dredging greenhorn

[scottpankey]

i am looking to bild a dredg for nome

 

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[Lanny in AB]

It can be done. I'm sure you can find plans to do it.

Having been to Nome, I know how unpredictable the weather is, and I know how quickly that shallow sea (Bering) can change from smooth, to rough, to extreme.

Do your research carefully and understand how expensive things are in Nome before you go as almost everything has to be shipped in (by air or sea).

I have a buddy that's been doing it for many years and he does quite well, but he's an exception to the many that start and fail.

I hope it works out for you. Send us some pictures of your dredge, and when you hit the gold, send some pictures of that as well.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[omnicron]

Have you ever dredged? Dived? Do you know how a dredge works? Do you have $30,000+ to build a dredge and ship it? Can you afford to go broke? Once you get there, do you have money for living and getting back to the lower 48 after going broke?

There are lots of thread here about people wanting to go to Nome, there are even members here that live there and they will tell you, don't go. The public area is all dredged out. People like you come all time with expensive dredges, go broke, sell their equipment for pennies on the dollar and go home with their tail between their legs. If you have a claim there, your odds are a little better but don't expect to get rich. You would need at least a 8" or bigger to have even a slight chance of breaking even in the short season. Speaking of seasons, if there's a storm, your beached and not making money.
Seriously, do lots of research, this site is a great resource.

 

[scottpankey]

thank you for advice but i wont to test some ideas about gold lost by dredges .

 

[Lanny in AB]

All the best to you as you run your tests,

Lanny

 

[scottpankey]

if you have iney info it will save me time and money

 

[omnicron]

IF the dredge is set up properly, the losses are very small, not even worth the effort. You can spend 100's to 1000's of dollars trying to capture or recover this "lost" gold. No sluice will ever have a 100% capture rate that I am aware of. The highest I heard of was 98% but these test are in controlled test in IDEAL conditions. Real world...who knows. You would have to carefully pan all your tailing to know. Good luck.

 

[scottpankey]

thank you for the email . that is some of the info i am looking for . that may be the reason miners use a 30 foot sluce .

 

[kazcoro]

Check this out. Tons of info here.

 

[omnicron]

thank you for the email . that is some of the info i am looking for . that may be the reason miners use a 30 foot sluce .

Um, even the big commercial ops using 30' sluices don't cant every piece of gold. Your not going to put a 30' long sluice on a dredge either...err... well you could but that would be some massive floats, barge, pontoons to support the weight of the water going down that box. That would be trick though @ 1" per foot. You would need a monster pump/motor.

 

[scottpankey]

no it was what got me to thinking about gold lost by short sluce dredges . that would be a monster . i was thinking of puting a derocker on to slow the water and keep large rock out of the sluce . slower water will alow fine gold to drop .

 

[Hoser John]

You never stated-or not seen- ocean or land as both done. Now the specific gravity of any saltwater makes fine gold retention MUCH more of a chore. Now watch that next show and you'll also pickup--if your a dredger that is-the immense amount of foam that salty brew causes in a dredgebox. Why do you think the pros go for floating barges and backhoes to run their gravels. Clear water is ez to do with a flared jet,over/under sluice is the absolute best way to go BUT add in that pesky salt and the fun ends. Archimedes figured this out many 100s a years ago. Take a object 1 cu.ft that weighs 63 pounds,put in clear water and watch it sink like a rock BUT in saltwater that same thang floats,now add in that frothy sea foam and D'oh more trouble than the endangered species act-John

 

[Armchair prospector]

There is a guy on the GPAA forum that is looking for one more partner to do some inland mining in Alaska. You may want to consider this before you go all out as this may be something to try first.

 

[scottpankey]

john this is info i am trying to get . i nead lots more info befor i try .

 

[fowledup]

Better use of time and more pay in finding concentrated new pockets then 're-running unconcentrated tailings fanned out across the ocean floor looking for lost fine gold. Think of it this way your focusing your efforts using the same technology on material that based on those conditions has already been run with at least a 75% efficiency factor. What is your advantage? In order for it to work (pay) you need to have a better mouse trap. If not your re-running someone else's tailings that in all probability has at the minimum 75% less gold.
Do you have a place to stay indoors, out of the weather? Trust me if you are from the lower forty eight you do not have a firm grasp of "summer" in Ak. on the Bering Sea. Be honest with yourself- can you live in a tent for a month or two? Can you do it constantly wet, with no place to get dry? The cameras don't film the scrappy weather so they don't ruin there equipment. Don't know if your allowed to or not in Nome, but where I was you were allowed to live aboard your boat. I would strongly recommend and consider this in your research. As if the mining isn't hard enough, there is nothing more demoralizing and self defeating, then being soaking wet, cold to the bone, and realize it's time to get out of bed and get to work. Lol!

