Increase production

[2020hindsite]

Before this season kicks off for me I was hoping to Mabe get some tips to increase production/amount of material I process.
The obvious answer is "buy a larger dredge" but aside from that any tips to run more material or be more efficient would be very helpful.
Thank you

 

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[G1sammons]

Before this season kicks off for me I was hoping to Mabe get some tips to increase production/amount of material I process. The obvious answer is "buy a larger dredge" but aside from that any tips to run more material or be more efficient would be very helpful. Thank you

Run your engine as fast as ya can ! Then adjust your box to keep the fines while it runs that hard..don't turn your motor down as a means of adjustment too keep the fines....
Another thing is to find ground with little over burden...! As more time in the goods and less moving junk...
And last is to get some help down there throwing cobbles ! Not sure what size machine you have but when we ran 2 divers on a 4"
We more than doubled production .. That 4" machine will out work what one man can do with it .probally could use 2 guys just throwing cobbles..
Hope that helps

 

[omnicron]

Are you using a blaster? Are you sampling? Run only the highest grade material. As G1 said, get a second person to move rocks. Only clean out once a day, don't take lunch, Work smarter, plan your hole to minimize cobble tossing ie: throw them behind you so you don't have to move them twice... Not knowing how you dredge, it's hard to advise you.

 

[principedeleon]

I throw out most of the cobbles out the hole. But when i hit bedrock i clean it well with the blaster& i stack all extra rocks on the cleaned bedrock. Since is easier than standing up and throwing it out rock by rock.. If you could get some gravity with your dredge you could also get a greater suction that could help you save gas or have a greater suction. If i want to dredge harder i take the nozzle off the hose ; it will draw more water and you can draw more material but if you never dredged before you will save time leaving the nozzle on because you will suck up rocks that are too big that will cause it to clog up the hose at the jet.

 

[omnicron]

I throw out most of the cobbles out the hole. But when i hit bedrock i clean it well with the blaster& i stack all extra rocks on the cleaned bedrock. Since is easier than standing up and throwing it out rock by rock.. If you could get some gravity with your dredge you could also get a greater suction that could help you save gas or have a greater suction. If i want to dredge harder i take the nozzle off the hose ; it will draw more water and you can draw more material but if you never dredged before you will save time leaving the nozzle on because you will suck up rocks that are too big that will cause it to clog up the hose at the jet.

P, if your not busting out the bed rock chasing the cracks till you either meet people who are speaking Chinese and or get to the bottom of the crack, your passing up good quantities of gold. OP this can help your gold take for the day.

 

[2020hindsite]

Thanks guys... Couple things,
I don't know how to run my engine hard? I have a proline 3 inch and was told to run just over 1/2 throttle with up to a 1 inch drop on the entire box. This is how I've always ran it. Wouldn't jacking up the throttle blow out gold? I know the water speed is not increased in the box but the water depth.

Second I have no idea what kind of dredger I am. I use a 3 inch proline with a power jet and just try and limit my plug-ups. I am a novice for sure. But I'm trying desperately to get better.

The area I must work has about 1-1 1/2 feet overburden which is not ideal for my dredge but I gotta do what I gotta do as this area has great gold for my area. Nearly all the exposed bedrock has been worked like a Mardi-gras hooker.
The overburden is mostly broken bedrock pieces which piled up over many years and are flat rocks which are difficult to run without plugging up.

One of the biggest issues I believe is my holes keep collapsing in on themselves and I continually have to process the overburden to keep making the hole bigger. I was taught to punch down to bedrock and then start widening your hole but I'm not sure how good my teacher was.

Thanks again guys and hopefully your pans are full this coming year

 

[principedeleon]

Yeah i know but it could be time consuming and if you got to the river with those tools. I only take a pry bar with me and i could just widing up some cracks to i only get to stick the suction hose down a bit more..

