I need black sand concentrates

[arizau]

The proposed Pebble Gold Mine (a major project) is a hot issue and being actively fought by enviros, commercial fishermen, natives, etc. and is located just across the inlet from Anchor Point located on the Kenai Peninsula. That or those associated drainages and many other of the feeder streams probably contributed to beach gold depositation all up and down the inlet and the coast in general. If you try the beach sand you will likely find gold but probably nothing of consequence (I'm guessing similar to Wash./Oregon coast like results?). Just for fun...Here is a possible alternative for you and, by the way, try your luck on your friends property too if that is what the "free" reference was about. You could be surprised. http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5195151.pdf
Good luck.

 

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[KevinInColorado]

Wow, that's another great one, thanks bro!

 

[reptwar1]

The proposed Pebble Gold Mine (a major project) is a hot issue and being actively fought by enviros, commercial fishermen, natives, etc. and is located just across the inlet from Anchor Point located on the Kenai Peninsula. That or those associated drainages and many other of the feeder streams probably contributed to beach gold depositation all up and down the inlet and the coast in general. If you try the beach sand you will likely find gold but probably nothing of consequence (I'm guessing similar to Wash./Oregon coast like results?). Just for fun...Here is a possible alternative for you and, by the way, try your luck on your friends property too if that is what the "free" reference was about. You could be surprised. http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5195151.pdf
Good luck.

Thanks again! Y'all are so helpful

 

[arizau]

Your both welcome. Now I expect payments in gold!

 

[reptwar1]

Your both welcome. Now I expect payments in gold!

Lol if Alaska goes as good as I hope, I owe a couple of you some gold!!

 

[johnedoe]

There are so many miles of Alaska coastline that are so far from anywhere that IF you could get to them they would probably be very worth while.
Bring up google earth some time and just take a look at some of the baring sea coastline........ Remote doesn't begin to describe what it is like.

 

[reptwar1]

There are so many miles of Alaska coastline that are so far from anywhere that IF you could get to them they would probably be very worth while.
Bring up google earth some time and just take a look at some of the baring sea coastline........ Remote doesn't begin to describe what it is like.

Johnedoe....I have thought that for years!! My only concern is that now that I finally have the money to fly to Alaska, after airfare, equipment, renting a quad and a truck, food etc. I don't think I'm going to be able to afford to stray too far from the airport lol Not to mention, when I was 20, I got in a fight and beat the guy up bad and was charged with a felony, leaving me with no way to protect myself from bears (I am now 40 years old and wouldn't think of commiting a crime, but still paying for the fight I should have walked away from)

 

[KevinInColorado]

Thanks for sharing your cautionary tale, hope others learn from your pain at least. Now go find a prospecting buddy who can be your body guard!!

 

[johnedoe]

I'm sorry to hear about your misfortune, sometime youthful exuberance does screw things up for our futures.... I wouldn't be where I am if they had caught me at some of the stupid **** I pulled in my past....... and no we ain't gonna go there..lol...... anyway I was just saying there is a lot of territory that few will ever get to see. I have been fortunate enough to be able to do some of that.... Some on my own and some when I was working for Alaska Fish & Game in the 90s. Now I'm not as agile as I used to be and have to take the path of least resistance....hmmmmm kinda like gold........ getting old and stove up sucks....lol

Anyway do your research before you go so you will be able to make the best of the time you have set for this adventure.
I don't know anything about GPAA's nome ground but what I have heard about GPAA isn't very flattering........

One of the things I thought I would like to do if I ever got back up to Nome is to take a good metal detector and go over some of the old dredge tailings. Anything bigger than 1/4" to 1/2" was classified out through the grizzlies of those big bucket line dredges and so I figure there should be a few little beauties that got away and maybe one of the big ones.....lol.
There is a lot of iron junk and bullets in those tailing piles that a detector will have to deal with but it is still something I would like to look into someday
if I can still walk.

I heard you can do this with permission from the gold company that owns them, of course they want a piece of the recovery but that is ok too.

Some of the biggest nuggets found in Alaska were in the Nome district. There were stories of guys seeing large nuggets go out the tail shoot on a couple of the big bucket line dredges but that material is moving at a pretty good pace and they could not recover it... Is that a true story? I can't say for sure but you can take a look at this.... Alaska's Largest Gold Nuggets & Gold Specimens ..... 5 of the 20 listed were found in Nome, mostly in the anvil creek area.

Anyway I wish you a great adventure and the best of luck in it. Keep us updated as to your discoveries and plans.

 

[Oregon Viking]

Interesting design and I would bet it works great for beach sands, I do find it humorous that it says it will catch "invisible gold". If I can't see it I'm not too worried about losing it lol. Maybe if you caught enough "invisible gold" you could then see it?

