What did you do with your gold prospecting equipment today?

[kazcoro]

Simple question. This is a good place to share ideas and reviews. You bought a new piece of equipment. Let us know what you bought and how it worked. Does it need modification? Did it work as advertised? I will start and let you all know that i asked for a Gold Magic recovery system from Pro- Gold Prospecting right here in AZ as a X-mas gift. What did you do with your gold prospecting equipment today?

 

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[kazcoro]

Well, took a minor step back today. Lost my scoop. Aw, poop!

 

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[DizzyDigger]

Well, took a minor step back today. Lost my scoop. Aw, poop!

Sorry ya lost it...tough to find a good poop scoop these days!

For scooping material into the sluice I use a pet food scoop. They're about $2 at the local
market, and last forever. They float, too.. Pick a nice bright color, so if it does float
away you can find it downriver when it hangs up in the creek.

Sunny today, and even though it was in the high 30's my neighbor (Gnatnutz) and I got
out to the local creek for a while. It's had LOTS of water down it since I was last there,
and there were tons of gravel/sand moved during the high water. Brought the trommel along
and set it up on one of the bars, and over the next 2 hrs we classified two dozen 3 gal buckets
of material through it, and ran the 1/4" material through his Bazooka Prospector. Days are short
up here this time of year, and by 4:00 we packed it up as the light was fading. As I type the #50
minus material is cleaning up right behind me on the miller table...

 

[KevinInColorado]

Went digging for a while yesterday after work. Got it panned out this morning. One +20 flake there, always fun to find something a little bigger in that creek. Also lots of lead from hunters back in the day.

Edit: final weight 1/4 gram...really great!!

 

[kazcoro]

View attachment 932510

Went digging for a while yesterday after work. Got it panned out this morning. One +20 flake there, always fun to find something a little bigger in that creek. Also lots of lead from hunters back in the day.

That's a good take from just panning.

 

[Jeff95531]

THAT is a great spot you got there Kevin! Did the panning get all those fines or did you use your blue bowl too?

 

[tweeta_bear]

Well I won't be mining for sometime to come, so I brought it in out of the cold and gave it the spare bedroom. Sluiceboxes, buckets, backpacks, picks, shovels, classifiers, crevice tools, metal detectors, the whole shooterie! If I can't go outside and play with it at least it's close by where I can hug and care for it.

OMG i laughed so hard. did you kiss it good night? lmao
i cant laugh really i feel the same way.

 

[KevinInColorado]

THAT is a great spot you got there Kevin! Did the panning get all those fines or did you use your blue bowl too?

Hey Jeff, my finish process is all old school, low tech. I classify to +20, +50 and -50. separate all the magnetics to process separately and then pan each size of material separately. The -50 stuff gets the shake and tap method of panning and the small gold just dances right out of the concentrate like magic (LOL it's not magic, it's physics!). As the gold comes out of the concentrates I suck it up and drop it into a small green ceramic soap dish. A bit of swirling in the soap dish separates the very last bit of non-gold...this pic was in the soap dish ...about $2 at Walmart for that high tech finishing tool ;-)

PS processing at the stream was via my Bazooka Gold Trap Prospector...not just a pan.

 

[Jeff95531]

Yesterday I organized and secured ALL of my equipment in the back of my pickup. Then I started in on all of the little problems with my sluice. I had to add extensions on to the rear legs for proper drop. I closed all the holes in the "across" spray bar as they were doing absolutely nothing. Then I opened the holes of both down bars from 1/8" to 5/32. Then added splash guards in the Hopper behind the spray bars. Will fire it up today for further testing. BTW, most of these "fixes" were suggested after y'all saw my last pics and video. THANK YOU!!

Was there any problems? Always.

Lesson one, never make an 8 mile trip into town for two 1/4"x 3" SS nuts and bolts without first measuring said bolts at store for yourself. Someone tossed in a 2 3/4" bolt and I didn't catch it. Also, I used 6" high plastic lawn edging for the splash guards. Had to cut it with tin snips, which wasn't so bad. What was bad was getting it to flatten out @ 50 degrees. I'm glad I was by myself because I'm sure it looked like I was in the fight of my life with a fat 6' Black snake

 

[kazcoro]

I'm glad I was by myself because I'm sure it looked like I was in the fight of my life with a fat 6' Black snake

That's too funny.

 

[Jeff95531]

Well I finished up with the sluice. Went back into town to exchange the 2 3/4" for a three. Picked up a barrel loop slide lock to keep the header box in place when operating. Drilled a total of 24 5/32 holes in the side bars to "open her up" as the cons still seemed to be loading up a bit. Ran some material I had from the falls (flour and teeny shreds) and IBD, it found all the gold (that I could see anyway) in the first riffle. Ran a bag of moss after that...nothing.

Well, I can't piddle with it anymore. The sluice is doing it's job. Time for me to do mine and feed it.

 

[kazcoro]

That's pretty good. Didn't even get past the first riffle. You deserve a pat on the back for that!

 

[kazcoro]

I started my highbanker dredge build yesterday. Got all my aluminum bent up. Turning out pretty good so far. I will get some pics up soon.

 

[kazcoro]

Well, I of course have been constructing quite a bit lately. Working an my highbanker/dredge build. But, I took a few minutes out to modify my drywasher. It's a Gold Buddy. The lip on the grizzly hopper has been driving me nuts lately, and Top Hunt pointed out that if I removed it, material would flow off the back side of it more readily. So, I drilled out the rivets, reversed the piece, and rivetted it back on. Pretty simple, but should make it easier to use now. WIthout further ado, here are some pics. First two are factory original, second two are modded.

 

[kazcoro]

Added a new machine to the fleet yesterday. Picked up a little toy highbanker from Pro Gold here in town. Pretty nice little piece. Tested it this morning, and took it out today. It is slow, but works really good. I would put up a link, but it is a brand new design, so no linky yet.

 

[jog]

I built some mining equipment.

 

[socalocmatt]

I went out and hiked for an hour and dug around for 3 hours. I was doing some tests with a modification to my a52a. Added a classifier to it. Test worked out ok but it can be better. So, this gives me more to play with. I'm a fan of tinkering.

 

[kazcoro]

I built some mining equipment.

So the motor mounted to the unit is only for rotation? And, you need a seperate pump to run water?

 

[jog]

Yes

 

[goldenmojo]

I set my extra pan that I was classifying into down into the creek and 5 seconds later it was 50 feet away riding the waves and turning the corner... I never liked that pan anyway......

 

[Jeff95531]

Yesterday I fired up the sluice and ran 5 gl of non classified. After a couple hours, I learned two important things about my sluice.

#1 ALWAYS check your drop before use and periodically. I always did till yesterday. I was looking at the flow, assuming nothing had changed with drop since last use. At the end of the run with no gold found, I noticed the front legs were angled out a bit more than they should be. How important was that?
#2 Even a 1/2 inch additional drop can blow out all your gold when you are running at peak efficiency.

Today I'll be re-running all from yesterday and 2 1/2 gl of 1/8" classified clay. I hate panning clay so first time for clay in the sluice. After that I'll be all caught up and back out for more this week.