Placer Claim Mined Out?

[desertgolddigger]

I belong to a local club that owns a claim. This club has had this claim for many years, and acquired it after the old timers had mined it previously, and others after they commercial outfits closed up.
I walked quite a bit of the 160 acre claim, and noted that just about every wash had been worked. Most of the surface nuggets has also been detected by those with gold detectors. In other words, this place has been picked over and over and over.
But I m a stubborn type of person, and I figured, just watching how people ram their puffer and blower drywashers, that some gold was just being blown through them. maybe not much, but some small stuff that never got a chance to settle behind the riffles.
I know many of you would never go to the effort of digging for three to four hours through the tailings in these washes. Again, I'm a bit stubborn, and anyway, I just wanted to have some fun locally, instead of driving 300 miles roundtrip to something that gives a little more for less effort.
I've spent the last three weeks, digging a few times a week along about 30 yards of wash, and have recovered just about a gram of gold. That might not seem like much, but I have only dug up 5 grams, not counting this one gram in almost 20 years out here drywashing in the desert of southern California.
As you would know, things always seem to go wrong. My gas powered blower motor decided it was time for the repair shop, and haven't heard from the shop in two weeks. So I purchased a WORX WG521 corded electric leaf blower to use with my Royal Large drywasher. I'm using a portable generator to provide the power. And it actually is working better than with my old gas powered blower. I have to run the blower on the lowest speed, or I just blow everything through the riffles. Results are very good, as I am getting gold specks so small that I will have to use the Blue bowl in order to recover them.
I'm not only getting a little gold, I'm having some fun, and I am getting a good workout. I've lost 10 pounds since I started. So things are going well.
I'm still digging test holes around the old time hard rock mines in the hope I will find where the gold has drifted downhill below these mines. So far just a couple specks here and there. I figure I just have to move laterally one way or the other before I get something better Of course, I' don't really know if the old timers stripped the hillsides. Even if they have, they apparently aren't as thorough as I am. I hope that I may be lucky and find a larger piece of gold that the old timers, previous placer miners, and detectorists have missed.
Hope everyone is having as much fun as I have been having.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[Assembler]

I completely concur with everything Clay said. As usual, he is spot-on. And, prospecting is WAY more fun than mining...LOL
Jim

Mining activity is striving to have a reasonable recovery returns where as the prospecting is a lot of dry holes / test spots that don't pan out.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Diving for Pleasure and Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[Assembler]

stroke length is too long for my little table. I'll let you know if the linear motor I have can cut the job.

You likely will fine that by spreading out the concentrates / values will make it way easier to suck up with a snuffer bottle or have some slots in the table to flow the materials off.

The most simple set up is to put a few tablespoons of material on top then turn on for say 5 - 12 seconds or so then stop and suck up with a sniffer bottle the values you want and discard the rest. Adjust the slope for your materials for best function.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

How about a windshield wiper motor? with the right controller nice speed selection . Maybe a junk yard special get the arms and all cheap at a you pull it.

Too slow. And, if you gear it up, too weak. For less than $100 you can buy a salt-spreader 12v motor that's fairly strong and runs 1000 rpm. Put a PWM speed controller on it for $10, and you're just about right.
Jim

 

[Assembler]

Too slow. And, if you gear it up, too weak. For less than $100 you can buy a salt-spreader 12v motor that's fairly strong and runs 1000 rpm. Put a PWM speed controller on it for $10, and you're just about right.
Jim

You have more experience with the motors. However try some larger truck electric wiper motors and stay away from car motors I say. I like the idea of a cheap PWM speed controller.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Your basic options for linear motion are ball-screw drives, lead-screw drives, and belt drives. That's the terminology for searching.

All those systems have drawbacks but cost wise you are better off with a belt drive with an eccentric. A simple cam or offset (from the driveshaft) attachment will work but you will be very limited on adjustment and accuracy/repeatability.

You could consider a direct drive off an eccentric or cam with spring return but with the higher cycle frequencies needed for a shaker table fine, repeatable adjustment isn't really going to be possible. "Bounce" will be an issue with this system, possibly so much that the table would be ineffective.

I realize you are doing this for the experience. Even so it would be wise to consider that with all placer deposits gold recovery volume is directly linked to volume of material processed. For a small table you are never going to see the volume needed to reimburse your expenses even with a rich deposit. Probably not a consideration for your purpose but something to put into your overall mining planning.

In my experience your time and resources would be best spent prospecting for a worthy deposit. It's your least expensive option and will in the end run produce more gold for fewer funds expended. You get to get out in the sunshine and fresh air, you learn more about the local deposits and your expenses are just travel money and sandwiches. Leave your mining equipment behind when prospecting. All you need for prospecting is a small pan or miner's spoon (my favorite), a little water, baggies, pen and a notebook.

