Kevin in Colorado...and elsewhere

[Duckwalk]

Thats some good looking stuff! is this from the honey hole you had going a while back?

 

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[KevinInColorado]

Thats some good looking stuff! is this from the honey hole you had going a while back?

Yes sir, it is!

The massive storms completely filled in my hole from before so some of the time I was digging recently deposited material but the overall take was still decent.

Like your little creek, this runs very shallow but the creekbed of paydirt is surprisingly deep and gets richer as you go deeper in most cases.

 

[mytimetoshine]

Love the color of this stuff. Very uniform in size and shape too.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Got out for a while this morning with GoldpannerDave in a confidential location

I spent most of the time working with my Bazooka Sniper high banking setup. I am losing some fine gold with it so I either need less flow thru the tubes or a slower feed rate (doubtful as it's pretty slow now) or more water overall. Going to try a bigger pump and see what happens.

Love your thoughts on this.

Anyway, good times with Dave

Here's the 0.05 grams of gold

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Got out for a while this morning with GoldpannerDave in a confidential location

I spent most of the time working with my Bazooka Sniper high banking setup. I am losing some fine gold with it so I either need less flow thru the tubes or a slower feed rate (doubtful as it's pretty slow now) or more water overall. Going to try a bigger pump and see what happens.

Love your thoughts on this.

Anyway, good times with Dave

Here's the gold
View attachment 1189432

Yes, we had a great time; however, while I like your gold, you are correct--seems you normally get more fines. Like I said on the creek, I won't be able to work my cons until later.

Thanks again; it was a great birthday adventure!

 

[BagLady]

All I can say is SWEET!! Thanks for sharing.

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Got out for a while this morning with GoldpannerDave in a confidential location

I spent most of the time working with my Bazooka Sniper high banking setup. I am losing some fine gold with it so I either need less flow thru the tubes or a slower feed rate (doubtful as it's pretty slow now) or more water overall. Going to try a bigger pump and see what happens.

Love your thoughts on this.

Anyway, good times with Dave

Here's the 0.05 grams of gold
View attachment 1189432

Kevin, For about 3+ hours of work on the creek, that still looks pretty good. If you got the fines you usually get, that would be 0.1 grams or close.

I would say that if you really were blowing out the fines, maybe one of your larger units would work better (larger trap). With the larger pump you are getting, you could still fluidize the bed, use a bit less slope and send the rest of the water to help clean the slick plate and grizzly. Of course, if I don't get much in the way of fines, if could be that there just weren't too many fines there--but the larger pieces are very nice indeed.

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Oh, my other thought, there was so much black sand there, maybe the bed wasn't fluidized _enough_ and the fines never really sank down; that was happening with my panning of my clean-ups. I need to remove the magnetic black sands and re-work my cons.

I really don't have enough experience using a Bazooka in a high-banking set up (none, other than watching you yesterday). A few of the other posters here, including Goodyguy, have done some work with it high-banking; maybe they can give you some more ideas.

 

[arizau]

Got out for a while this morning with GoldpannerDave in a confidential location

I spent most of the time working with my Bazooka Sniper high banking setup. I am losing some fine gold with it so I either need less flow thru the tubes or a slower feed rate (doubtful as it's pretty slow now) or more water overall. Going to try a bigger pump and see what happens.

Love your thoughts on this.

Anyway, good times with Dave

Here's the 0.05 grams of gold or
View attachment 1189432

Maybe contrive a ramp (for water and feed to flow down) and insert it on the slick plate area while highbanking so that the sluice itself can be run flat (or more flat) rather than at an angle. That will insure that the fluid bed area is evenly active front to rear allowing better settling potential/efficiency. You will probably have to scrape some larger material off the grizzly but I think you said you are doing that now.

GoldpannerDave may be right in that a bed of only semi suspended or settled blacksand/heavies may have formed under and around the tubes creating a false bottom thus restricting the volume for displacement and settling to take effect.

Good Luck

PS Too little flow flow through the tubes certainly effects efficiency but I am not convinced that extreme flow will actually lift material from the bottom once it is already settled. There may be a zone created around and above the jets that hinders settling though. I have no way of proving this but I think this zone(s) is somewhat static in that it keeps or layerizes the heavies/hydraulic equivalent material while ejecting lights, etc. but when flow is shut off they will still stay in the chamber. If a strong water flow was injected from the bottom up then that would be a different story but it would still create zones of concentration by weight or hydraulic equivalence.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Good points AZAU. I was running it really flat so I don't think that is the issue. On further thought, your comments about fluidization may be right on target. I may be losing fines due to lack of sufficient fluidization. Gotta get a bigger pump!

 

[Jeff95531]

 

[KevinInColorado]

Two of my heroes!

