Placer Claim Mined Out?

desertgolddigger

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May 31, 2015
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I belong to a local club that owns a claim. This club has had this claim for many years, and acquired it after the old timers had mined it previously, and others after they commercial outfits closed up.
I walked quite a bit of the 160 acre claim, and noted that just about every wash had been worked. Most of the surface nuggets has also been detected by those with gold detectors. In other words, this place has been picked over and over and over.
But I m a stubborn type of person, and I figured, just watching how people ram their puffer and blower drywashers, that some gold was just being blown through them. maybe not much, but some small stuff that never got a chance to settle behind the riffles.
I know many of you would never go to the effort of digging for three to four hours through the tailings in these washes. Again, I'm a bit stubborn, and anyway, I just wanted to have some fun locally, instead of driving 300 miles roundtrip to something that gives a little more for less effort.
I've spent the last three weeks, digging a few times a week along about 30 yards of wash, and have recovered just about a gram of gold. That might not seem like much, but I have only dug up 5 grams, not counting this one gram in almost 20 years out here drywashing in the desert of southern California.
As you would know, things always seem to go wrong. My gas powered blower motor decided it was time for the repair shop, and haven't heard from the shop in two weeks. So I purchased a WORX WG521 corded electric leaf blower to use with my Royal Large drywasher. I'm using a portable generator to provide the power. And it actually is working better than with my old gas powered blower. I have to run the blower on the lowest speed, or I just blow everything through the riffles. Results are very good, as I am getting gold specks so small that I will have to use the Blue bowl in order to recover them.
I'm not only getting a little gold, I'm having some fun, and I am getting a good workout. I've lost 10 pounds since I started. So things are going well.
I'm still digging test holes around the old time hard rock mines in the hope I will find where the gold has drifted downhill below these mines. So far just a couple specks here and there. I figure I just have to move laterally one way or the other before I get something better Of course, I' don't really know if the old timers stripped the hillsides. Even if they have, they apparently aren't as thorough as I am. I hope that I may be lucky and find a larger piece of gold that the old timers, previous placer miners, and detectorists have missed.
Hope everyone is having as much fun as I have been having.
 

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desertgolddigger

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I guess I got dumb luck the last time out. Today I ran 20 full buckets, and nearly got skunked. I'm hoping the paltry amount I got today is 1/20th of a gram.

I'm quitting this area, and returning to the difficult to dig wash on the other side of the hill. I'll try digging in an area that doesn't look like dry washer tailings, but I doubt that's possible. The whole wash has probably been scoured multiple times, but maybe I'll finally get something worth my efforts.

As for the wash I've been prospecting, it's even worse, though I'll continue to dig a few more test holes.

Tomorrow one of the club members will escort whomever is wishing to see the distant claim near Eagle Mountain. I'm hoping the road is passable, and maybe I can find something out in that out of the way location.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Just got back from the distant claim tour, which it wasn't. It was basically a volunteer who lead the way to the claim.

I did two test prospecting digs, one of which produced two specks. These were areas no one was currently working, though it looks like years ago, someone might have dug.

This claim is in the lower desert, which is about 10-15 degrees warmer than 29 Palms. I don't adjust well to sudden temperature changes, so my digging was very abbreviated.

Tomorrow, once my dry washer material dries out, and I can classify it into four or five mesh sizes, I will pan things out. I know I got three or four pieces of gold, and possibly some fines during quick pans to see if any of my digs were producing.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Just realized I forgot something on yesterdays post. The road going through Joshua Tree National Park isn't maintained, and rules prohibit those who're not Park staff or contractors from moving even one rock contained within the Parks boundaries. Consequently, the road I remembered as a fairly good one, has, in 15years, become nearly impassable, except by high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicles. My Nissan Frontier 4X4 isn't high clearance, and I bottomed out several times, though I made forward progress down the road. Some wheel tracks tilted vehicles nearly 45 degrees.

Because of all this described above, I cannot even consider returning to this distant claim, and mining district. There are no other roads that go to this mining district, and I can only believe this area is ripe with placer gold, and possibly float ore. Just my luck.

And, please don't suggest I purchase another vehicle. I can't afford one. And I won't spend any more money on the gold thing. What I have, is what I got.

By the way, I was totally frightened during the whole drive there and back. I was exhausted from the effort, and the emotional toll. I still don't understand how people can consider such roads a recreational fun.

I'll just have to be happy with mining Placer gold at Humbug's dry washer tailing piles.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Just do what you're comfortable with having fun cost money.
Yeah, I do enjoy the closer location. Yesterday I found nearly 1/5th of a gram in those old dry washer tailing piles. Too windy for the next two days to do any digging.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Yippie!!!! Today was a great one. Came away with 1/4 gram.