Yes! As you said above,if you caught enough "invisible gold" you could then see it? I met a guy on Nesika beach, that is what he was doing. Entire sluice V mat only, just run until you see was his method. That's how I do it. I asked him about the "magnets" under the sluice and other beach box techniques. Nope shovel and "see" was his answer. Now if you were in Nome, you have some great beach box options as you can use powered equipment.

 

[johnedoe]

Did he give you any indication as to how he was doing?
you would need at least a couple penny-weight a day to make it barely worthwhile.

 

[GoldpannerDave]

The Nome beach gold is EXTREMELY fine, like flour nothing like the gold they are showing in Bearing Sea Gold on the discovery channel.
Here is a link to the cleangold site that has some photomicrographs of the Nome beach gold... cleangold photomicrographs

It was pretty amazing though just about anywhere you took a shovel full you could see color. separating it from the heavy cons is a real pain in the ass.

We would look for the black and ruby sand deposits then work them out.

There was an old-timer everybody knew as Blueberry John.... He had a pretty good setup and knew the beach, he had lived there for years, anyway he was known to pull an ounce a day off the beach more than once.... But like I said he had the knowledge and beach mining was wide open then.

Funny you should mention Blueberry John.

I had been gold prospecting and panning for about 3 years back in the mid-80's when I was an chemistry instructor at the Air Force Academy. The chemistry of gold brings together many of the topics one studies the 2nd semester of Freshman Chemistry. I would do a guest lecture on the chemistry of gold with demonstration of gold panning for about 100 cadets every lecture period right at the end of the semester. One of the Biology instructors I knew asked if I would mind if his dad came to my lecture. We had talked about gold before because he had been stationed at Galena AFS in Alaska and had done some gold prospecting while up there. I told him that would be fine. He said his dad lived with his kids during most of the year but went to Nome for the summer months and worked the black sands on the beach. I knew I wanted to talk with his father since I had dreams back then of going at least once.

So I gave the lecture (lots of chemistry) and did the gold panning demo. I had put about a half dozen small pieces in the pan and showed the cadets that I pushed them down into the sand and gravel of the pan. I found all the pieces and by then class was over. The captain's father had sat there though all the lecture never saying a thing but at the end when it was all over, he came up to me and said, "Mind if I show you something with the pan?" I told him that would be fine and handed him the pan, still with the small pieces (like 1 mm max; some smaller). He took the pan, which still had some black sands that I had backwashed to the opposite side, mixed them and then panned them again and did a tapping of the pan with his hand that I had never seen before.

I was a GPAA member and it suddenly hit me!! "You're Blueberry John, aren't you?" He admitted he was. What a surprise--here I had been demonstrating gold panning to a class with a master-panner in it. Sort of like giving a lecture on relativity and then finding out Einstein had been in your audience....

We had a very nice chat for 20 minutes or so. He would live on the beach about 3 months and I think his major limitation in his gold collecting was the Social Security limitation. He told me they basically used an 8 x 4 sheet of plywood as their sluice. I think he told me they used burlap on it. His son had come to collect him and said they had a luncheon date to keep and had to go.

I never got to talk to him again; I was hoping he might come back the following year, but it didn't happen. It was quite an honor to get to talk with him. Also it was nice of him to wait until the panning demo was over before showing me how to improve my panning!

 

[johnedoe]

It is a small world......
If I remember correctly that technique was called the Blueberry bump or Blueberry bounce.
It really was amazing to watch that little fine line of gold just walk up the pan as you tapped it.

 

[KevinInColorado]

The Blueberry Bump...and I use it on my -50 cons every time I finish pan!

 

[reptwar1]

Thanks for the link and the great advice as usual!! I will for sure be bringing a metal detector to Nome in case my foolproof sluice method fails lol BTW....guys....I threw a miller table together in under a half hour last night. I used Easy liner shelf liner and even though the build didn't go as planned (rush job lol) I found a BUNCH of specks of gold that my blue bowl wouldn't have recovered, in the first few inches of the the easy liner matting. Friends...PLEASE... do yourselves a favor and aqquire a miller table!!! And whether you buy it or build it....use easy liner shelf liner. I bought mine at Lowes for around $5. I don't see how ANYTHING could be better for flour gold!!!

 

[johnedoe]

Is this the stuff?

 

[reptwar1]

That's it

 

[johnedoe]

that looks like a pretty good mating material..... kinda sticky with a slightly rough surface... angle, water flow,and feed rate is the key.

 

[reptwar1]

I agree on feed rate and angle but the stuff is foolproof. Y'all I screwed up my miller table build so I just took cups of water and dumped it on the first 1/10 of the table until the black sands were almost gone and still it retained gold! When i die, I want to be buried with that stuff lol it is very forgiving!

 

[johnedoe]

LOL.... We all need some forgiveness.