Confesstion time. Lets hear em, gold junkies we all

I told myself I was "enhancing" my home made sluice, But, I was really taking it apart to pan anything that fell out as I drilled the rivets. Found a couple small pieces too.... Maybe I should silicon better :icon_scratch:
 

Back when I was Really a scatter brained newbie I purchased a Keene "Portable" 2" dredge (brand new out of a shop in Livermore CA) and packed it in myself (200 lbs of gear) several times to different locations (not all 200 lbs at once) and never found a thing - due to the fact I had no clue as to what I was doing or how to really set the unit up. I am not talking about taking it out of the back of my truck and walking it over to a river I'm talking backpacking it into wilderness country, Down 3000' vertical feet (and back out) and then up or down river to a side canyon, going up the side canyon and then setting it up. This includes breaking a trail into an out of the way creek canyon as no trail existed. The bear that came upon me was absolutely beautiful, solid glistening black color black bear (instead of some of the blonde/tan colored black bears that are being produced in this area).
View attachment Dredging 2.bmp

It seems almost unnatural to recount these trips as they were so physically demanding and rewarded me with only the trip experience though, the trip experience was worth it as they were just so dog gone tough and yet I survived them and they paved the way for me to do even harder trips into Very rugged country. The rewards are what we choose to take on/accept and the adventure's along the way provide me/us with the increasing desire to keep going!

Happy Thanksgiving to all and I am thankful for what we have here in this country and I pray that we will ban together to keep our freedoms!.........................63bkpkr
 

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Took the carpet out of my trunk washed it out panned it down and had 3-4 specks and one little picker! Must have rode in on the bottoms of my buckets.
 

At the end of my first, full-time dredging season, I was staring at a full five-gal. bucket of twice-run concentrates. I decided to dump a third behind a tree back of camp for "safekeeping" and pack the rest home. After "lightening the load" several times while climbing up the 1,000 feet to my truck, I had about a 1/4 bucket left. Got home, rented a spiral clean-up wheel for 20 bucks, and recovered 20 bucks worth of gold. I know, I know - should have flown it all out by helicopter, lol.
 

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I have never thrown away so much as a spec of my cons. It's all right here in my garage.
 

Hello... My name if GoldenIrishman and I'm a prospecting addict!

I've been known to re-run tailings several times if I'm out of fresh materials to run

I sometimes go down to our wash to get dirt to pan even though I know the heaviest thing in there is going to be lead or garnets.

I do my panning with a set of jewelers magnifying glasses so I can see the micro gold (Just kidding. Wanted to see if anyone would bite)

I'm crazy enough to be considering staking a claim and having to jump through hoops (but only to a certain extent, I'm not a trained animal. Just a party animal.)

I cook my cleaned out cons using the "Shake N Bake" method and ALWAYS find more gold.

I have had dreams of being out prospecting and woken up more tired than when I went to sleep

I am a prospecting addict...........
 

Once a year usually early spring I'll vacuum the carpet in my prospecting van and pan the contents of the vacuum, I can always count on a speck or two.
That is after running and re-running my cons all winter. I also vacuum the shed where I run the cons and find gold on the floor there also.

GG~
 

The planter boxes below our deck are 90% once ran cons. I know there is a bit of gold in them as a lot of the cons came from learning the blue bowl. Even now I know I'm not going as fine as I should, but I figure that's my rainy day post surgery playground.
 

Goodyguy said:
Once a year usually early spring I'll vacuum the carpet in my prospecting van and pan the contents of the vacuum, I can always count on a speck or two. That is after running and re-running my cons all winter. I also vacuum the shed where I run the cons and find gold on the floor there also. GG~
Click to expand...
Ditto and ditto :-)
 

I saw an episode of Gold Fever where Tom Massie went to a hardware store and bought some bags of sand and ran them through a cleanup
sluice and recovered some gold. Guess it's all about where the sand came from.

My desperation plan was to visit the local gravel company where they have different materials in large defined areas that can be accessed by
loaders and such.. I thought that maybe the coarse sand pole may have gold in it and after years of loading and unloading that some of the gold would
eventually fall to the bottom of the pile and gather in the cement cracks or whatever the base of the sand bin was.

Bought a sluice, pump, and wash basin but never got around to testing my theory. Now all my equipment is at the claim so will never find out.
 

