nmhunter
Jr. Member
Just an update on my Royal Drywasher.
I have now set up and started her 3 times with each one being a little more productive, although I have to admit the first trip was the best.
Monsoons have hit hard this year and saturated most areas I prospect. Love the rain and want every drop, but with 3 days of no rain and no chance of storms until latter in the week I was excited for the opportunity to take the drywasher out and really see what she could do. I was getting great color using a chisel to dig gravel from under the caliche layer for the first 30 buckets when the thunderstorms started back up and I was confronted by the fact drywashing does not work well in the rain. I am still way short of even a quarter ounce, but by eliminating the need to classify and pan every bit of sand I was able to make a significant showing for me. Next trip if no rain I should have no problem doing 50 buckets.
The previous attempt was just prior to the monsoons. I took my 13 year old son to one of our favorite areas of an arroyo and started by running the overburden from a crack we had previously exposed. At most this amounted to maybe 4 buckets of material. We then started in with cleaning the crack and had less then a gal of material. My son had been out long enough, so we classified the drywasher concentrates and the material from the crack down to 8- before heading home. All in all a great day and after running the concentrates through the goldcube we even had a few flakes and lots of fly poop.
The first trip by far yielded the best treasures. This was my first day home in over 3 months and all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and spend time just being home. My son and 7 year old daughter had other plans though and off we went to the desert. We had a decent breeze and temperature so I was hopeful for a good day. On the way to the washes we search, we saw some mule deer does which are a rare sight for us in the area. Once we were at a decent location Tom quickly set up the drywasher before we even tried a test pan. I gave my daughter a classifier, trowel and a bucket and she quickly started "mining" with daddy as I filled two 5 gal buckets to test. She may have sifted 2 screens. I attempted to run these two buckets trying different speeds on my leaf blower and watching my kids scamper around the area. The first excitement was Tom catching a Tarantula quickly followed by the capture of a western garter snake. The kids discovered a small rattlesnake and caught another garter snake. After releasing the snakes, a second spider was caught and since both were males the kids got a blast out of watching their defensive posturing. We released the spiders, saw a fast red snake that we do not know the species of so we did not approach. Both kids filled the car with special pieces of leverite rocks and after lunch we cleaned up and headed home. Not a speck of gold found but I certainly am not complaining.
Hope you all are having a blast and finding treasures of your own.
I have now set up and started her 3 times with each one being a little more productive, although I have to admit the first trip was the best.
Monsoons have hit hard this year and saturated most areas I prospect. Love the rain and want every drop, but with 3 days of no rain and no chance of storms until latter in the week I was excited for the opportunity to take the drywasher out and really see what she could do. I was getting great color using a chisel to dig gravel from under the caliche layer for the first 30 buckets when the thunderstorms started back up and I was confronted by the fact drywashing does not work well in the rain. I am still way short of even a quarter ounce, but by eliminating the need to classify and pan every bit of sand I was able to make a significant showing for me. Next trip if no rain I should have no problem doing 50 buckets.
The previous attempt was just prior to the monsoons. I took my 13 year old son to one of our favorite areas of an arroyo and started by running the overburden from a crack we had previously exposed. At most this amounted to maybe 4 buckets of material. We then started in with cleaning the crack and had less then a gal of material. My son had been out long enough, so we classified the drywasher concentrates and the material from the crack down to 8- before heading home. All in all a great day and after running the concentrates through the goldcube we even had a few flakes and lots of fly poop.
The first trip by far yielded the best treasures. This was my first day home in over 3 months and all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and spend time just being home. My son and 7 year old daughter had other plans though and off we went to the desert. We had a decent breeze and temperature so I was hopeful for a good day. On the way to the washes we search, we saw some mule deer does which are a rare sight for us in the area. Once we were at a decent location Tom quickly set up the drywasher before we even tried a test pan. I gave my daughter a classifier, trowel and a bucket and she quickly started "mining" with daddy as I filled two 5 gal buckets to test. She may have sifted 2 screens. I attempted to run these two buckets trying different speeds on my leaf blower and watching my kids scamper around the area. The first excitement was Tom catching a Tarantula quickly followed by the capture of a western garter snake. The kids discovered a small rattlesnake and caught another garter snake. After releasing the snakes, a second spider was caught and since both were males the kids got a blast out of watching their defensive posturing. We released the spiders, saw a fast red snake that we do not know the species of so we did not approach. Both kids filled the car with special pieces of leverite rocks and after lunch we cleaned up and headed home. Not a speck of gold found but I certainly am not complaining.
Hope you all are having a blast and finding treasures of your own.
