2 More Days With The SDC 2300: 52 Nuggets And 8.8 Grams

[Jim Hemmingway]

Steve… this is a very good report. It addresses the salient points for anyone considering the purchase of an SDC 2300. Love the vivid outdoor photos, and of course your gleaming rugged gold has a special allure. Thanks for putting it together, I think you've made a good conscientious effort to communicate your thoughts and ideas regarding the unit. Good luck with your hiking trip into the outback.

 

Jim.

 

PS: Chris... most impressive, you richly deserve all the credit in the world. 

[Reno Chris]

Just an update:

Been up there some more dry washing and doing a bit more detecting, though 90% of my time this last trip was dry washing. I now have 113 detected nuggets for 20 grams, and 16 grams of dry wash gold - total now is 1.15 ounces. Some of the DW stuff could easily have been heard with the detector, but I am digging up places with depths from 6 inches up to about 18 inches max, and some of it was just deeper than could be heard without removing the gravel material first, and it just got dug and put in the dry washer. The DW stuff is on the left, the detected nuggets on the right.

[azblackbird]

Nice going Chris! Just out of curiosity, the stuff you're showing looks like 1st run concentrates... are there any fines? 

[deathray]

Looking good Chris!

[Reno Chris]

Quote

looks like 1st run concentrates... are there any fines?

I did not re-run the fines through the dry washer a second time if that's what you mean. Generally that is a lot of work for a small amount of gold unless the material is wet or has other problems. I did go over all the DW fines (and coarse too) with my metal detector and got one little flake. Dry washers don't do all that well on fines - like minus 50 mesh. Not that they have zero recovery of minus 50 mesh gold, but that the percentage recovered is not that great. I did not recover a lot of that size - though there was some. I have not tried wet panning some of the fines reject to see how much of that real small stuff is present - mostly because hauling the material to water is just not an option. 

[azblackbird]

On 9/17/2014 at 9:37 AM, Reno Chris said:

I did not re-run the fines through the dry washer a second time if that's what you mean. Generally that is a lot of work for a small amount of gold unless the material is wet or has other problems. I did go over all the DW fines (and coarse too) with my metal detector and got one little flake.

Whoaaaa Nellie… are you telling me that what you're showing are the results of your first pan out of your DW concentrates, and there was nothing finer (mesh wise) worth messing with? If that's the case, it sounds to me like you may have hit upon one nice little patch.

Okay… time to pick your brain. Forgive me if if some of the questions I'm going to ask you are amateurish in nature. I'm still a newbie to all this.

1. What made you select this particular area to detect or drywash?

2. Did you do any research on this area (geology wise), or was it an area that is/was popular among the past/present day gold prospectors?

3. What are the geological features of the area?

4. How would you describe the specific characteristics of the area? Are you on a bench, hilltop, hillside, tertiary channel? Is the gold in your opinion eluvial, or alluvial?

5. Are you doing any sampling of the general area to see which direction the source may be?

That's enough for now. I'm just trying to learn why gold ends up where it does, and try to avoid the places where it doesn't.

[Reno Chris]

So you need to explain what you mean by "first pan out of your DW concentrates" - its not terminology I am used to using, so I am unsure of what you mean. Do you pan your concentrates over and over? Do you re-run your fine fraction from the Dry washer?

 

1. What made you select this particular area to detect or drywash?

Detect - which I did first - it was because old timers worked it in the 1800s.

Dry wash - because I found gold concentrated in small patches, though some nuggets of "scattered gold" were found around the general area.

2. Did you do any research on this area (geology wise), or was it an area that is/was popular among the past/present day gold prospectors?

It is not popular among modern prospectors, but was well worked in the past.

3. What are the geological features of the area?

Metamorphic rocks of several varieties

4. How would you describe the specific characteristics of the area? Are you on a bench, hilltop, hillside, tertiary channel? Is the gold in your opinion eluvial, or alluvial?

There were two patch areas, an upper and lower. The upper was hillside and eluvial, the lower more water washed and alluvial. The source is nearby, but the hills are covered in many places with deep gravel (and that was part of what the miners worked in the upper workings.

5. Are you doing any sampling of the general area to see which direction the source may be?

I have done a bit in the past but found nothing. I have not done any recently, but I will do some more in the future, although that may need to wait until next year. We shall see.

[azblackbird]

Thanks for answering my questions Chris.

"I have done a bit in the past but found nothing. I have not done any recently, but I will do some more in the future, although that may need to wait until next year. We shall see."

Is this a patch that you see yourself spending some considerable time on, or is it just more or less something to fall back on if you have a dry spell and need a gold fix?

"So you need to explain what you mean by first pan out of your DW concentrates"

I guess what I'm trying to convey is that you basically took your DW concentrates, classified them down, then panned them out and that's what we're seeing. In other words, you had no residuals that would warrant further processing with a Blue Bowl or Miller Table. I was expecting to see a vial of fine gold along with what you posted. But if it's not there, or is to time consuming to mess with... then it is what it is.

[Rick Watkins]

You guys have been doing very well with 2300' i see, have you used gold bugs near them working in same area, they shouldn't talk to each other should they? Been nice seeing everyones hunt results and feedback

this season, hoping to get on a hunt in oct. In Nev. Ourselves before desert is white and frozen.

[Reno Chris]

Is this a patch that you see yourself spending some considerable time on, or is it just more or less something to fall back on if you have a dry spell and need a gold fix?

The patch Steve and I were working on is pretty well beat up, though I am sure there is at least some left. I still think some of the workings located above where we dug the nuggets still need more detecting. A friend who borrowed my SDC found one up there in the time since Steve was last up there detecting with me. The search for the source is a low priority thing, but I will likely devote a day or two to it in the future.

I guess what I'm trying to convey is that you basically took your DW concentrates, classified them down, then panned them out and that's what we're seeing.

Yep. In fact as the DW unit has its own classifier in the feed hopper, I didn't need to classify the cons, I just panned them out. There was very little fines, but there was some.

have you used gold bugs near them working in same area

I used one with a gold bug Pro (new gold bug) and there was no cross talk unless you were right next to each other. We tried digging a target I found with the SDC (it was gold) and as we were standing at the same spot, could not have both the GB and the SDC on at the same time. (that was done with Scott Harn of ICMJ, not Steve).