Find a worthy deposit and the circumstances of the deposit will dictate the mining methods and equipment needed. Every deposit is different. Buying or building equipment before finding the gold is putting the horse before the cart. That horse/cart arrangement results in a lot of backing up which can be very frustrating.

Heavy Pans

Clay, thanks. I've got two problems keeping me home now. Lack of money is one because of the home water main thing, and the other is I'm nearly crippled because of my left foot. I can walk, but only a few hundred meters, then I have to take a break. I didn't go placer mining yesterday due to both.

And I have what I ordered for my shaker table. It was all ordered before the water main hit me like a Mack truck. So I have to stay home, and work with what I have. I still have four 35 gallon trash cans full of ore that GoldTramp put me onto. So I'm hoping the shaker table will help me recover the finer stuff I'm apparently losing off the end of my sluice. I know I'm losing a little, but apparently there's even finer gold you don't see unless it gathers in a line.

Stay tuned for whenever I get this new debt paid off, and can again go out mining/prospecting.

Got my new auto insurance bill today. It's $1300 for six months, and is $200 more than my previous bill, which was $200 from that previous bill. What is it with Allstate? I'm guessing they will increase my next six month bill to $1500 for six months, and if they do, I won't be able to afford driving anymore, which means no gold mining/prospecting.

 

[Assembler]

You likely will fine that by spreading out the concentrates / values will make it way easier to suck up with a snuffer bottle or have some slots in the table to flow the materials off.

The most simple set up is to put a few tablespoons of material on top then turn on for say 5 - 12 seconds or so then stop and suck up with a sniffer bottle the values you want and discard the rest. Adjust the slope for your materials for best function.

If you use a metal table on top of the sander you can grind some light grooves in the steel metal as your course drop traps and have the fines spread over steel that is sanded with say 400 - 800 grit sand paper as your drop riffles. You could have different table tops for as ultra fine as you want to go.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

It could take a lot of material rock to off set this cost if the single shaker tends to pulls over 5 - 14 percent more then most sluice boxes. The amount of material processed per hour is going to be a lot less then most sluice boxes.

With this being said if one can shake a given small batch of material to get the heavies down to the bottom of a container then process just the bottom 1/2" or so of material this can be a fairly fast process...

IMHO you're confusing methods. A sluice is a primary recovery method, and a shaker table is more like a final recovery, or secondary method. Most small tables are not much good at primary recovery, but are decent at separating the gold concentrates from black sand.
Jim

 

[Assembler]

IMHO you're confusing methods. A sluice is a primary recovery method, and a shaker table is more like a final recovery, or secondary method. Most small tables are not much good at primary recovery, but are decent at separating the gold concentrates from black sand.
Jim

Most people will agree with what you are laying out.

I will tend not to agree when there is a lot of silt / clay types of minerals in the lights to cause problems with both wet and dry processes (most clay/silt minerals have a strong charge) The other factor to take a test with is how much heavies such as black sands (most black sands have a charge) is there to cause build up issues with many box riffles.

The idea is to remove much waste materials before plugging up a typical riffle box especially silts /clay minerals / unwanted black sands.
In a small thin batch of materials 3 minutes will get almost all free / loose heavies down to the bottom with the lighter materials (that can have a high static charge) above it to quickly remove by a mechanical removal that is fine tuned for your minerals reducing the volume going to the sluice box that may not be cleaned up for a long time.

Then there is the issue of the different frequencies that different minerals as well as different size particles move at. I will spare the boring issue that most people have no interest in. However it is also a factor here and should also be pointed out.

 

[Assembler]

Clay, thanks. I've got two problems keeping me home now. Lack of money is one because of the home water main thing, and the other is I'm nearly crippled because of my left foot. I can walk, but only a few hundred meters, then I have to take a break. I didn't go placer mining a few yesterday due to both.

And I have what I ordered for my shaker table. It was all ordered before the water main hit me like a Mack truck. So I have to stay home, and work with what I have. I still have four 35 gallon trash cans full of ore that GoldTramp put me onto. So I'm hoping the shaker table will help me recover the finer stuff I'm apparently losing off the end of my sluice. I know I'm losing a little, but apparently there's even finer gold you don't see unless it gathers in a line.

Stay tuned for whenever I get this new debt paid off, and can again go out mining/prospecting.

Got my new auto insurance bill today. It's $1300 for six months, and is $200 more than my previous bill, which was $200 from that previous bill. What is it with Allstate? I'm guessing they will increase my next six month bill to $1500 for six months, and if they do, I won't be able to afford driving anymore, which means no gold mining/prospecting.

The bills and issues like these come first.
The ore that GoldTramp put you on to sounds good and will provide you with some fun time.

