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.

 

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[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

Guys, not sure I'll ever get the shaker table done. The reason is that I watched a video from Hard Rock University, and saw something so simple, I wish I'd seen this video a few years ago, before investing in a retort, mercury, and a lot of other things.

What did I see that had me almost banging my head against a wall? It was a lab beaker with stopper, with two metal tubes inserted into holes in the stopper. Clear plastic tubing is attached to each tube. One tube I attached to a round wooden plug with tube connected to another metal tube in that wooden plug. The wooden plug is inserted in the wet/dry vac port instead of the normal vacuum hose. The other tube is cut at an angle like on a snuffer bottle.

Since I've learned to be fairly apt at panning 500 minus gold into the corner of a pan. I can now use the vac snuffer to suck up that gold, which gets deposited into the beaker. Of course, my panning isn't perfect, and I do get a little black sand along with the gold, but who cares? I've eliminated the need for the retort and mercury.

If anyone is interested, please PM me concerning the retort, and mercury. I'm retiring them as soon as I get the courage to run the retort one time to recover the gold I slurped up with that mercury. Oh, yes, I also have a mask rated for mercury vapors I won't need anymore.

Do you have a link to this beaker vid? Everything I find looks like a bong !

 

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[desertgolddigger]

Do you have a link to this beaker vid? Everything I find looks like a bong !

I can't find that video. I can't remember how I found it, but the system consists of a small wet/dry shop vac, a

Corning Pyrex #4980-500, 500ml Erlenmeyer Flask with Rubber Stopper ,​

which I found on Amazon, as well as the plastic tubing., and three lengths of aluminum tubing of various lengths.

There wasn't a plan for this system. I just watched the video, made a list, and fabricated the parts. You need to drill two holes in the rubber stopper that are a tiny fraction small than the aluminum tubing. Make sure you keep one tube an inch or more from the bottom of the beaker, and the other tube an inch higher than the intake tube.

I measured the hole in my shop vac, and then got one of my round hole saws, and cut out a plug from a 2x4 piece of wood. I drilled the central hole to match the third aluminum tube, and epoxied it in the drilled hole. You may need to do some sanding to get your wood plug to fit in the vac hose hole. I got lucky, and happened to have the correct size hole saw. It fits snuggly.

This is a no brainer to make. If I can make it, anyone can.