agolddigger
Jr. Member
Got the gold bug back in Oct (2016) and I've been looking to get back out ever since! I just started sluicing today with my new Angus MacKirk Foreman II after waiting 3 months for my bazooka that never arrived =D
I'll be posting updates of each trip here & occasionally posting pointers & tips on my blog as I figure out what I'm doing. Most of my digs will be in metro Denver since that's where I live (Clear Creek, Cherry Creek, & South Platte) but I also plan to make some trips this summer out to Cache Creek & around the summit county area.
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Went to Arapahoe Bar today on Clear Creek (in the burbs of Denver) - there was a bit of snow on the ground but the dirt was just as easy to dig as always & thanks to the upstream Coors plant the water was plenty warm.
My sluice was setup in the V in the middle of this pic ^. If I were smarter I would've taken the picture with the sluice :P
Took a picture of my first pan of the day (about a half a bucket of material through the sluice) which also happened to be the best cleanup of the day.
Spent a lot of time messing around experimenting with my new sluice - twice I managed to blow out all of my top riffle (and all of the gold) but overall had a lot of fun today. At one point when my sluice was running perfectly I decided to run a bunch of nearby tailings in the creek to see if I could get some gold that they missed, got a couple little pieces of fly poop but overall that person was moving a lot of material & catching basically all of it.
Overall pretty happy with my Angus MacKirk - still need to figure out the balance of how many buckets I can run before I start losing gold. It also seems like if I leave my sluice unattended the riffles will eventually wash out - at least with the heavy flow I had today. I'm planning to use this for low flow situations and eventually buy a Gold Hog stream sluice for my production runs since you don't need to classify with those.
I'll do the finish processing on it tomorrow and post up the results. I have a scale coming from Amazon next week so I can start to track my cleanouts.
I'll be posting updates of each trip here & occasionally posting pointers & tips on my blog as I figure out what I'm doing. Most of my digs will be in metro Denver since that's where I live (Clear Creek, Cherry Creek, & South Platte) but I also plan to make some trips this summer out to Cache Creek & around the summit county area.
-----------
Went to Arapahoe Bar today on Clear Creek (in the burbs of Denver) - there was a bit of snow on the ground but the dirt was just as easy to dig as always & thanks to the upstream Coors plant the water was plenty warm.
My sluice was setup in the V in the middle of this pic ^. If I were smarter I would've taken the picture with the sluice :P
Took a picture of my first pan of the day (about a half a bucket of material through the sluice) which also happened to be the best cleanup of the day.
Spent a lot of time messing around experimenting with my new sluice - twice I managed to blow out all of my top riffle (and all of the gold) but overall had a lot of fun today. At one point when my sluice was running perfectly I decided to run a bunch of nearby tailings in the creek to see if I could get some gold that they missed, got a couple little pieces of fly poop but overall that person was moving a lot of material & catching basically all of it.
Overall pretty happy with my Angus MacKirk - still need to figure out the balance of how many buckets I can run before I start losing gold. It also seems like if I leave my sluice unattended the riffles will eventually wash out - at least with the heavy flow I had today. I'm planning to use this for low flow situations and eventually buy a Gold Hog stream sluice for my production runs since you don't need to classify with those.
I'll do the finish processing on it tomorrow and post up the results. I have a scale coming from Amazon next week so I can start to track my cleanouts.