 

[N-Lionberger]

 

[desertgolddigger]

I've seen this video. Quite a contraption. Unfortunately I have no way to create a miniature version of it, as I I don't own metal working tools. It is beyond my skill abilities anyway.

 

[N-Lionberger]

Doesn’t matter how you make the table surface if you don’t have a good driver it will be useless. You can’t half ass the driver end of a shaker table.

 

[desertgolddigger]

Doesn’t matter how you make the table surface if you don’t have a good driver it will be useless. You can’t half ass the driver end of a shaker table.

I'm quite sure you're right. The problem is, I'm not a machinist, nor do I own tools for such work. I need a motor and mechanism that is already made, and so far I've found zilch on the internet. I'm also not an engineer, nor very good at mathematics, so building my own just isn't possible

And suggestions like wiper blade motors which don't have the power or speed don't help.

I wish I could find out what the smaller shaker tables like the ST-1 and RP-4 use to power them.


I'd been hoping someone might know something about table motivators for the size table I wish to make. It will be some where between 36x18 and 48x24.

EDITED: I finally found a picture that shows enough of what's underneath the RP-4 and ST-1 shaker tables to see the motor driver unit. It's a larger electric motor, with pully system with those square articulating gears attached to a sturdy rod attached to the underside of the table. It's doable if I could just find that articulating mechanism. It's not an arm but a bridged double arm, one wider than the other attached to pivot in a circular motion.

 

[russau]

I thought I remember Keene Eng. had a small table a bout the size your asking about . Great video N-Lionberger !!!!!

 

[Jim in Idaho]

I told Chris (wife) the other day, I might have to start making the simple table drive mechanisms to sell. There wouldn't be much money in it, but there appears to be a need for them. I'm not interested in making the ones I show in the video N-Lionberger posted. They are too labor intensive, and most hobbyist prospectors couldn't afford what I'd have to charge for them. The simple ones I'm thinking could probably be made and sold for under $500. The problem with our hobby is "numbers". There aren't enough of us to justify mass production, so you can't make a production line, with all the jigs, etc.
Jim

 

[Assembler]

I'm quite sure you're right. The problem is, I'm not a machinist, nor do I own tools for such work. I need a motor and mechanism that is already made, and so far I've found zilch on the internet. I'm also not an engineer, nor very good at mathematics, so building my own just isn't possible

Spend the money on anther metal detector to help you find the next 'rich color spot' out there faster. and get some good magnification going to help you read the rocks a lot better.

Continue to use your sluice box set up that you have now.

You could try the HF air powered paint can shaker with a air compressor to help you get a consistent repeatable recovery process and reduce the clay / silt in the wet process.

When you get enough good / rich materials then by what you want to help with the processing of the materials.

Just my two cents worth of ideas here.........

 

[southfork]

I'm quite sure you're right. The problem is, I'm not a machinist, nor do I own tools for such work. I need a motor and mechanism that is already made, and so far I've found zilch on the internet. I'm also not an engineer, nor very good at mathematics, so building my own just isn't possible

And suggestions like wiper blade motors which don't have the power or speed don't help.

I wish I could find out what the smaller shaker tables like the ST-1 and RP-4 use to power them.


I'd been hoping someone might know something about table motivators for the size table I wish to make. It will be some where between 36x18 and 48x24.

EDITED: I finally found a picture that shows enough of what's underneath the RP-4 and ST-1 shaker tables to see the motor driver unit. It's a larger electric motor, with pully system with those square articulating gears attached to a sturdy rod attached to the underside of the table. It's doable if I could just find that articulating mechanism. It's not an arm but a bridged double arm, one wider than the other attached to pivot in a circular motion.

I was just thinking out loud about the wiper motor for Reciprocating Linear Motion with a small vibrator added a lot of rpms wouldn't be needed. I'll keep my thoughts to myself

 

[Assembler]

I was just thinking out loud about the wiper motor for Reciprocating Linear Motion with a small vibrator added a lot of rpms wouldn't be needed. I'll keep my thoughts to myself

Please share your thoughts. Just switch to a larger used surplus motor thats all.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Russ, Angus McKirk had a small (about 24") aluminum table with a simple drive unit. But, it cost $1500 several years ago. They were located in Boise, but were bought out and moved to Canada a few years ago. I don't know if they're still operating.
Jim

 

[desertgolddigger]

Russ, Angus McKirk had a small (about 24") aluminum table with a simple drive unit. But, it cost $1500 several years ago. They were located in Boise, but were bought out and moved to Canada a few years ago. I don't know if they're still operating.
Jim

I think he runs Broken Back Mining Supplies Ltd. in British, Columbia, Canada. I found a Facebook page, but no website page. Apparently he sells equipment for small time miners.