This massive dry washer tailing pile (8x30x 4 ft high) is like a Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde. For a week I sometimes didn't even get 1/20th of a gram, and now 1/10th gram plus three consecutive days. It's always interesting panning the concentrates each day at home. I never pan out at the claim. Takes time from my digging, and each day I dig six full buckets, plus one bucket I fill from the sweeping of the bedrock. Today got me two pieces mesh 16+, and quite a bit of smaller pieces.

I'm just waiting to clear a bit more of the bottom of the hole before cracking more bedrock, and vacuuming to see what my sweeping missed.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Yesterday, I went out to dig into that huge tailing pile.

On the way, I of course, drove over the claim access road I've been repairing. It seems one off roader was contrary to a road being nice and smooth, and firm. He apparently stopped. Put one foot on the brake, the other he gunned his vehicle, dug into the ground, and then peeled out, causing. a one foot depression, and about 10 feet of damage. I really could never figure out how people will deliberately destroy something. I guess it's the child in them, never growing up, or bothering to turn their brain on.

Anyway, that person added two hours to my normal work, as I had to haul twenty buckets of gravel to repair all that damage.

I did manage to accumulate 9 buckets of material for the dry washer in the process, and got 0.16 grams, which is good, ad previous outings netted me less than 0.05 grams.

Today I gathered all the material my dry washer dumps into the bottom of my equipment box, and classified it all. I got 0.04 grams, and the 70 mesh and smaller has a lot of fine gold which I couldn't separate due to the heavy black sands with it. So I'll have to dry that material so I can use a magnet to remove those sands. Yeah, I could do that wet, but I prefer doing it dry. Easier for me.

So. I've had a good couple days. But the winds and possibly, rain will put a damper to the fun for a while. I was hoping to camp out this coming weekend, and mine for three days but the rain (possible) could dampen things too much for dry washing.
 

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mikep691

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At least you can get out in Jan/Feb to play in the dirt. Here in the Northeastern Sierras, even at 5000 feet in elevation there's way too much white stuff to even attempt to get to my claim. But I'm old now and interest in cold water is no longer appealing. We've decided to throw in the towel, and sell the claim. I'll at least be keeping it in the family as my niece is the buyer. With that said, her family will get a senior claim advisor in the deal for free.
 

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desertgolddigger

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I've been out to the claim the past two days, but noy camping as I wanted to. The nights are just too cold to get through with only a sleeping bag.

So I am just doing the same as usual, digging, sorting rock, and repairing roads, as well as getting some fairly good gold for just digging through tailing piles.

Yesterday netted me 1/5th of a gram, and today 0.193 grams. My yearly total is now 3.2 grams

Where I've been digging, and at the bottom is some, material I have been thinking is disintegrated bedrock, but the consistency is strange. It is mostly small gravel less than 1/4 inch with lots of darker brown dirt. I keep scratching with my Paleo Pick, and still haven't scratched down to solid bedrock. I ran a four bucket sample, and it came up with several dozen pieces between 16 and 50 mesh. I just wish I had the hand strength you guys have. I would probably been able to finish that part of the digging. Will just keep scratching away until I reach a solid bottom.

Anyway, I'm wondering if this odd material might not be the early start of a caliche layer. There is a little bit of whitish material which I think is calcium carbonate, though not a whole lot.

Hopefully tomorrow will be good for the last day of the holiday weekend.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Wellllll, it always seems that when I mention how nice things have been, The next time out is a flop, and this morning was a biggie with only 0.059 grams. Didn't even pay for my fuel.

I'm going to take a few days off to get things done around the house.

Hopefully the few remaining days of this month will net me better returns. I need about 3/5th of a gram to reach 4 grams for this year. That will put me very close to a lifetime total of 1 ounce of gold from placer mining in a nearly mined out claim.
 

N-Lionberger

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Hey at least you can get out there, this time of year my digs in the northern Sierra and Klamath mountains won’t be accessible until at least mid April.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Hey at least you can get out there, this time of year my digs in the northern Sierra and Klamath mountains won’t be accessible until at least mid April.
Too bad you only have seasonal access. When you can dig, hopefully you get better gold than is available here.
 

N-Lionberger

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Good gold yes but lots of overburden where I can drive my rig to and a long treacherous hike where there isn’t much overburden. My northern Sierra claim was totally hammered by the old timers, there ain’t no roads in there yet all kinds of machinery laying around and there’s still gold to be had it’s kinda crazy. In the Klamath mountains I can back my rig up to the creek but the bedrock is like 30 feet down.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Good gold yes but lots of overburden where I can drive my rig to and a long treacherous hike where there isn’t much overburden. My northern Sierra claim was totally hammered by the old timers, there ain’t no roads in there yet all kinds of machinery laying around and there’s still gold to be had it’s kinda crazy. In the Klamath mountains I can back my rig up to the creek but the bedrock is like 30 feet down.
Wow!! You are more determined than myself. Hope you get to dig soon.
 

