Dug Someone Elses Tailings From Last Year In The River.....Best Hunt Yet!

John-Edmonton

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Mar 21, 2005
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Those tailings from last year, or older, have to have those spaces filled with some sort of matrix. Looks like gold was part of that. I weighed it, and it came to 0.7 Gram, minus the weight of 4-5 drops of water. So.......maybe 0.5 Gram? Flour gold always looks like there is more of it, then there really is. I shoveled for about 6 hours. I used expanded mesh over miner's moss, over vortex which does a very good job of collecting that fine stuff. I end up with more concentrates, but that's the price you pay for more gold! It took me about an hour to run my concentrates through my micro sluice, after screening down to about 30 mesh. I removed a lot of the iron with a magnet prior to running the concentrates through my micro sluice.

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Someone elses loss is your gain!:icon_thumleft: To bad the other person was in such a hurry OR unknowledgeable and lost this treasure !:occasion14:

On the other hand I suppose I could capture a bit more fine gold if I slowed my dredge flow down but I'm a kinda "suck it up and spit it out , the faster the better" dredger. I chalk it up as givin' a bit back to the creek and making those tailing pile hunters happy...HA!
 

On the other hand I suppose I could capture a bit more fine gold if I slowed my dredge flow down but I'm a kinda "suck it up and spit it out , the faster the better" dredger. I chalk it up as givin' a bit back to the creek and making those tailing pile hunters happy...HA!

All those baby pieces of of flour gold will some day grow up to become large nuggets.
 

All those baby pieces of of flour gold will some day grow up to become large nuggets.


doesn't work like that.

Set up to recover it, it adds up. Spitting it out of the end of a sluice is silly.
 

I luv to run other people's tailing piles after they have left them for a while. Easy pickins as people are looking for the big nuggets and to me the flakes all add up; might have to work a bit more but they all add up !!!
 

O.K. ......here goes.... 1/2 gram for 6 hours work ain't going to buy beer. I don't want to step on toes but there are a couple (really many more) ways to set up a sluice box, no matter if it's on a highbanker or a stream sluice or on a dredge or perhaps a "fine gold recovery system" that requires con's screened to 300 mesh. Almost every miner has been beat up upon here on the West Coast for many years and by a select few and labelled as "hobby miners" and trust me, it has bitten us in the butt more than once. (A well established rule and one that may prove beneficial in on-going court case's is the "Prudent man theory"). What I have and will continue to pervey is an honest understanding of what it takes for me to maintain my year-around residence on these claims. I have to find gold. Long gone is the gleam in my eye when spotting that flake in the bottom of the pan after hours of rock chucking, un-plugging that hose, changing spark plugs, looking for nuts and bolts and figuring out that those minnie flakes in my snuffer bottle are long gone considering that it's swiftly being carried downstream by the current, bobbing up and down and smiling as tho' enjoying the ride. (I've since learned to always have a couple of ounces of buckshot in the bottle and to always have it filled with water...that way if you drop it or it rolls off the dredge it sinks and stays right there on the bottom)
Now I'm not saying to let gold just "spit" out the back of my dredge and I'm always tweeking my 5 inch three stage (which is a tad more complex than my old crashbox Keene). But what I am saying to all my gold getting buddies is to take full advantage of your equipment, location, knowledge and physical abilities when you work. I've read and heard many a tail about success in tailings, and undoubtably some of those piles may contain gold.......but just like my overall attitude is "dang... after dredging my tailings once in awhile it appears that I've blown out a gram or two, not bad for a couple days of two pennyweight or better days of .....yes, you guessed it.......SUCKING THEM ROCKS LIKE YA MEAN IT....and don't look back.
Re-working those already been thru a sluice box tailings might be worthwhile but don't give up the thought about what lay's ahead of that area where those tailings came from.
 

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