Beach Mining

[johnedoe]

Been a while since I been here.... still around, sorta.... If anybody has any questions I'll be happy to try to answer. And Ill try to stop in a little more often.

Heavy pans.....

[johnedoe]

Well it has still been a while since I hit the beach.... 

Last time I looked at the little beach I visit it was not inspiring...lol

Anyway I have set the end of march for a trip up to Benson Beach. I have been there a couple times to visit but not to mine. I am looking forward to this little weekend adventure and hope to get some nice gold.

Here are a couple pf pics of Benson Beach..... LOTS of black sand.

 

 

[Seadog92]

I'm new to the forum and loved reading your thread.  I'm excited to start doing some beach mining.  I used to live in NM and got hooked on prospecting and panning, but now live in Tacoma.  I wondered if you ever take trips up along the coast and if so, if you've ever tried the beaches between Ocean Shores and Moclips.  I'm going to be new at beach mining so I'll  keep watching this thread and YouTube for information.   Thanks

[johnedoe]

Hey Seadog.

Glad to see you here..... Welcome to the best forum on the web.

I dropped you a PM with a little info .

I do have a thread over at Treasure net . here's a link.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/sluicing/454120-got-out-little-today.html

I haven't added much to it for a while but there is some more stuff for you to check out.

I haven't really hit the beach in almost a year..... wow how time flies when your sidetracked....

But I am really looking forward to the upcoming trip.

Anyway if you have more questions just ask.

I'm happy to help if I can.

[Macgregor]

Hello All,

I recently moved from Michigan here to the Portland Area. I used to pan for gold for fun in Michigan and found an occasional speck of gold and it was a fun experience. I just found this forum and realized that I could have a lot of fun out on the beaches. I was inspired by this post to check out a beach just off a camp site and found a bunch of black sand like in the pictures throughout this post and a lot of sparkling. I just purchased a 50 inch foldable sluice box for some future trials at this beach. I know blue bowls are a good option, but I was wondering if a blue bowl would work for fine gold like this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank you,

[johnedoe]

Well I just got back from Benson beach. Haven't had a chance to do a cleanup yet but will get to it in a day or two.

For cleanup I use my gold cube with deep V mat on the slick plate .... There is still a bit of black sand to deal with but finish panning makes quick work of it.... I don't have much use for a blue bowl.... Now you don't need a gold cube to do your clean up just make a small sluice tray and put deep V mat in it... small sluice size is a little variable but 8" wide by 24" long works real well. use about 800 GPH with the sluice angle at about 15 deg. As you run your cons you can watch and tune everything from there ....

 

Here are a few pics of the beach weekend.

 

[johnedoe]

Well I finally got the preliminary cleanup done... just letting it dry so I can weigh it later, also there is still more but it is extremely fine so I will probably just do a borax firing in the furnace.

 

 

[johnedoe]

Here ya go...... 1.52 gram.

Not bad for the material I actually moved.

 

[AeroXray]

Thanks for sharing your beach mining experiences. I found this thread while looking for information on beach mining and it compelled me to join the site. Have you had a chance to use your cleangold sluice side by side or in conjunction with a gold cube? In looking at the cleangold system it appears that it may no longer be available. It's not shown on the Snake River Products page and the cleangold website has been taken down.

[johnedoe]

Cleangold is surprisingly efficient at capturing fine gold plus it can be fed faster than the gold cube.

I pretty much use the cube for cleanup anymore. In fact I have been thinking of selling my 5 stack.

Now what I use for beach mining is a multi stage sluice.... On the last trip I configured it to 8 feet long with a header box that dropped onto a 1/8th inch punch plate to keep anything other than sand running into the sluice.

The top of the box had a section of slick plate followed by a section of 1/4" sawtooth mat, followed by a section of deep V mat and finally by a section of cleangold.

Regarding SnakeRiver products they have closed that site to my knowledge. Regarding the cleangold website .... I don't know what is going on with that. I think they have pretty much given up on the US market and focus on the artisanal miners of the third world countries.

If you want a cleangold sluice I know the fella that cut a good system together for you His name is Dennis Katz and he had been the US distributor for cleangold .... He has improved on the system by doing pretty much what I have done and that is incorporating additional mat types within the sluice. If you want his contact info let me know.

There is enough info on the web that would allow you to make your own now also the patent has expired on cleangold.

I will refer to cleangold as a magnetic mat system from here on out since that is truly what it is.

Here is a video of David Plath in Nome and here he shows how to use the prospector sluice and that is as close as you will ever get from him for free.

 

That is partly why he failed in the US market... He would give you no info unless you bought the system from him. There are forums that even banned the systems discussion because of threats of lawsuits from him.

There is a pretty good thread on cleangold over at Canadian Gold Prospectors... Here is a link to that one.  

http://gpex.ca/smf/index.php?topic=3281.0

 

Anyway that should get you started.