Prospecting in Western Washington (Infinium, GMT, Hookah, Gold Cube, ATV, and Dredge)

[Brasmussen2006]

Hello all!

I am Geology Student at Western Washington University about to earn my BS this fall. I spent my last few summers gold panning and sluicing around King County, where my parents live. I’ve been collecting quite a few gadgets for gold prospecting off of Craigslist, here is what I have so far:

------Garrett Infinium LS with waterproof headphones, large DD coil, 8 inch mono coil, and warranty - 600 Dollars
------Minelab Excalibur II - 450 Dollars
------Minelab Pro find Pin Pointer - 150 Dollars
------Buying a White’s GMT for 500 for the tiny shallow gold my Infinium may miss.

------Airline AL E160 - Two Person Electric air compressor dive system (Hookah), with two 60 foot hoses and regulators. Good for two people to 25 feet deep, or one person to 60 feet deep, and 120 feet out. Connects to generator - 450 Dollars
------Honda 2000i Inverter (2000 watt portable suitcase generator) - 350 Dollars
------4 Stack Gold Cube - 300 Dollars

------Going to make a homemade classifier for gold cube
------Going to make a homemade neodymium magnet sluice for before gold cube
------May have an extra sluice catching gold in my tailings if I still have the square footage of riffle area available. I should because the magnet sluice will be riffle-less, meaning it shouldn’t count as a sluice.
------Wet vac for sucking material, connected to generator
------ATV with Trailer for hauling my gear behind it
------May buy a dredge to run into my classifier, magnet sluice, and gold cube.
------Three water pumps, running off of 3 types of power
------Dive light, which I still need to buy.
------Wetsuit
------Go pro
------Car batteries
------Tarps for keeping generator and diving air compressor dry.
------Stands for classifier and magnet sluice, need to build.

Let me know what you think and if you have any advice on how my gear will hold up on catching that fine flaky gold in washington. let me know what modifications you think i could make or gear i should look into. If you are in the area and know where some gold is, we can sure find it together. i should have everything necessary to find it and get it out of the river.

 

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[425jesse]

Sounds like you have a whole load of goodies. How have things come along since you posted this?

 

[sambiggins2012]

Gotta love the Gold Cube!Gold Cube - Free Shipping - Gold Rush Trading Post

 

[unbrokendreamz]

where did you get the 4 stack gold cube for 300 they retail closer to 500 for the 4 stack.

 

[BC1969]

where did you get the 4 stack gold cube for 300 they retail closer to 500 for the 4 stack.

Craig's list ?

 

[chirper97]

Brasmussen2006, Keep us posted. Your thread may develop into one of the most useful on this forum. Let us know the positives AND negatives of your experiences.

 

[unbrokendreamz]

i saw that after i posted. what a steal of a deal!!! i wish i can find a deal like that lol. i hunt craigslist daily.

Craig's list ?

 

[DaveGetSome]

Just joined and found this thread. Hell of a set up. Anyone know Brasmussen2006 ? Rattle his cage, let him know people are interested. Functioning science is awesome to watch for sure thank you. Looking forward to updates.

 

[Brasmussen2006]

Just checked my account for the first time since moving back from Hawaii with all my Craigslist goodies and such haha, sorry for the wait. I will send some info now, and much more this weekend after my sediment test tomorrow. I am currently finishing up my BS in geology at western Washington university, I'll be done March 2015. This summer I may stick around Washington and prospect with my gadgets above and below the waterline, or intern at gold mines in Alaska or Idaho. I am currently taking structural geology, stratigraphy and sedimentation, and advanced petrography (optical mineralogy). All upper division geology, very cool stuff. Next quarter I will be on my geologic mapping and methods field camp in Utah and California for 8 weeks and I will be hauling my Gold pan and geo hammer every step of the way. All I have left after that is geophysics, physics, and marine paleontology for next year. I am virtually the only geology student at my school who prospects, pans, metal detects, etc. I did my senior project in 2009 for high school about gold panning and have collected rocks my whole life, as my grandfather was a huge rock hound too. both him and his wife were born in cle elum around 1910. My grandfathers father was a brick mason and built "The Brick" in Roslyn around 1896, the oldest tavern in Washington, and the brick bread oven in the black diamond bakery, which also was/is the oldest in production of its type for the NW. Another interesting note, wwu got rid 99% of one their old USGS libraries a few years ago. And as i seem to be the only geology student actually interested in interesting geology, I was able to spend the year daily filing my truck interior with boxes of free usgs maps and lettered series's dating back to the Ore deposits of Utah, the 40th usgs professional paper from 1905 in hard copy. I gained a short lived nickname of the geo-vulture from my class mates haha. The stack of books I ended up with would be over 80 feet tall, everyone else in the department only wanted a few inches of books haha.

I am currently doing a my strat/sed research project on the proper angle, water discharge, and sediment input rate for my basic proline sluice box. Should be a cool study. I am gonna run 20ish trials and see which combinations get the greatest gold deposition in the sluice box, using my gram of hand panned western Washington gold as a test, mixed in with a calculated artificial slurry of fluvial sands and black sands.

I will tell you about other studies tomorrow, I did one on heavy mineral percentages in the nooksack, for geomorphology.