I'm guessing your claim is within 50 miles of Grass Valley, right? Go to Hansen Bros. gravel on La Barr Meadows rd. Buy a sack of "unwashed sand" - send me
the expense for it thru a pm. I want to see if, in addition to gold, you recover any merc. Its important, so....?
 

MinerFortyNiner1952 said:
I saw an episode of Gold Fever where Tom Massie went to a hardware store and bought some bags of sand and ran them through a cleanup
sluice and recovered some gold. Guess it's all about where the sand came from.

My desperation plan was to visit the local gravel company where they have different materials in large defined areas that can be accessed by
loaders and such.. I thought that maybe the coarse sand pole may have gold in it and after years of loading and unloading that some of the gold would
eventually fall to the bottom of the pile and gather in the cement cracks or whatever the base of the sand bin was.

Bought a sluice, pump, and wash basin but never got around to testing my theory. Now all my equipment is at the claim so will never find out.
Click to expand...

That's a good theory about gold collecting under the piles, but usually it is so hard packed there its hard to scratch with machinery.

The key to gravel pit gold, is in the wash water. I've had access to a wash plant in ohio for years, not a lot of gold here, but when you are talking about concentrating thousands of tons of material, it can add up.

The sand screws are the best places for gold accumulation. They are a large screw, 2 to 4' dia., in a square tub angled upward. The good sand is augered out the top, the light stuff empties off the rear, and all the heavies collect in the bottom of the box. It can be almost all black sand.

Here in Ohio we drain the boxes in freezing weather, and the cons accumulate there.

I built several sluices that I can hook to the 4" drain on the bottom of the tanks, and hose the material through. The problem has always been controlling the feed rate, too often way too much sand will come through and fill the box. Dumping it on the ground, gathering it up and then slowly feeding it through takes two days, and is a lot of work.

I'm building a much larger sluice, hoping to spread out the material for better recovery.

Here are my last two results from a pit in Ohio.

100_0656.JPG100_0663.JPG

Gravel pits can be very dangerous, be careful, and Good Luck.:icon_thumright:
 

I shamelessly rubber neck at all creeks streams and rivers. Even on TV or in pictures.
 

Ok, here it goes.. We did an addition to my house last year, finished the addition Dec 2012. The last thing to do is to finish the back patio...which is half done. So this is where my shame/story begins.

Started prospecting January 2013, it was a bit too cold to spend any considerable amount of time in the river sluicing, so I would just go down to the riverside and collect 15 gallons or so of 1/4" classified material. Once home I would classify down to a couple levels and run on my sluice that I had set up at the patios edge, simply fed by my garden hose.

Over the last year I have learned so much about sluicing, and am positive that I dumped literally as much if not more off the edge of the patio than I actually recovered--and I thought I was being crafty using my tailings as a base for the rest of the patio.

So...now I refuse to finish the patio until I have excavated and run all those tailings again on my recirc under a controlled environment....wife is really ready for the patio to be done!
 

Haha, I sweep the floor of the cabin I rent on the river hoping the guy who comes there with his dredge or myself may have had some stuck to shoes/clothing over time!
 

OK! You dragged it outta me. I check the sand under my fingernails!!! I dig holes in the back yard!! I stare at rocks along the river looking for nuggets, I pan with my hands, I can't help but watch Gold Rush...Whew, I feel better now. Thanks!:icon_thumleft:
 

Fullpan said:
I'm guessing your claim is within 50 miles of Grass Valley, right? Go to Hansen Bros. gravel on La Barr Meadows rd. Buy a sack of "unwashed sand" - send me
the expense for it thru a pm. I want to see if, in addition to gold, you recover any merc. Its important, so....?
Click to expand...

I went to Hansen Bros and bought a five gallon bucket of unwashed sand and gravel for fifty cents

DSC_9878sm.jpg

All our classifiers were at the claim so we had to improvise with a fire screen and wash tub, returning the cons to the five gallon bucket after classifying.

DSC_9889sm.jpg

We then ran the cons through our cleanup sluice, a hollowed out four foot neon light fixture with Keene miracle matting

DSC_9890sm.jpg

Color is color. Who would have thought!! But no mercury was seen.

DSC_9894sm.jpg
 

Looks like over a dollars worth of gold in the pan -= you made out like a bandit ! Shhh - don't tell anybody, lol.
 

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