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

You should start by reading my slightly old Getting Started in Nome Guide: Gold

You should also try spelling a little better, good spelling makes it easier to think of you as someone intelligent and thus worth spending time to help.

$30k as mentioned by omnicron is a very lowball estimate to get a super basic operation to Nome. The cheapest shipping will be about $7k for a 20' connex, just from Tacoma to Nome. Typically, a well outfitted operation would be about $90K.

No one offshore uses a 30' box, well maybe one operation, but their barge is about 150 feet long. Only a few operations even have a dredge over 30' long. Worrying about the 10% to 20% loss for a 6" or 8" operation that only gets 20ozt a year is really not worth it. A few operations screen and pump their undersize material (the portion with the vast majority of the gold, say 3/4"-minus) to another box. We do it on my operation, but our box is only 4' wide by 16' long. We control loss by cleaning the first 2' daily, and the next 2' once or twice a week. The next 4' monthly. There is almost no gold in the rest of the box, maybe only 50ozt by the end of the season.

That was a joke, there is not 50ozt in the second half of our box, maybe 6ozt, after 4 months. And we probably put more gold in our box than the bottom half of the fleet combined, and we are maybe in the top 7 in the fleet; people don't really advertise their numbers, the point is, there is not enough of a value in the tailings to be worth going after. It's been tried before, many times.

There is a saying in Nome: If you focus on specks, all you will get are specks.

 

[scottpankey]

sorry about my spelling . not after what is lost .i am hear to learn more about it befor i try .

 

[omnicron]

You should start by reading my slightly old Getting Started in Nome Guide: Gold

You should also try spelling a little better, good spelling makes it easier to think of you as someone intelligent and thus worth spending time to help.

$30k as mentioned by omnicron is a very lowball estimate to get a super basic operation to Nome. The cheapest shipping will be about $7k for a 20' connex, just from Tacoma to Nome. Typically, a well outfitted operation would be about $90K.

No one offshore uses a 30' box, well maybe one operation, but their barge is about 150 feet long. Only a few operations even have a dredge over 30' long. Worrying about the 10% to 20% loss for a 6" or 8" operation that only gets 20ozt a year is really not worth it. A few operations screen and pump their undersize material (the portion with the vast majority of the gold, say 3/4"-minus) to another box. We do it on my operation, but our box is only 4' wide by 16' long. We control loss by cleaning the first 2' daily, and the next 2' once or twice a week. The next 4' monthly. There is almost no gold in the rest of the box, maybe only 50ozt by the end of the season.

That was a joke, there is not 50ozt in the second half of our box, maybe 6ozt, after 4 months. And we probably put more gold in our box than the bottom half of the fleet combined, and we are maybe in the top 7 in the fleet; people don't really advertise their numbers, the point is, there is not enough of a value in the tailings to be worth going after. It's been tried before, many times.

There is a saying in Nome: If you focus on specks, all you will get are specks.

I just pull a number out of my arse...I was thinking if someone had a 6" dredge already (keene, proline, ect.) and shipped it there and stayed in the shallower public area $30k would about cover it.

 

[omnicron]

sorry about my spelling . not after what is lost .i am hear to learn more about it befor i try .

If you know nothing about dredging then if I were you buy some basic prospecting tools, gold pans, hand sluice, buckets and classifiers and get out and start learning. You will need to have excellent panning skills, understand how a sluice works, you need to learn how to recover gold first. You need to learn to walk before you run.

After you learn this important stuff, buy yourself a dredge and learn how to operate it, how to maintain it, how to dive safely. Mining is not a easy way to make money. It takes lots of money, hard work, hours and hardship just to get a few specs of gold. What you see on the tv shows for the 15min that each mining group is given for camera time is condensed from prolly 50-60 hours of actual work time, maybe more.

Seriously dude, you need to start with the small stuff 'till you learn then move on up to the big boy toys. I'm not trying to bring you down, you obviously have ambition but ambition alone wont get you gold in the box, case in point, Vern Ankinsan from the Wild Ranger, he has how many dredges, has put his family in the poor house, owes how many thousands of dollars and the guy doesn't know the first thing about gold recovery. Hell my 4yr old daughter knows more then he does about gold recovery.
Then you have Steve Ridell, what can I say about him that everyone doesn't already know...but he doesn't know the first thing about gold recovery or setting up a dredge that wont kill someone.

 

[Hoser John]

hahahaha spelling never put a single speck in my stash in over 58 years a mining jus' knot wrth gettn' panties all up'n a bind ovr- and myne gott puncuation gives me horrendous nightmares too o the horror