My gold from a 5 pail test!

[TMLonggun]

Finally got around to checking the rest of my cons from last month. This is a sample from approximately 5 5 gallon pails of 1/4 inch classified material, 3 of gravel, 2 of lighter clay and mud. It isn't a huge amount of gold in total but it is a pretty impressive amount relative to the material moved and the small amount of time we had. Hopefully will get back there later this month. I estimate there is about 250+ pails left or about ~7 yards accessible in this zone. It is all fine gold but with VDR tech it all ends up in the jar.



Total is 2.51 g with sub 1000 mesh all the way to 20+ flake. We would have got way more but the ground froze solid on us. Spent more time messing with the pump than we did mining A bit frustrating with gold fever and gold glittering front of your eyes and no way to process. Still lots of fun though plus we discovered multiple new zones to test!

 

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[Digger RJ]

Sweet Yellow Nectar!!! Congrats!!!

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Sweet Gold, congrats!

 

[TMLonggun]

This is what we got last year from the same area.

(Over 3 troy oz)

My goal is to get enough that if I dropped it on my toe it would actually hurt. Those tiny little specks add up eventually though! Thanks for the comments!

 

[A2coins]

Thanks for sharing that Thats a dream of mine someday Loks like your doing well Hope you strike it rich. Tommy

 

[A2coins]

Welcome to tnet also

 

[TMLonggun]

I don't think there has ever been a better time to start prospecting if you're interested. Gold prices are high, fuel and claims are cheap, while fine gold recovery tech is getting to almost full recovery levels. The claim I got all this gold from was only $100 and we have pulled out a lot of good gold from it so it is paid off many times over. It is a pretty fun, rewarding, and inexpensive dream to pursue if you use some of the knowledge on this forum. Thanks for the comments and welcome!

 

[Chuck Catchings]

What is VDR Tech? Haven’t heard of that. Also what are you doing with your left over material after cleaning? I’m looking for black sands or tailings. I need a good 5 gallon sample for research, will pay for shipping to the US if interested, could be well worth your time. Thanks

 

[Coinstar magnet]

That looks and sounds like fun...thanks for sharing!

 

[TMLonggun]

Thanks for the comments, guys!

Chuck -

The VDR tech is short for vortex drop riffle mats. The ones I use are developed by Devin Gold (Devingold.com) which have the best design for fine gold recovery in my opinion. There are several variations that came out of the original 1950s Australian tech that experimented using vortex (whirpool) action to accumulate small gold and dispel lighter material. I think the original tech is based on the natural act of rockpooling. (How almost perfectly round holes are naturally created in river systems - often accumulating a lot of gold). I have experimented with many different mat types and combos and watched most of the competitors in action for fairly large sample sizes and I converted whole heartedly to Devin Gold VDR. They appear to get well over 99% capture and they are inexpensive, so I don't see any future efficiency gains from competitors. The Devin Gold VDR mats are the best flour gold recovery units on the market and they saved us a lot of time and significantly increased our take. Anything with a one day potential pay back is probably a good deal.

I made this video and I was like "wow this basically an indirect promo for these awesome mats"
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxI9Gmnq3RczMNoKMqQ8-PQ?view_as=subscriber
So I looked into selling them and now have a source here: https://www.infinityprospecting.com/

These VDR mats are important because with rising gold prices it is turning tens of thousands of acres from $5/hour into $10, $20 etc making previously uneconomic land mine-able at a profit. There are profitable benches in nearly every gold bearing river now. If I could start over again I'd save the thousands we spent on cleanup gear and just use VDR for everything. We used to spend up to 9 man hours panning and fiddling with concentrates each night, now it is a ~10-20 minute process with this


As for black sands, we do have a fair bit stockpiled but I just decided the other day that I am going to make super difficult pay dirt bags loaded with tiny flour gold and black sand and then give them away/sell to help promote my channel. I will probably give some away on this forum too because who doesn't like FREE GOLD? I watched Klesh do the "most difficult paydirt ever" and it wasn't even an average pan of flour gold and black sand cons - those are incredibly challenging to pan to get every molecule. So I am afraid my black sand is now mostly spoken for. I will double check though, because we have been saving our heavy barren cons for almost ten years so it is possible I have far more kicking around than I thought. You are using them for equipment optimization? I did discover a flow of black sand deposited on top of a gravel bar a few years back. It had almost no gold and was almost pure black sand - very unusual. I might have to go back there and loot that. Was always curious what was under the lighter sand at the surface anyway.