Some bedrock is a piece of cake with just the pry bar; but some you need a hammer and a chisel to just bust bits off. It depends on his structure.
I just try carrying a good pry bar that wont bend easy i dont like taking too much stuff. Even the winch i leave it and if i needed ill go get it if in close to home ; damn that little thing weights lol

 

[2cmorau]

throwing cobbles out of a hole wears-ya-out, worst when your deep,
cut a plastic 45 gal drum in half, long side and drill holes on the sides run rope or cable through this and start winching out the cobbles
have a large tool box to store your stuff in? , drill holes in the bottom, find a large rock or bedrock drill holes in the rock to fit your holes on the tool box, lagbolts, I,m sure you know the drill LOL
show your shine, that always gets lotz of help

 

[omnicron]

Thanks guys... Couple things,
I don't know how to run my engine hard? I have a proline 3 inch and was told to run just over 1/2 throttle with up to a 1 inch drop on the entire box. This is how I've always ran it. Wouldn't jacking up the throttle blow out gold? I know the water speed is not increased in the box but the water depth.

Second I have no idea what kind of dredger I am. I use a 3 inch proline with a power jet and just try and limit my plug-ups. I am a novice for sure. But I'm trying desperately to get better.

The area I must work has about 1-1 1/2 feet overburden which is not ideal for my dredge but I gotta do what I gotta do as this area has great gold for my area. Nearly all the exposed bedrock has been worked like a Mardi-gras hooker.
The overburden is mostly broken bedrock pieces which piled up over many years and are flat rocks which are difficult to run without plugging up.

One of the biggest issues I believe is my holes keep collapsing in on themselves and I continually have to process the overburden to keep making the hole bigger. I was taught to punch down to bedrock and then start widening your hole but I'm not sure how good my teacher was.

Thanks again guys and hopefully your pans are full this coming year

Ok, you want to sample first to locate the gold first. My dredge is set up with a small scalper section that makes this easy. Its just a small section at the head of the box that is easily removed and cleaned out to check for values. Not sure if proline has anything like that. Once you locate a area you want to dredge, try to find the boundaries of the pay streak. This is important as you don't want to throw cobbles and cover up good ground. Typically I will move down stream punching holes till the gold disappears. IF you have a good eye you can see the gold in, on or below the hard pack. Once you establish your boundaries start your hole. Make it big enough that you can work in with out the sides collapsing in. Throw you cobbles behind you. I usually like to make my hole at least 6 foot so I'm able to lay in it to work or move around on my knees and not worry about collapse. If your still having collapse issues then make it wider.

Once you removed the overburden, start on your hard pack and keep going till you hit the bedrock. I don't know if you have air on your dredge but it's a absolute must imo. So one you exposed bedrock, look for cracks. Clean out the cracks by any means you can. Bust it up pry it up, you get the idea. Let me tell you a story from last year.

I had found a great pay streak on this creek I was working. I had dredged up a large section but stopped busting up the bedrock. My reason? I did not see the gold like I expected. So for the next few weeks I was just flushing the cracks and moving on. One day after I had already moved 30' from when I stopped busting up bedrock, I came across a very deep crack that I could not flush to well. So I proceeded to bust out the bedrock to get to the bottom. It was a lot of work, I didn't see lots of gold but kept going. I finally got to the bottom and went ahead and busted out more br. So I stopped for the day and did a clean out of my upper section. I was shocked, I had a 5 gram cleanout. The next day I decided to back track and move all the cobbles that I had tossed. I then proceeded to bust up the br. I did a small 5x5' test section... maybe 30 minutes, shut down and cleaned up my upper section again (this was before I added a scalper). Guess what, this br that I passed up just because I didn't see gold sitting in a pocket like I expected yielded 1.2grams. The rest of that section of just bed rock that I could move the cobbles from yielded 4 grams. I did not bother trying to go further back as it was covered up by tailing. Sorry for the short novel but it's a good story to remember. Gold is heavy, it is always working it's way to the lowest point. Cracks in the br is just like your riffles. Traps the gold and the gold will keep working it's way down till it can no longer go deeper. Also pay attention to your br you busting out. That clay/silt/material that my be stuck to the sides may contain gold. I flush everything that I toss out of my hardpack and bedrock, gold sticks to rocks

