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Went For Gold And Found Nothing But Fossils


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How can I make a dredge for fossils. I don't want the fossils to go through the pump. I haven't bought anything yet...just using bucket classifiers and its painfully slow with all the blue & purple clay and leaves. We are on a small creek that runs through a swamp in South Carolina. Right now we are just going through piles of excavator dirt from the creek bottom but would like to get into the hand size teeth in the creek bottom. We are considering just using an excavator and a gas powered preasure washer to wash the fossils off the clay. Any help would save me time and money. Thanks?

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Nice collection going there.  I think you should consider setting up a large screen off the back of the dredge and have a member of your crew work it while you dredge if you want to have an easier go recovering fossils.  You getting anything else in the riffles?  If you dont want the fossils going thru the pump use a siphon set up, I think thats what its called,  high pressure stream into a head that creates a jet for pick up.  Someone will help me out here as I'm not a dredge guy.

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Actually the excavator and pressure washer idea sounds reasonable.

If you did make a dredge it sounds like a lot of work to actually get the clay into the pipe.

Maybe consider some sort of grate like DDancer suggested but a little bigger to pressure wash against. Whether or not you want smaller screens after is up to you. Once the clay is broken down by the pressure washer, the latter stages may not have to be a big as the slurry should flow much better by this point.

How elaborate to get will depend on whose land it is and how much time you have. Sounds like a blast.

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Excavator is the way to go. Get a sheet of woven steel mesh with 1in or 1/2in holes, depending on the smallest fossil you want to get. Dump dirt on screen, pressure wash and pick out the fossils and arrowheads that you will get. Rake stones off, start over. You might make a screen that dumps to save time. Sounds like a great time!

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Can't get the excavator deeper into the swamp....just right by the one road. So I think it's time to get in the water with the snakes and the gators with a sand scoop or a  big dredge. A small dredge will leave behind the prize fossils but could be used to clear sand to help get down deeper quicker.

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I got in the creek with a Backpack dredge and soon realized that my arms aren't long enough to get down past the sand to the clay layer. I will need a hookah pump on my dredge. Looks like I need another gas motor and a gast pca-10 pump. These pumps are hard to find used. New they run around 680.00-700.00. That's more than I have into my Keene backpack dredge from the 80's with 2 stroke motor. 

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