today was the first time i used a gold claw, it was a small bag of paydirt, but it had 4 small pieces in it. the smallest one, i would probably have missed with a bigger pan.
uh oh, i posted too soon, decided to go through that first bag of paydirt one more time, was not expecting to find anything more, then i seen this itty bitty shiny thing in the corner with some black sand....and the rest is history.....see pic, this time i remembered to add something for scale......
Did it take your breath away? I think I speak for every single person that has ever prospected; the very first time you see a lustrous speck gleam in the pan... when it finally reveals itself from the sand... you forget to breathe for a moment and you finally get why this little cluster of 79 electrons, 79 protons and 118 neutrons has been the only thing of any value consistently throughout human history. It's intoxicating. I'm jealous you live out west.
ok so here is my story. i ordered a bag of paydirt from amazon on friday, amazon said it would arrive by the following thursday, did not want to wait that long so on saturday i began looking online for any place in vegas that sold paydirt, well as luck would have it, i found a place in henderson that would be open for another 3 or 4 hours, grabbed the wife and away we went to henderson, thought my GPS was wonkers when it wanted me to turn into a residential area, i was looking for a business not a house, turns out the business WAS in the garage of the house, my mistake. so i picked up a bag of paydirt and a gold claw (i love this thing, if your in vegas i am giving away my full size pan, don't need it anymore) anyway, i waited till sunday to dig into the bag of paydirt, the results of that venture are in the green topped bottle (5 pcs of gold ) well monday the other bag of paydirt arrived, but i did not drop everything to start that bag, i ended up processing the first bag of paydirt 3 more times just to make sure i did not miss anything else. today (tuesday) i got to the 2nd bag, in the round container you see what i found in the 2nd bag. over the next couple of days i will go through the 2nd bag at least 2 more times, not sure what to do after that is done.
today i got my paid membership in the GSSN (gold searchers of southern nevada) got home to late today, but first thing saturday morning going to the closest gold claim to las vegas.
ok finally i can take a break, friday i joined the GSSN, today i went to one of their gold claims, i filled up 4 sand bags and one (1) bucket from home depot (did not want to bring back any empty container that i could put material into) got back this afternoon, started panning about an hour later (why wait any longer!!!) my single goal was to find something shiny that would validate my efforts for the trip and all the work i did there. i did not find the one i was hoping for (sad face) instead i found the 5 pieces i was not expecting to find (happy face) yeah yeah, i know they are REALLY small, but gold in any form is still gold.
decided to make "alterations" to my round pan and my gold claw. there are so many gold colored rocks i might miss an actual tiny itty bitty piece of gold in the pans, my fear is that i will mistake a real piece of gold for a gold colored rock so i did this. i have some really good super glue, i took 2 flat pieces of gold that i got from a bag of paydirt, the purple background is the gold claw (the smallest ripples side), the black background is my round pan, this super glue i am using is very good stuff. this seemed like a good solution, i hope it helps.
anyone out there have a gold buddy 24in sluice? just got one saturday, got a 500 GPH pump to push water through. any suggestions/tips/problems with this sluice?