 

[G1sammons]

Thanks guys... Couple things, I don't know how to run my engine hard? I have a proline 3 inch and was told to run just over 1/2 throttle with up to a 1 inch drop on the entire box. This is how I've always ran it. Wouldn't jacking up the throttle blow out gold? I know the water speed is not increased in the box but the water depth. Second I have no idea what kind of dredger I am. I use a 3 inch proline with a power jet and just try and limit my plug-ups. I am a novice for sure. But I'm trying desperately to get better. The area I must work has about 1-1 1/2 feet overburden which is not ideal for my dredge but I gotta do what I gotta do as this area has great gold for my area. Nearly all the exposed bedrock has been worked like a Mardi-gras hooker. The overburden is mostly broken bedrock pieces which piled up over many years and are flat rocks which are difficult to run without plugging up. One of the biggest issues I believe is my holes keep collapsing in on themselves and I continually have to process the overburden to keep making the hole bigger. I was taught to punch down to bedrock and then start widening your hole but I'm not sure how good my teacher was. Thanks again guys and hopefully your pans are full this coming year

First off you don't know what kind of dredger you are? Sure you do your a gold dredger ! Lol
As to running you engine harder ... Just for testing purpose run it as hard as it will go flatten out your box as in no drop ..
And work with it best ya can to do everything you can to stop to from blowing gold out ..
Thing that work for me is a under flow setup with 1/4 woven wire or even 1/2 woven half way down the box with expanded below it ...
Increase you feed rate ! Don't over do it but it going without plugging it up . And cap yor nozzle with a flat rock when your moving cobbles and stuff .. That will stop your box from running empty and that when it will start blowing gold out ..
Also running it harder will help a lot with the plug ups ..
The general idea is to adjust and setup your machine for the increased water flow instead of adjusting you water flow to Mach your current setup .. I do loose more gold then if I run slow but the increase in volume more than makes up the difference...
An increase in feed rate and flattening out your box are some simple things to do to help with the increased water flow ....

Hope this helps ya

 

[calnatv]

Slow and easy wins the race. Don't hog the nozzle, be mindful of sucking up odd shaped rocks,move boulders well away from where you will be dredging, take the time to make your dredge holes in the overburden large enough so they aren't collapsing on you and have a basket of some sort next to you that you can fill up with small cobbles and winch out of your hole when full.

 

[principedeleon]

throwing cobbles out of a hole wears-ya-out, worst when your deep, cut a plastic 45 gal drum in half, long side and drill holes on the sides run rope or cable through this and start winching out the cobbles have a large tool box to store your stuff in? , drill holes in the bottom, find a large rock or bedrock drill holes in the rock to fit your holes on the tool box, lagbolts, I,m sure you know the drill LOL show your shine, that always gets lotz of help

Sometimes winching out a basket from the bottom would make water dirty in slowi moving waters i would rather have some guys carry them out ..

 

[G1sammons]

Slow and easy wins the race. Don't hog the nozzle, be mindful of sucking up odd shaped rocks,move boulders well away from where you will be dredging, take the time to make your dredge holes in the overburden large enough so they aren't collapsing on you and have a basket of some sort next to you that you can fill up with small cobbles and winch out of your hole when full.

iv tried both approaches slow and easy has always cut my take by half .. You can't be stupid about hogging the nozzle and over loading your box but but but poking around just leads to poking around ... I have a good friend of mine who use this method and well he always gets blown out of the water .. Iv put him on my six and waxed him with my 4" more than once .. Everything you do has to be balanced more water flow needs a higher feed rate . And so on but running your dredge at half throttle will lead ya to doing half the work that is capable of doing ! Your gona set your box up might as well set it up to deal with more flow if you want to process more material.. If your happy with less than why not just run it at 1/4 throttle ..you will loose less gold at 1/4 throttle than 1/2 but then if ya leave it in the GarageBand sit on the couch , you won't loose any gold That way ..
But you won't take any either ...

