Questions from a newbie

[Orien]

Ok here i go,

First question, right now i am just using a gold pan to go mining with. I am having a great time but i am curious as to how much gold is normal with just a pan in a day. I think i am doing well but i dont know. (Maybe you could post a picture if you have one)
Second question, would it be hard to run a 2" highbanker dredge combo with one person. I would really like to get one but i dont have any friends yet in this wide world of prospecting. what works better for a small operation the highbanker combo or just a small dredge? I have to drive three hours to get to any placer locations and i have to make it worth my while.
And my last question for the night is how do i meet people to learn about prospecting, when i do go out i see a couple miners here and there, but i get the feeling that if i get close to them they wont be to happy. like today i saw a guy using a highbanker combo and i wanted to go over and talk to him but when i started to approach i got the look of death.(at that point i turned right around).
Any ways, any help you can give me would be greatly appriciated.
Oh, by the way i live in oregon and do my prospecting on Quartzville creek. If anybody is ever heading that way and needs a grunt to do some shovel work, i would love to lend a hand and try to learn something.

Chris
Deadshot@charter.net

[Highmountain]

And my last question for the night is how do i meet people to learn about prospecting, when i do go out i see a couple miners here and there, but i get the feeling that if i get close to them they wont be to happy. like today i saw a guy using a highbanker combo and i wanted to go over and talk to him but when i started to approach i got the look of death.(at that point i turned right around).

A lot of us are solitary souls. Usually when we go into the canyons by ourselves its because we chose to do it that way. I sometimes run into single individuals tromping along a remote trail with a shovel for a walking stick obviously going to or coming from someplace up ahead or behind me. We usually nod and grunt at one another, sometimes even smile as we pass.

You can probably find someone to work with you by putting an ad here or joining some local group if there is one.

As for the other questions you asked, the answers depend entirely on the site conditions, the amount of time you have to work and lots of other things. There's no single catch-all answer.

[Hoser John]

Chris, A highbanker is a good choice,it gives ya 2 options,really 3.You can sluice,hydro,or dredge.I'd buy a proline because the rocks are introduced under the screen to the box and runs like a dredge should.The normal keene is a pain with gravel on bars and your big gold running out with the tailings. Me I'd buy a good gold bug 2 or Tesoro Lobo supertraq.Requires no water,checks a cubic foot a gravel a second,and ya can throw gravels in a sluice and really do some work,lighter,no permits,no seasons and on and on. When it comes time to go home after a hard days work you just stand up and go-no engines,boxes,buckets,bla,bla to haul miles back to your truck??Tons a au 2 u 2-John

[lab rat]

How much gold you get in your pan in a day is a factor of several things:

1) How much gold is in your area to begin with (varies from place to place depending on how time and Mother Nature laid it out)

2) How evenly distributed it is (if its concentrated on a thin line in a stream bottom vs. scattered evenly throughout a region)

3) What form its in (heavy nuggets are easier to trap than flour or tiny flakes, free gold is easier than gold in matrix)

4) How savvy you are at locating the richer spots (do you know what types of places trap moving gold?)

5) How efficient you are at panning

6) How long and hard you work during your 'day'

[Orien]

well the reason i am asking is, i wanna know if the gold that i get excited about is worth getting excited about, or if i should be finding a better spot. Like last sunday i was out and found a slab of fractured bed rock right above the water line. There was about a foot of cleen cracked bedrock above the water then it became a fine gravel. I started peeling up bedrock chunks and gathering the material, panning a sample pan here and there. (since i am so far away from actual gold bearing spots i like to clean out cracks and take the material home for later). I was really excited to find 5 to 10 colors ( to me that is any gold that is remotely visible) in a pan. My question is, is this about average for a decent spot or better or worse. I am still working the material while at work( i got like 3 5 gallon buckets full) and the biggest pieces are like the size of a large flea or something like that. there are like 1 of those in every 3 half full eight inch pans. And there a like three pieces in each pan that are like half that. I hope i made sense there, it is late.

Chris

[Highmountain]

You're making sense, Chris. But there's no 'average' where finding gold is concerned. The average is you don't find any. If you found some it's worth getting excited about, but the excitement's over the potential, rather than over the flea-sized pieces. It takes a lot of fleas to make a grain. But you've found a place where nature concentrated some gold, so that's worth being excited about and worth chasing as long as it holds out. A foot over you might run into a lot more small stuff, or some larger stuff. Or as you work you might discover the stuff you are working accumulates quickly enough to make it worth some extra excitement.

I doubt there's any prospector who could find what you've found and just leave it without finding out more.

I worked on a club claim once near Santa Fe where I was getting stuff in about the quantity and size you describe. I was working cracks and breaking out layers about the way you are in a dry canyon and working a homemade hand crank gold screw sort of device of my own design. I never broke into anything better, though I worked it a number of days. But on the last day I was out there three other guys came in and started bringing out bucket loads of the same stuff I was working, hauling it to a dry washer and leaving it there in buckets for about three hours. About the time I quit they gathered around the dry-washer and while one was classifying the other two worked the dry-washer. In the space of a few minutes they found an ounce and three-quarters.

There's just no way of telling.

[Chris in BC]

Chris, stick with it man. I remember when I was 16 , I lived at a real good spot on a river for the whole summer and worked it panning almost daily. At the end of the summer I bet I didnt get 1/8 oz total of super fines and didnt even get close to a nugget. A little experience and a few years of fun taught me a little and now I tend to do a little better *wink*
Don't worry about the take so much, enjoy and learn, the gold will come!

A 2" highbanker is super easy to run on your own, nice thing about working on your own is you can go at your own speed, break when you wanna and there is no split, keep in mind the conversation sucks though.

I spent 3 days underwater last year dredging with a fricken Dixie Chicks song running through my head non-stop, finaly got the song out of my head when a partner showed up and offered a little conversation.
Good luck to ya,
Chris

[Orien]

ROFL, Chris i know what you mean. I work with my fiance who likes the Dixie Chicks a little to much.

But there's no 'average' where finding gold is concerned. The average is you don't find any. If you found some it's worth getting excited about, but the excitement's over the potential, rather than over the flea-sized pieces.

Thank you Jack that just gave me a whole new way to look at it. Going out and teaching my self has been tough, but places like this are really helping me.

Do you need a permit to run a highbanker in Oregon? I am thinking about getting a Proline 1.5" Combo unit. The price is really good and i do all my work with a hand trowel anyways.

Chris

[aarthrj3811]

Orien?.. When I was a newbie I walked by this one part of the creek for a whole season because all the books and other people said there would be no gold there. The last day of the season I stopped because the pile of stuff I had on my Dredge fell off. I decided to Dredge there and ended up with ? oz.that day. I spent the next season dredging that spot. This hobby is a learn as you go and the more you learn the more gold you get?.Art