 

[INDEAD]

Kevin, For about 3+ hours of work on the creek, that still looks pretty good. If you got the fines you usually get, that would be 0.1 grams or close.

I would say that if you really were blowing out the fines, maybe one of your larger units would work better (larger trap). With the larger pump you are getting, you could still fluidize the bed, use a bit less slope and send the rest of the water to help clean the slick plate and grizzly. Of course, if I don't get much in the way of fines, if could be that there just weren't too many fines there--but the larger pieces are very nice indeed.

I have had the same problem with black sands packing the bed to the point of blowing out fines. I have been trying to figure a way to make some cones to funnel the water, which should increase the PSI, has anyone tried this?

 

[KevinInColorado]

Met up with Brianc053 and WesternMassGold today near Bernardston MA. Brian came up from New Jersey on a business trip so it was the perfect time for a little afternoon meet up.

WesternMassGold has a well deserved reputation for sniffing out the New England gold and he proved his skill again today. He arrived in the morning and picked a spot that turned out just great. It was a short walk but in an open area where, as is so common, most people had dug within 20 feet of the point the trail hits the water. We were up stream just a bit in a spot with slate bedrock sitting vertical and running across the Brook. I spent the whole time with just a pan - mossing and busting/cleaning out bedrock cracks.
Here's the proof there's decent sized flakes in the Berkshires! I was finding multiple colors in every pan, I think I only had one colorless pan all day too. (N.B. This was finish panned in the hotel room soap dish!) this is WesternMassGold going after the slate Here's BrianC with his custom made hand dredge cleaning off some bedrock. He found this picker(!!) I sure would love to get back there soon as there's a lot more interesting rock to bust...which is amazing as it seems untouched by other miners.

Anyway, we had a great time together. I hope you all get out soon too!

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Two of my heroes!

Both in great series!

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Met up with Brianc053 and WesternMassGold today near Bernardston MA. Brian came up from New Jersey on a business trip so it was the perfect time for a little afternoon meet up.

WesternMassGold has a well deserved reputation for sniffing out the New England gold and he proved his skill again today. He arrived in the morning and picked a spot that turned out just great. It was a short walk but in an open area where, as is so common, most people had dug within 20 feet of the point the trail hits the water. We were up stream just a bit in a spot with slate bedrock sitting vertical and running across the Brook. I spent the whole time with just a pan - mossing and busting/cleaning out bedrock cracks.
View attachment 1190405 Here's the proof there's decent sized flakes in the Berkshires! I was finding multiple colors in every pan, I think I only had one colorless pan all day too. (N.B. This was finish panned in the hotel room soap dish!) View attachment 1190406 this is WesternMassGold going after the slate View attachment 1190407 Here's BrianC with his custom made hand dredge cleaning off some bedrock. He found this picker(!!) View attachment 1190408 I sure would love to get back there soon as there's a lot more interesting rock to bust...which is amazing as it seems untouched by other miners.

Anyway, we had a great time together. I hope you all get out soon too!
View attachment 1190410 View attachment 1190411

Very interesting post!! And nice gold, too. Slate being vertical reminds me of Breckenridge, Colorado. They found some great gold there. You guys did great, too, given the location! I mean, that looks like you got about as much as you did Sunday in Colorado--and just with a pan also. I am impressed.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Thanks Dave. It does look to be a similar amount of gold; I'll know more when I get a chance to weigh it. That said, 4 hours of panning was perhaps equated to about a two hours of fiddling with my highbanker setup in CO...

 

[brianc053]

Kevin, that was a great day yesterday! Thanks for joining up with me, and I'm glad WesternMassGold could join us also. I would enjoy prospecting with you anywhere, any time my friend!

By the way, I put that picker in a place of honor (one of those little round display thingies with the white foam) because that's the largest picker I've found "in the wild".
Hopefully that's a title it will not hold for very long, if you know what I mean.

Here's my "group selfie" picture from the trip:

 

[GoldpannerDave]

From last Sunday's outing with Kevin



I don't have a lot of fines either, though I have some material to put on the Miller table. Kevin, remember I was wondering if I was feeding too fast? Not only did we have a ton of black sands, but I was used to my Miner, where feeding is not a problem.

So perhaps my fines did not settle in the trap. Go run the tailings when you get back to Colorado!

 

[KevinInColorado]

Hey Dave, was a good time together as ever! I think we dug overburden most of the time...next time, I'm digging a little more toward the main flow of the stream where the overburden is stripped away. Looking forward to seeing your Miller table results.

And yes I'll run those tailings if the creek doesn't sweep em downstream before I get back there

PS that side of that creek usually produces 3-4x what we got ...gotta go try again!