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desertgolddigger

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Today is, as I mentioned, a day to do things around the property.

And since I got most of that done already, I swept out the bottom of my equipment box, which also holds the dry washer main body. I always put it in upside down so it can deposit whatever it has in the bottom of the equipment box.

I learned years ago not to dump that dusty material, as it contains flat and small gold that sifts down under the plate with the cloth covering.

Today I discovered where a lot of my gold disappeared to, the bottom of the washer to the amount of 0.115 grams (over 100 small pieces). It's like I went out and dug, without all that work.

Now back to my chores.
 

Assembler

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Today is, as I mentioned, a day to do things around the property.

And since I got most of that done already, I swept out the bottom of my equipment box, which also holds the dry washer main body. I always put it in upside down so it can deposit whatever it has in the bottom of the equipment box.

I learned years ago not to dump that dusty material, as it contains flat and small gold that sifts down under the plate with the cloth covering.

Today I discovered where a lot of my gold disappeared to, the bottom of the washer to the amount of 0.115 grams (over 100 small pieces). It's like I went out and dug, without all that work.

Now back to my chores.
Do you dry pan the dusty material?
Do you use some kind of air blower for the extra fines?
Thanks.
 

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desertgolddigger

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No, I dump the material in a stack of mini classifiers. Then I remove most of the magnetics, in a dry pan for each mesh (26, 50 and 75).

I then pan each mesh size with water, using tweezers to remove the gold.

I guess you could say it's time consuming, but I really never have enough material for either my mini or big sluice.

Why would someone use an air blower for the extra fines. The blower would scatter those into oblivion. My extra fines amounted to over 40 specks. I no longer use a sucker bottle, as it picks up non-gold material, and then I still have to clean that out of the gold.

I'm at a loss as to how to remove non-gold debris from 150 mesh and smaller. And I can't tweeze such small gold, so I just keep accumulating it as is.
 

Assembler

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No, I dump the material in a stack of mini classifiers. Then I remove most of the magnetics, in a dry pan for each mesh (26, 50 and 75).

I then pan each mesh size with water, using tweezers to remove the gold.

I guess you could say it's time consuming, but I really never have enough material for either my mini or big sluice.

Why would someone use an air blower for the extra fines. The blower would scatter those into oblivion. My extra fines amounted to over 40 specks. I no longer use a sucker bottle, as it picks up non-gold material, and then I still have to clean that out of the gold.

I'm at a loss as to how to remove non-gold debris from 150 mesh and smaller. And I can't tweeze such small gold, so I just keep accumulating it as is.
Removing the magnetics first is just a given.

Air blowing methods goes all the way back to Egypt times where people used cotton sheets with air movement through and over materials to help separate lighter material away from heavier materials.

Today some will take some type of blower to do similar separation of the lighter materials away from the heavies. Some will use a plastic sheet tunnel to help give time for the materials to separate and drop out as the materials travel through the tunnel. Screening the material can be done after this first step. The air process can be repeated for different size heavies as the next step. Controlled air movement will depend on the light materials you are trying to remove first.

The next extra step is a electrostatic charge added to the process. I don't think there is anyone here on this forum talking about that process yet.

Dryer climate is perfect for this kind of process.
 

N-Lionberger

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The easiest way I have found to get those pesky fines out is to put the sands in a mortar and pestle it down, the sands will be crushed while gold flattens out and can be recovered by classification if you have enough screens or by panning it. I like using a little steel pan for this as after I have cleaned off the fine sands by back panning I can put it on the stove to dry the gold before funneling it into a vial. If you have a lot of fines you can use a rock tumbler as a miniature ball mill.
 

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desertgolddigger

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The easiest way I have found to get those pesky fines out is to put the sands in a mortar and pestle it down, the sands will be crushed while gold flattens out and can be recovered by classification if you have enough screens or by panning it. I like using a little steel pan for this as after I have cleaned off the fine sands by back panning I can put it on the stove to dry the gold before funneling it into a vial. If you have a lot of fines you can use a rock tumbler as a miniature ball mill.
I'm just picking them out one-by-one with tweezers. I got tired of having more debris than gold in my vial. Kind of hard to know what something weighs when there's so much junk mixed in. Right now I'm just doing 50 pieces a day until I get things cleaned, then after that I'm going back to what I did before People started suggesting all the miracle tricks, which haven't worked for me, and that's tweezing the gold. Takes less time for me than using all those doo-dads.
 

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