paper work, emails and waiting. The minerals specialist locally here was invaluable and fought really hard to get our plan pushed through. I don't know if we would have managed it without a pro-mining person sitting in that chair. As our plan had to deal with trail in a road and trail free zone (thanks Clinton) it had to go all the way to the chief of the forest service to get approved. It took almost a year. It all came down to the fact that the law was on our side - if you can be patient and remain polite. You can still mine in this country. They gave us 5 acres of dig area, I was floored by this.

 

[GarretDiggingAz]

Ohhhh. How much fun. Truly living a dream up there. Especially at 80 in May. Just means the bugs are coming sooner than later. Lol.
Good luck.

 

[Doitlaynstyle]

Yay! So glad you are on your way to getting back into the dirt. Good luck and I'm sure many of us will be anxiously awaiting your posts!

 

[elkie13]

Here we go! First test of the trommel. As usual, there were some hiccups. First off the water pump it came with would start, but would not stay running. Maybe it got some dirt in a fuel line on the journey up here. No big deal, one thing we have a lot of is pumps. Flange up another 2 inch pump, and off she goes. So there are also a few welds that were leaking and a hole in a hose or two, but not enough to stop us from trying a load.

We ran a bit of dirt from where the grizzly used to sit last year. Here’s what we learned. Although there is a grizzly on this trommel, we still need the larger grizzly as a first stage, we had a large rock make it through the bars sideways and get jammed in the trommel. We bent the spray bar in the barrel, it still works. Also, we lost a little gold where the sluice meets up to the chute on the trommel, we have to put a stop in there. We also had to play with the angles and the water pressures. We were very pleased that we were able to fill the settling pond with water and then recycle that water indefinitely, should save us a lot of money not having to run a pump from the river and the trommel pump. But we did get a little gold out of our test. Overall we were very happy with our new rig, we just have to tune it in a little better.

Here's a couple videos if you are interested in seeing her run.

 

[elkie13]

Have spent the last two days welding on our grizzly. Got here and noticed we had a visitor. We saw tracks in the mud from our settling pond.

I’m guessing a black but I’m not sure.

Our grizzly got really beat up last year. We decided to reinforce it a little more. That means metal sides and cross braces. Our welder extraordinaire was able to the task. I do believe he could weld the crack of dawn.

That’s done now time to get some dirt. You won’t believe what the thaw uncovered. More for next time…

 

[Pirate Vern]

Just found Elkie13 on the forbidden Bay.. I will do my best to help one bag at a time

 

[Mint_2k]

I have to say it. This is the best read I've had in a while. It's great to see the real deal. Man, I wish you the best and keep those updates coming!

 

[Reed Lukens]

It's nice to see a video It looks like your sluice box can handle at least 4 times more material then what the trommel is able to put through it right now at that angle. This opinion is from your movie so take it with a grain of salt because the trommel looks almost level from here. I would raise it up 6" to start on the infeed of the trommel and then make sure that the material still has plenty of wash and then adjust down 1" at a time if needed to get the complete wash. It just looks way to level for its capacity. I have what looks like an older but same basic trommel here with the same style of built in circular bars inside to hold the material inside.

 

[elkie13]

You were absolutely right about the trommel angle. We kept getting rocks jammed where the hopper feeds into the drum. We lowered the end of the trommel to a steeper angle and it made a huge difference.

Then we were over loading the sluice, so we had to lower it a bit as well.

Then we discovered that all the belt ten bolts had rattled loose, had to tighten them.

It's all an experiment, thuogh I think we are getting closer. Last run we ran more dirt that we usually run in a day. I'm sorry, someone sucked up the gold before I got a picture, we got a few nice little nuggets.

We had to head home, there is a pretty serious forest fire headed our way, it's raining ashes at my house.

We have decided we are going to swap out the sluice for the one off our old washplant. It has deeper sides and is much longer. Other than that we should be ready to do some real processing when we go back.

 

[Reed Lukens]

You were absolutely right about the trommel angle.

You will probably have to either put a second sluice side by side to get at least 24" of width or just ration the feed from the bucket when you get that thing maxed out. That is a good sized trommel to have, I love the portability of it :-)

 

[elkie13]

Back here at the claim. Now that we know our homes are relatively safe from the forest fire. Got some much needed rain, it doesn't make it much fun to work outside, but we don't have to worry about every little spark from grinding or welding. Campfires are still banned, so we had to huddle up by the little buddy heater in the storage tent last night.

First order of business, noticed some cracked hoses on the backhoe. Off to town to get new ones made.

Then some welding and grinding on the trommel. We are adapting the sluice that was from our old wash plant. It's wider, deeper and longer. Should work much better. Also have to put lock nuts on the belt tension bolts to make sure they don't rattle out.

Seems like we spend more time getting ready to run than it takes to actually process the dirt. Part of mining I guess.