New Guy with a lots of questions

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colddigger

Jr. Member
Jan 26, 2014
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All Treasure Hunting
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Back story- As quick as possible : ) I met a girl and our third date we were watching Gold Rush. We both found it interesting and I suggested why not try it. She knew a guy that was a member of a gold prospecting group. He came over. She has a river in her back yard. Dug up some gravel. Found some gold. This was about 8 months ago. I have since taken about 20-5gl buckets from the river and found more and more! HOOOOORAY! I am having a lot of fun doing this, but it bothers me that I am not doing things right. I was on another thread and had alot of experienced people helping me with some of my novice questions. Very cool and extremely awesome! They suggested I start my own thread, and here I am : ) I don't want anyone to feel stupid- including me- for asking questions. I don't have alot of money so I cant buy the best stuff.
 

Ask your Qs and I am sure our fellow prospectors will give you some good answers. Welcome to Tnet:treasurechest:
 

Welcome Colddigger!
 

All I use is a shovel, 2 pans, mini sluice, 5 gal bucket, and a sifter to separate the gravel and such. Oh and a sucker to pick up any gold you might find. G'luck
 

Does anyone know the best way to look for a spot to dig a spot? I am digging a sand bar on the outside curve of a river with 90 degree angle in front of it and behind it. Both of the corners are very deep and very fast on the inside but only about 2ft deep between them and are separated by about 75yds of flat cobble. The first corner has sandstone ledges and makes the turn once it hits a very tall hill. Is there a place that would be better to look?
 

LOL! Newgoldfinder. That probably would get you more that me. I feel like I am loosing more than Im getting. I panned some stuff that I dumped and I still found flecks. Do you think its the angle, or the speed of the water? I just dont know?
 

colddigger said:
Does anyone know the best way to look for a spot to dig a spot? I am digging a sand bar on the outside curve of a river with 90 degree angle in front of it and behind it. Both of the corners are very deep and very fast on the inside but only about 2ft deep between them and are separated by about 75yds of flat cobble. The first corner has sandstone ledges and makes the turn once it hits a very tall hill. Is there a place that would be better to look?
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Please do post a picture or two of what you are looking at! Welcome, there are no dumb questions here. Lay your questions out and I'm sure many people will chime in. Gold Mining is Great Work if you can get it :)
What tools do you have? What methods do you use? Do you have a sluice?
 

Thanks Aufisher : ) I don't know why there isn't a like button on here. I must of messed up when I posted this thread:dontknow:
 

I built a sluice and a friend of mine is letting me use his gold cube. Other than that, I have a wagon, a shovel, a couple classifiers and pans, tweezers,magnet and buckets. My method is just tacking the bucket into the river with a classifier on it and strain off the big stuff. I know that sounds simple but thats all I know. Why shouldnt I post a picture of the spot? Its in SE michigan. Gtmd (1).jpg
 

Gold will stay on the inside of a curve for the most part. Look for large rocks on the inside of the bend one that has gravel that is pack in behind the rocks, Digging in a sand bar is easy but you will find very little gold there. Look up on the net how to read a river for gold movement. Also when you are out on the river do alot of sampling most people do not do this.they pick a spot and just dig when sampling your hole dig a foot deep and pan it out, go down another foot or so and pan again gold can be down on the bed rock or be in the layers in between here on the ranch there is decomposed grainte on top of the bed rock a foot up is a layer of river rock with gold in it, no gold above it or below it. Good luck and have Fun
 

Keep your spot secret. People can use apps to locate where a Photo was taken with a phone. It sounds like you have the basics down. Sluice setup has general rules to follow. There are many videos on this but I have found the size and shape of the gold you are typically finding will determine your setup. One other variable you missed in the equation is how fast you feed material into your sluice ( referred to as feed rate ). If you are catching gold and loosing specs as you described you may try less angle and slow down the feed rate. Continue in small increments until it is satisfactory. Test your tailings as you go. Get the angle right then adjust your feed rate.
Good luck and welcome.
 

The water is about 5ft deep and pretty fast on the inside. Do you have a suggestion? Every time I try to dig in the deep parts the current washes everything off the shovel.
 

colddigger said:
LOL! Newgoldfinder. That probably would get you more that me. I feel like I am loosing more than Im getting. I panned some stuff that I dumped and I still found flecks. Do you think its the angle, or the speed of the water? I just dont know?
Click to expand...

When you say you panned some stuff that you dumped do you mean the tailings?

If your losing flakes, could be the speed/angle, maybe the material you have under your riffles? Could also be that you need to do clean ups sooner or just keep on top of the material building up and disrupting flow... I'm just throwing out ideas since I'm not sure what your setup etc is...

You've basically got the same procedure as I do though, get bucket, fill bucket, run bucket, get another bucket, fill another bucket, run another bucket....... and so on and so forth... with a couple clean outs, beer breaks, and taking in of nature along the way lol
 

I set up the angle at 15degrees with a level. Do you think thats to little? Any smaller on an angle the gravel seems to just sit and doesnt move down the sluice. Do you think that i should replace the riffles with expanded mesh and matting?
 

colddigger said:
I built a sluice and a friend of mine is letting me use his gold cube. Other than that, I have a wagon, a shovel, a couple classifiers and pans, tweezers,magnet and buckets. My method is just tacking the bucket into the river with a classifier on it and strain off the big stuff. I know that sounds simple but thats all I know. Why shouldnt I post a picture of the spot? Its in SE michigan.View attachment 938166
Click to expand...

Keep the Tv off you will catch more gold I promise,:cat::occasion14:
 

Yes, the tailings. Is there a range or approx range in the angle you should have it set at?
 

The angle is really subjective depending on the flow etc... if you have a lot of flow, then you wont need as much angle, and if you have a lower flow, a higher angle can help out etc. I copied this off another site, it say its better than I would be able to explain it... hope this helps:

"A box is running right when you fill the front with gravel (and hopefully some gold). When the box has finished running the gravel down onto the riffle area of the box, the space fills between the riffles, you can start to look for the last of the gravels to leave the front of the box. Now, if the box is running too slow, you will not see most of the carpet clear behind the first riffle for something over 45 seconds of time. If the box is running too fast then you will see most of the carpet in 15 sec of time. Remember that the box is affected by four things: average weight of the gravel, size of the gravel, water flow throughout the box, and the angle of the box. When you get it set for time you are ready to go mining. Remember 45 Sec. is too slow and 15 Sec. is too fast."

My homemade is outa wood. I used ribbed rubber matting on the first part (which is usually pretty good at catching most of the gold) and then plastic mesh and ribbed carpeting underneath the riffles. Seems to work just fine and I haven't experienced much loss at all. I'm now using a Bazooka though so I converted this one into a recirculating high banker (which is going to require some fine tuning after my last test of it lol).


IMAG0682.jpgIMAG0683.jpgIMAG0684.jpg
 

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Thanks. that does help alot! Does it hurt to let the water run for a while, or am I loosing gold when I let it just run for a while?
 

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