First Post and First Gold

[Mrjester]

Hello All… My first post and I want to thank everyone for all the post I have been reading the last year.
I have learned so much from everyone by just reading their post..
Last summer was my first try at prospecting and did find a few flakes.. a very few.

Over the winter I decided to try and make my own high banker… Probably should of spent the money and bought one because
In the end I probably spent just about as much money and time making mine which works but not as well as I would like.
I basically got a tub from Walmart, some pvc pipe, mounted the bucket to my sluice, then bought a Johnson 2200 pump off eBay along with some hose.
Then I bought a 18aH battery to run the pump which sucks out 7.5 Amps…

Got it all running and took it out in March and April… learned many mistakes and have had to make a lot of adjustments. Hence why I should of just
Bought one that is well built. No headaches.. but for what I have it seemed to work.. I even bought some pay dirt off the internet to test it and it seemed to do
What I needed it to do.. catch gold!

I had the chance to take it to a claim known to have gold on a 3 day weekend a few weeks ago… quickly found out that charging the 18aH battery in the field via my
Car was NOT going to work… ended up only being able to use my system for 2.5 hours and the rest of the weekend I spent trying the old fashioned way..


So this last weekend, I scored on a little gas generator.. went camping for 3 days and was able to overcome the issue of not being able to charge the battery.
I was able to run the header box for 2 hours, take a break and re-charge for 2 hours, off and on all weekend. It was awesome!
I was by myself and could not operate the header box right where I was digging so I had dig / carry / dump a 5 gallon bucket at a time.. should of done that different but
Was still able to get in about 20 full buckets of material… granted I did a clean up after each of the 2 hours of run time…

I think I did pretty well but am not sure and would like input from other member… how much gold do you consider a good weekend when working alone?
The water is really high right now here in Central Montana and think I can do better in this particular spot once the water goes down… I did a lot of sampling
Before I started and was actually finding more color the closer to the water.. thought for sure I would find more towards the shore line..

All in all, I got .5 grams of fine gold out of 20 5 gallon buckets and about 12 hours of working in 3 days.. really 6 hours of running and 6 hours of digging lol.

I will try some pictures, all I had was a video but tried to capture some photos.. you should be able to see where I was digging and am thinking that the glory
Hole sort of speak may be closer to the edge of the corner once high water goes down. Would that be a good guess ?

Thanks again

 

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[Aufisher]

Nicely done!

 

[bobw53]

I'd take a half gram in 20 buckets... Figure the buckets weren't totally topped up, so you ran 1/3 of a yard.. That's a gram and half
per yard (obviously)...

Watch some of those gold shows on TV, they are happy with a quarter gram per yard...

I'd be happy with it.

 

[mtau]

Looks like you have a nice spot to work on. .5 grams for 20 5gal buckets = 1 gram per cy which isn't bad. It doesn't look like you got down to bedrock, so it might get better as you dig deeper. Welcome to the forum.

 

[Mrjester]

Thanks...
I have never hit bedrock in my life... not even sure what it looks like..
I only dug a hole about 2' x 4' by 3' deep... maybe a little longer but not much..
What is weird is that the first day (Saturday) I did my test pans... seen good color and decided to work that spot.
Spent the whole day working that one spot by the bank and dug 3 feet down. Was not seeing much color in the black ribbing of the sluice but clean ups did show I was getting good color... must of been in the carpet.

Sunday I did another test pan in the hole and found that it didn't look as good as the day before BUT to the right of the hole within 6 inches deep, it showed good color again so I started working the top 6 inches of dirt for my last 2 hours and started to show more color in the black ribbing then I did on Saturday.

Really puzzled and not sure what to work when I go back there... just work the top foot of dirt OR keep digging deeper and hoping that I hit another layer of good dirt... maybe even hit bedrock for the first time?
Maybe if I keep going deep the gold will get bigger then the fines that I found?

I watch a lot of gold shows and was not sure if I should be happy or not... was trying to figure out what my $ per yard is... $40 per yard? that seems really high.

Anyway.. I forgot to post a photo or video of my home made high banker... this video is not from this trip but is what I am using.
Need to make some improvements such as angle... and would like to get a bigger pump like a 3700 rule

 

[mtau]

It looks like there is a bench, or berm on the up-stream side of where you are digging. That would explain why you are finding fine gold in the top foot of material. What you have is a "back wash area", in other words, it is a slack water area. The fine flood gold will drop out there. Bedrock is a solid bottom, it can be shale, granite, conglomerate, clay, etc. It can be anything that the gold can't settle through. I would dig deeper and test any change in material. You may find lenses of high grade, and your course gold should be setting on the bedrock, or in cracks in it. Good luck.