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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[elkie13]

Got the larger, deeper, longer sluice box hooked up. Wouldn't you know it, our current pump system doesn't put out enough water to run it. Oh well, not all experiments work, not my favorite part of mining.

Back to the old sluice, running some dirt. Get a rock jam every once a while but otherwise works ok. I am still a little disappointed in this trommel, I wanted something that would run itself I guess. We have to keep a close eye on the feed rate and the thin sharp rocks that make it through the grizzly.

You know it's going to be a pretty good run when you see gold in the concentrate bucket

 

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[Reed Lukens]

are you running around 1500gpm?

 

[Socalnuggetnut]

Got the larger, deeper, longer sluice box hooked up. Wouldn't you know it, our current pump system doesn't put out enough water to run it. Oh well, not all experiments work, not my favorite part of mining.

Back to the old sluice, running some dirt. Get a rock jam every once a while but otherwise works ok. I am still a little disappointed in this trommel, I wanted something that would run itself I guess. We have to keep a close eye on the feed rate and the thin sharp rocks that make it through the grizzly.

You know it's going to be a pretty good run when you see gold in the concentrate bucket

I am the edge of my seat, More posts! more posts!

 

[elkie13]

Here I am bragging about the great weather we have been having. A cold front from the arctic moved down and things got a bit chilly. Snow on the mountains.

Trommel working petty good. We sped up the motor a little and only had one jam up the last run. Got to take a break and run the backhoe to the doctor. Fluid leaking from the transmission. Not sure what it is, but more than we can fix in the field.

Starting to get through the overburden, gold starting to look better, though still not as good as last year. Hope our streak isn't petering out after all this.

 

[Doitlaynstyle]

Both are beautiful pictures. I wish I could get cleanouts like that. Looking good and keep us up to date on the backhoe. Do you have something else to dig with?

 

[elkie13]

Backhoe done. It wasn't anything really big, just a leaking fitting and a fill cap loose. We had it serviced at the same time, they even pressure washed it. I don't know how it will run now that it is clean

The two inch pump that originally came with the trommel is also fixed. Should be interesting to see how it does with more water volume. Of course, we just got it dialed in so nice with the other pump! I don't know why, but I feel like we just don't have the momentum we did when we were shut down last year. Like we haven't reached our stride yet. But its only the first week of June I guess.

I'll update you guys again in a few days.

 

[Oakview2]

Ready to rock and roll

 

[KevinInColorado]

Pretty sure that backhoe will run better when dirty but expect you'll get this done quickly!!

 

[elkie13]

I swear if we didn’t have bad luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all. The bar that we set the tension for the belts on the trommel decided to fall off. We managed to wedge it with an axe head of all things until we get the welder. Couldn't mount the other pump until we get things fixed.

Next the pull string on our pump decided to break, we had a spare so no big deal. Had a good couple of runs, and then the backhoe decided not to start anymore. Battery related we hope. Today multiple trips to town are called for.

We didn’t get a lot of gold, every time we have to leave for a while we knock the high wall on our dig spot in so no passers by get hurt while we are not here. We are going through a lot of overburden. If we get the backhoe going, we should get better results.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Nice field repair with the axe!

 

[elkie13]

Things going well here. Nice little picker we got the other day. Nice of the mosquito to pose for reference. I think we have discovered through test hole that we have a depression in the bedrock ahead of us. Old waterfall maybe? Only problem is the only safe way to get the loader in there is dig from where we are. May as well process the dirt while we are at it.

All has been going pretty well. We keep breaking the pull strings on the pumps for some reason, but we can deal with those kind of fixes.

Last week we took a little trip to the 40 mile gold country. The lady in the gift shop let me hold the nugget they have on display. She said it was ONLY 5 lbs, but boy it felt a lot heavier than that! If only the mosquito had been there!

 

[Prospector70]

Mother of god.... Nice!

 

[goldenmojo]

Bash the mosquito with the bigger one....Nice Chunk

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Glad you are on the gold!

 

[elkie13]

Been a while, lots has happened.

Most importantly, the formation had presented us with a gift. If you look at the first picture you can see the uniform horizontal layers but then as you look lower, you can see they tilt at an angle. Now I know what you're thinking, there must bee a depression in the bedrock there! I bet the gold settled there when the river used to run here! Sure enough, the bedrock is getting deeper , and the gold is getting better - chunkier and more of it. Too bad we can't run any more of it because we broke the little tractor we use for loading the trommel. :-(

Now we are taking a trip to town to get it fixed and that gold is just sitting there, singing to us.

I attached a picture of the black mat from the stuff we got to run before the tractor died.

 

[Jeff95531]

Congrats Elkie! Looks good...and it looks like it's gonna look even better....and soon!

 

[elkie13]

Guess what? Went all the way home to get the trailer, started to load the little tractor, discovered a stuck lever or the backhoe attachment that was stealing all the hydraulic power. Walla! Fixed. We were right about this hole, gold keeps getting better.

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Nice pan full

 

[SHoward]

I just placed an order for some pay dirt.

 

[elkie13]

It's been a rough week. Broke the coupler that connects the motor shaft to the trommel. Multiple trips back and forth to town. Rained so much we started thinking about building an ark. To top it all off, had a round of the flu. After four days, the sun came out, we got the trommel back together, and had a perfect run. Ran into some rotten bedrock. Started breaking it up and it is full of chunky, crystalline gold. We even found a piece with quartz still attached. I never thought to find that in an area that experienced so much glacial activity. Guess I need to go back and give those quartz rocks in the tailing pile another look.