Jomsa Prospecting

[DizzyDigger]

Jomsa, thanks for taking the time to share your world with us. That's beautiful country you're in.

That gold looks a little bit coarse..any chance you can chase it back
to it's origin?

 

[Jomsa]

Jomsa, thanks for taking the time to share your world with us. That's beautiful country you're in.

That gold looks a little bit coarse..any chance you can chase it back
to it's origin?

Thanks. Many have tried following it, but the area is crushed by several ice ages so there is meters of glacial till and bedrock is usually very much hidden.

 

[Jomsa]

Some quick final gold before moving on:

 

[Jomsa]

So ran into bit of a issues with my pump but that gave us a preview into upcoming gold by a chance :

 

[Jomsa]

Hi, so mining continues at one of my claims here at Finland. Here is the latest short clip when we find a surprising clay layer just above bedrock and hit some nice gold specs too (Subtitles in English):

 

[N-Lionberger]

Is the pressure jacket on your dredge nozzle leaking? I’ve noticed this spray from the right side of your nozzle in other videos I thought previously it was intentional.

 

[Jomsa]

Is the pressure jacket on your dredge nozzle leaking? I’ve noticed this spray from the right side of your nozzle in other videos I thought previously it was intentional.

Yeah it is leaky. The pipe had somehow gotten squished at some point during winter transportation to the mine, thus it was no longer complete circle and it had sprung a leak. For upcoming season i have ordered a new one, with some improvements and hopefully it wont suffer the same fate.

 

[Jomsa]

Season at my main claim is reaching the end, and we find largest piece of gold for the summer. Yeah not that big, only 0.4g piece, but it is major improvement for last few very thin years.

 

[N-Lionberger]

Nice little nugget. If that made it that far down you might want to build a more efficient sluice box in your off season. I mentioned before that your box is really quite narrow for a 3” dredge, you want 12-14 inches width in a 3” dredge box. Also your big riffles should be before the fine riffles as water friction on the sides slows the flow as it travels down the box.

 

[Jomsa]

Nice little nugget. If that made it that far down you might want to build a more efficient sluice box in your off season. I mentioned before that your box is really quite narrow for a 3” dredge, you want 12-14 inches width in a 3” dredge box. Also your big riffles should be before the fine riffles as water friction on the sides slows the flow as it travels down the box.

Hi, Yeah i am working on a new sluice setup all ready. Problem is i am all out of cash and logistics, so we will see if i can manage to get the new 400mm (15.7in?) sluice there on time. I was thinking of 200mm wide and some 2m long (6½ft?) with sort of a mixer box on the first part where i take most of the velocity out from the slurry (if it works).

 

[N-Lionberger]

My older dredge boxes had crash box headers I didnt find particularly great at their job as having the slurry exit the hose and run up into a wall or baffle causes a few problems, it mixes the slurry up before it goes down the box adding air bubbles and ruins your hose classification. The action also creates back pressure in the suction hose which reduces suction power requiring more throttle from your pump, the back pressure also leads to more plug ups. Flared headers work great. A while ago made one from a traffic safety cone with the base cut off squished and attached to a piece of wood with an oval hole. Made an ABS flare header for my 4”. A rubber damper mat mounted at the header to ride on the flow helps slow things down. You can also use over riffle screens and/or build an over under sluice

 

[Jomsa]

My older dredge boxes had crash box headers I didnt find particularly great at their job as having the slurry exit the hose and run up into a wall or baffle causes a few problems, it mixes the slurry up before it goes down the box adding air bubbles and ruins your hose classification. The action also creates back pressure in the suction hose which reduces suction power requiring more throttle from your pump, the back pressure also leads to more plug ups. Flared headers work great. A while ago made one from a traffic safety cone with the base cut off squished and attached to a piece of wood with an oval hole. Made an ABS flare header for my 4”. A rubber damper mat mounted at the header to ride on the flow helps slow things down. You can also use over riffle screens and/or build an over under sluice

Interesting. I was thinking of making the crashbox have like deflector and loads of room for the slurry to enter so it is not too "closed spsace". Did not think this backpressure thing, but i dont think it will be a problem. Double decked sluice is also quite an interesting idea.

 

[N-Lionberger]

Dredge manufacturers ditched the crashboxes in favor of flares years ago. If your nuggets are going that far down you are blowing out your fines. Doesn’t matter how long the sluice is with a narrow box, unless it is flared the water velocity won’t change all that much. With a 3 inch nozzle even your suggested 8” box is still too narrow you ideally want 14”. I enjoy watching your and other Finnish prospecting videos as I find it fascinating you guys are using sluices like our old timers used. Please don’t take my comments as downtalk as a somewhat experienced dredger I’m worried you are losing gold I want you to find your motherload like we all seek.

 

[Jomsa]

Dredge manufacturers ditched the crashboxes in favor of flares years ago. If your nuggets are going that far down you are blowing out your fines. Doesn’t matter how long the sluice is with a narrow box, unless it is flared the water velocity won’t change all that much. With a 3 inch nozzle even your suggested 8” box is still too narrow you ideally want 14”. I enjoy watching your and other Finnish prospecting videos as I find it fascinating you guys are using sluices like our old timers used. Please don’t take my comments as downtalk as a somewhat experienced dredger I’m worried you are losing gold I want you to find your motherload like we all seek.

No i dont mind the advices. However we do regularly keep panning the tailings to make sure we're not losing anything we dont mind losing I mean sure the setup is crude even by modern Finnish standards, but i kinda like it that way. The less money and effort the sluice system ties down, the less stress i experience. Also i was trained by the local "old timers" themselves (some even who started the whole gold rush back in 1940s) , so i am just doing what they taught me.

Anyway i kinda last weekend built the setup and see attached picture. It is "double barreled" 16.5" sluicebox. Double barreled, meaning that i use two side by side 200mm Goldowl mats there (to keep the compatible with my other sluice systems). It will also have heavy rubber mat calming down the flow on the top there in the crashbox sort of thing.

 

[Jomsa]

....I enjoy watching your and other Finnish prospecting videos as I find it fascinating you guys are using sluices like our old timers used....

Also thanks for watching. Good to hear that the effort that i put into subtitling them is not for nothing as judging by viewer statistics, there are very few viewers outside Finland. (and it makes sense of course)

 

[N-Lionberger]

Stuck in the flat land due to winter weather. I’m self employed and in winter make laboratory apparatus and it is really boring.

 

[Jomsa]

Stuck in the flat land due to winter weather. I’m self employed and in winter make laboratory apparatus and it is really boring.

Well i guess thats something.

Anyway here is the next bit of my summer mining trip:

 

[Jomsa]

So i our summer trip is coming to an end at my primary claim, we had one more thing to do though, to test this thing i got borrowed a gold screw i believe it is called, or gold hound... never used anything like it before and it went as well as you can expect, but see for yourselves here:

 

[N-Lionberger]

pretty slick spiral pan, they are a little finicky to set up but they work. I had one but the motor died and I’m building a shaker table to replace it as I would like to be able to separate my cons into more than just two separate feeds. Also welcome to NATO!

 

[Jomsa]

pretty slick spiral pan, they are a little finicky to set up but they work. I had one but the motor died and I’m building a shaker table to replace it as I would like to be able to separate my cons into more than just two separate feeds. Also welcome to NATO!

Yeah it definedly was finicky. I think i will retry next summer again to see if i get it to work.

And thanks, feeling somewhat safer all ready with NATO. I just wonder how much will it affect my claim next to Russion border. I wonder if i get more visits from border guards from now on.