Look at it from another approach! Instead of worrying about what you might loose worry about your total take ... Run it both ways for a day and measure your take at the end ...
Also talk to some of these folks who dredge for a living see how many of them run 1/2 throttle vs 80 to 90 percent of it ...

This is where I learned my approach after poking around at half throttle .....because I was thought to be so carful not to loose any gold by running to hard ..
And I'm not say to hog your nozzle and overload your box . But most of these boxes will do a lot better with higher water flow than what most folks believe they will do ....

 

[principedeleon]

There is always a balance in the sluice. If you run at 1/4 rpm and you suck up material very slow and leave the hose and not suck any material you will blow out gold no matter what. If you run at full rpm and you increase your material you will not let the water create so much vortex that will make your gold move down the sluice.

Most of your gold is mostly found on bedrock so going through overburden as fast as possible could help you recover more gold at the end of the day. Sometimes you just pick up with your hand the best nuggets or you just suck something you didnt see and rewards you later in your clean up..

 

[calnatv]

Here's a rookie scenario: Get to bed rock as fast as you can! Got to get the gold quick! Punch straight down in the overburden. Deal with plug up after plug up. Then when you reach bedrock, your narrow hole keeps caving in you. Now your dealing with that. Move the boulders only a couple feet because moving them is taking up precious nozzle time. Now you find yourself moving the same boulders again that you moved several hours ago or the day before.

These were the lessons I learned. When I finally slowed downed and gave what I was doing some thought. My production went from grams to ounces. It doesn't take rocket science to be a gold dredger. Work smarter, not harder and KISS

 

[rodoconnor]

For years I've run a cheapo H/F air chisle off my hooka to really open the cracks up. With that and the blaster you can damn near get it all. G/L

 

[principedeleon]

Here's a rookie scenario: Get to bed rock as fast as you can! Got to get the gold quick! Punch straight down in the overburden. Deal with plug up after plug up. Then when you reach bedrock, your narrow hole keeps caving in you. Now your dealing with that. Move the boulders only a couple feet because moving them is taking up precious nozzle time. Now you find yourself moving the same boulders again that you moved several hours ago or the day before. These were the lessons I learned. When I finally slowed downed and gave what I was doing some thought. My production went from grams to ounces. It doesn't take rocket science to be a gold dredger. Work smarter, not harder and KISS

The faster your running your engine the less it will plug up and thats a fact. rocks flip less inside of the hose and make it to the sluice faster. Dredging hard doesnt mean keep your hole narrow. There is a misunderstanding. There are some dredgers like one i know i just wanna pull the hose off there hand because they have such a patience to just stare at every little rock they suck up the hose. I always try to loosen up rocks with one hand and trying tosing them out and sucking up the loose material with the other while im looking at what in sucking up .but you better get out my ways cause im just focusing on what im dredging. I dont think there is more to it ; if you want to move more material faster and thats what he asking for ...

 

[calnatv]

No where in my statements do I suggest run the engine at a lower throttle. Just ideas to be more efficient. As stated earlier, running anything lower then 3/4 throttle will just lead to more plug ups, a overloaded box and gold loss.

 

[principedeleon]

Ohh okay so its clear now

 

[MadJack_ME]

Hindsite, keep doing what you're doing, 1/2 throttle plus a little and no more than 1/3 solids through the nozzle. My 34 years experience tells me to do the same thing. Flood gold (some pretty good size pieces too) will be on top of a gravel bar sometimes, so don't rush to bedrock.

Put a mask on and get wet, too! Being IN the water beats breaking your back in boots.

Yes, you will blow gold right out of your box running the pump too fast!