UNDERWATER gold dredge ***HOW CAN I BUILD ONE***ideas?

[keepmehumblelord]

hey everyone, so im sure you have seen Glen Lebaron on bearing sea gold. His dredge is a genious idea and its mainly for slower moving water but i know the pools of slow moving water are drop off points as far as gold goes. I would like to build one this summer if possible and does anyone have any idea how to build one. I dont understand the dragon on the gold show where do the big rocks go because its a enclose sluice box. I really want to understand how to build one. ANY SUGGESTIONS. its not rocket science but it will take much in depth precision to make everything work.

 

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[Reed Lukens]

YES! Thanks Reed. Kaveman (and Steve Herschbach) where instrumental sharing their information when we made ours. I forgot about those guys over there back then

ratled

You're welcome
Kaveman and I can't remember the other person who got me going on mine which is my 8" Keene Sub with the last section of riffles removed and a custom ¼" to ¾" expanding grizzly with a hopper going to my 4" Proline box above on my 6" homebuilt frame. It worked ok but I still got some fines out of the tailings. I don't see any advantage with Glen's Dragon dredge at all because the best classification and gold retention still comes above water. I don't see the Dragon as being any more portable then any standard surface dredge. He used an 18hp motor like Dave Franks set up didn't he? The most that I remember about the Dragon was that it was always lost at sea...

 

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[ratled]

You're welcome
Kaveman and I can't remember the other person who got me going on mine which is my 8" Keene Sub with the last section of riffles removed and a custom ¼" to ¾" expanding grizzly with a hopper going to my 4" Proline box above on my 6" homebuilt frame. It worked ok but I still got some fines out of the tailings. I don't see any advantage with Glen's Dragon dredge at all because the best classification and gold retention still comes above water. I don't see the Dragon as being any more portable then any standard surface dredge. He used an 18hp motor like Dave Franks set up didn't he? The most that I remember about the Dragon was that it was always lost at sea...

Sounds like a guy who use to mine the Feather we know as Subbie George. He stomps around your area some still and mines ID now. Has a very similar rig as ours and really got good gold out of the Feather. Mostly fines with mods like you mention. Subbie fine gold retention gets a bad rap form those that have never used one...... It is also amazing that one can use two 9hp motors to run an 8" dredge.

ratled

 

[Harley Nathan]

Hi all, back in the 50 60's I formed a Construction Diving company and owned it for 19 years finally selling out to a couple of ex NZ Navy divers. I took on a job with and old college mate, selling heavy engineering equipment. I became friendly with one of my customers who dabbled with building jet boats. He invited me to spend a long weekend with him at the Aorere River in the south Island of NZ. He told me that this river gave up a lot of gold back in the 1914 -20 and had many prospectors panning gold, so it might be a good idea to bring some diving gear as those days they working where they could access without diving gear. But later someone did take a Seebee Gorman to one of the rivers there and almost lost his life with a flash flood. So I went hunting in my shed for some of my old gear, 2in venturi 11/2in high pressure pump and hoses. He arrived with his jet boat and we set off to get the ferry. ( I was domiciled in Wellington those days) we left Wellington ar 8.30 arrived in Picton at 12 noon. After driving for 61/2 hrs we reached our destination and setup camp. Those days a Prospecting licence cost 50cents at any NZ postoffice, We went up the river to a gorge and when we came back, on the way we selected what we thought would be a likely spot to try, so got all our gear ashore and put it all together and down I went into twelve feet of absolutely clear water, there was a slate shelf at around eight feet down so I started at the base and removed rocks around five to sixin as I worked the venturi down It was not long before I saw what I thought to be a piece of gold. Not a nugget nor a picker, but a thin flake a third the size of my little finger nail. I went up to show my mate and he let out a hoot yea we were on a good spot. He had boiled the billy so we had lunch and emptied the material out of the riffles in to his brand new gold pan and started panning out the rubbish it was not long before we saw gold nothing big but a lot of flakes and fine. I knew nothing about gold dredging but he knew how to pan as he had done it before. So that was my introduction to gold dredging. I had taken two diving cylinders and they lasted about four hrs and in that time, when we weighed up back home we had just over am ounce of gold. Worth those days $60 an ounce, good money then. Needless to say I was back a year later with a 15in dredge. But that's another story.