How good were the old timers?

[calgeologist]

I have a place that i have been checking out all winter that is the drainage of a hydraulic mine. There is only one drain for the tailings and i know a sluice spilled into the drain during operation.

My question is how much gold went through there sluices? Im not looking for a actual number, but would you think it would be enough to explore the area?

Part of me thinks that there must have been a good amount that slipped through and ended up in the tailings. This might just be me hoping for something that doesn't exist

Only problem is that it is extremely difficult to access and its a bid too steep and slick to attempt to check it out during the wet season.

Thanks for the responses

 

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[Jeffro]

Old hydraulic workings are good to check out. Lots of gold went right on through if the equipment wasn't running properly, which was frequently.

 

[Klondikeike]

This is a great place to seek gold...find the actual place where the sluice dumped...that's where you'll find lots of fine gold... they often used sticks as riffels and if they took the time to make some riffels, they were probably of wood...rarely used metal... to difficult to work with easiy back then...

Excessive water flow, wrong sluice angles and poor equipment allowed them to capture a wopping 60% to 80% at best in many cases... their failure is your reclasification of the gold into one spot..at the end of the sluice race...

Good luck...hope it works well for you...

Klondike..

 

[Hoser John]

Educate and prosper as thats what winter is for. Every state has a geo/mines dept with the exact info you seek. Size,shape,configuration utilized,results from yardage,depth to bedrock,kt of gold etc etc-example of what ya need-A SHAKER WITH A 2" SCREEN WAS USED FOR CLASSIFICATION=all nuggets bigger than 2" went BACK into creek or same such info. Read and prosper,sorry gotta run as busy as LL today-John

 

[jmoller99]

A lot of 30 mesh and smaller was lost because they did not have sluices set up to catch that (miners moss was not available then). Dredge areas also lost a fair amount too (as suggested, probably as much as 40%). Hydraulic miners often ran the water too fast to catch anything small, even with long sluices.

Getting a sluice that can capture lighter material would be a good start.

Often gold that is tied up in clay simply went thru the old timers systems and are now in the tailings piles. These can be good sized nuggets and are often what is found on old dredge sites with a good Gold capable metal detector.

 

[kuger]

It also was not uncommon to lose whole sluice header box's from cave in's and boulders falling.Aside from hand shoveling mass amounts of gold was sometimes lost