New to prospecting, trip planned in October

[penster]

Hi all!

We have rural property in Virginia. Ive told my husband since we bought I "knew" there was gold there. Last year I read an article about a Canadian mining co going into SC. So I did some research, and with a gift card at Christmas I bought a panning set. I found 4 flakes this summer and after more research I'm confident I threw out a small amount of flour gold. I thought it looked like gold, DH said I was crazy, so instead if saving the pans I washed them out when I started a new batch. Arrggghhh!


So I have a couple of questions....
Does anyone have a favorite hand dredge (not ready to invest $$$ on a motorized dredge--unless I can find a pay streak ;-))
And,

It is a fairly brisk moving creek. There is a huge deposit of black sand and the end of bedrock slate where I found my flakes. (of course half my material washes away as I shovel it up.....hence the first question) Also a nice gravel bar leading up to this point. I am so confused over sluices...fast water, slow water, flour gold, pickers...yadda yadda yadda. should I just classify into buckets and bring my concentrates home and pan them here rather than sluicing?

Thanks all!

 

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[okbasspro]

Welcome to the TNet and the never ending fever.You can move tons more with a sluice than a pan I would sluice and bring those cons home to pan.Try putting the bucket underwater on its side and shoveling into it.It may be slow but at least it doesnt wash away.I have never used a hand dredge but surley someone will chime in on that matter.
Happy Hunting

 

[B H Prospector]

Welcone to the forum Penster. Gold-n-Sand has a good hand dredge that isn't too spendy. There are also plans on the net for making your own hand dredges. Just look on you tube for vids and google for plans. I would then classify and sluice what you suck up and then pan the cons.

Good Luck!

B H Prospector

 

[russau]

i totally agree with BH Prospector on the Gold-n-Sand hand dredge and dont forget the adaptor he uses that goes to the sluice. its a really neat setup!

 

[NeoTokyo]

Heya, welcome to the forums and the hobby.

If your creek isnt too crazy, isnt too cold and has some exposed bedrock then you might want to try underwater gold sniping.

I have done really well at it but it is a hit and miss. You are trying to find the best place in your mind where gold might settle.

So if you have a mask, snorkel and simple hand tools you can get started before it gets too cold just to see what you have down there.

As for sluices, I bought a Bazooka Gold trap (The Miner version, their largest) and it works very well.

I cleaned out a couple cracks and got 1 5 gallon bucket worth of material, ran it through the sluice and got a pretty nice line of gold for that 1 buckets worth.
The Bazooka can run bucket upon bucket upon bucket because it is a self cleaning, gold trap sluice.

I have some video's up of my sniping finds and a video up of that 5 gallon bucket and how much I had to pan the leftovers to get the gold. On that note, I did not have enough angle so I had more material than usual.

Make sure to order a couple vials and snuffer bottles.

As for a good hand dredge, like Russau said, the Gold-n-sand units are nice, they feed into a small bucket and have a one way valve system to keep from losing gold on the downstroke.


If you have 7+ feet of drop on your creek over 100 feet of distance then you can even Gravity Dredge into your sluice.

Home Depot and Lowes have 4" tubing at 100' for $55 or so dollars and a simple reducer on the front will have you set up in no time for some cheap gravity dredging.

Now you dont need the sluice right away if you dont want to, the ribs inside the hose act like riffles and catch the gold for you, just work the gold out when you are done into a bucket.
There are some video's on YouTube about it.

Take care and good luck.


PS. You can find my video's here. I have a new one uploading today showing a discolored gold nugget that I found yesterday.

CrainRacing - YouTube

 

[penster]

Thanks everybody! I appreciate all the advice. My 15 year old says I'm obsessed, it's just that now I know there IS gold, I wanna get the most for my time. I was looking at the gold n sand dredge and thought it looked pretty good, nice to get the feedback. Happy panning!