Set-up for beach gold
To KevininColorado, and others interested in this topic. I'll see if my tech abilities allow me to get some pics up.
The beach gold is collected from mother nature's store house in the winter. All summer we have northerly winds, these blow the beach sands south, in the winter the low pressure centers, rotate counterclockwise, thus produce a southerly wind. This wind in a good storm will run 70-90 mph, combined with high tides we often get surfs running 25-30+ ft.
Together, this combination washes the winter sands much as a gold pan, constantly moving the lighter weight material back to the ocean, and leaving the heavier black sands and gold (an occasional diamond ) on the beach. If one is especially fortunate to get a due west winter wind the gold can really accumulate, one person I know collected 3-4 ounces in day.Go back to the gold pan analogy, a straight back and forth motion vs a angled one.
As for our set up, there are many variations, but most have something like this: a standard size sluice, some wider, some narrower, some longer. Most use a header or slick plate at the top. I line mine from the plate down with green felt and let it go an inch up the sides.Then a full length of deep V matting. I like to slow the flow of the material in the sluice so I have 2 sheets of thin
board like plastic to which I have glued Scotch-Brite or the green kitchen scrubby. I place one of these about 8 in. down the sluice, leave a break with only the matting exposed, say 5-6 in. then other green covered plastic. The intermittent flows created allow the fine gold to drop out and not gain speed to race out the end and be lost.
This gold is dust, flour and will float on water.Most is minus 80 mesh, I have found some plus 25 mesch mini-flakes. nothing any bigger.Again, there is a lot of it.I work 2-4 hours per day, and normally get a few grams, 2-3 or 4.We set up in the freshets in known gold bearing areas.
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