tvanwho

Nice Georgia gold, is getting me tempted to add another engine with compressor to my 2 inch dredge after seeing DJ's Indiana gold and now this chunky gold from Georgia.. I know Keene makes an unadvertised 2.5 horse engine with compressor unit. Wonder how much the whole air setup will cost me? i could bolt it to my frame up above the sluice i think and still keep the dredge weight under 140 pounds.

Yes, quite chunky bits and the odd thing is I used to mine upstream of this location 1/2 mile for 6 years and no matter how deep we dug/dredged/highbanked , we got only gold fines, nothing chunky, the gold had no weight, just pretty little fines and hundreds of them, made a nice swirl in our pans. This was all gravels and large cobbles . But bedrock was just upstream 500 feet. I am wondering if the whole creek bottom is bedrock with dips in the bedrock where the gold laden gravels gather in certain spots like where the photo was taken and like where we got them fines? I just thought some more about my ponderings. Just immediately upstream of the fine gold location and before the slick bedrock, were jagged chunks of bedrock and the stream was deeper with a 10 foot tall bank. I bet we should have dredged right there for there for bigger gold !!! That whole spot is off limits now as the land changed hands, dammit... Come to think of it, where this stream is straight and narrower is where the bare bedrock and boulders tend to be and where it widens out and bends hard is where the gravels and gold tend to be. Does this mean anything to you as far as reading the stream? Will the gold be the biggest right where the creek widens and gravels begin to show? How do I tell how deep to bedrock in the gravel areas? I can only go about 2 feet with my baby dredge. If only I were not so afraid of being underwater or getting sick from having my mouth on a hookah thing potentially teeming with bacteria from dirty river water....I had that Giardia bacteria once which put me in the hospital 2 days ...picked it up at the Crisson gold mine in Georgia from the gold panning troughs...do hookah divers generally have strong stomachs or do you get sickly after dredging underwater? And upstream of the spot where we got the fines highbanking is another hot spot for fines, BB size nuggets and copper, all in a giant S bend with slick bedrock and potholes and FAST water. The stream is VERY wide there too, like 80 feet and the locals swim in the deep holes. Upstream of that no gold at all between limestone bluffs and an island, then a 1/2 mile of slick bedrock the kayakers love at high water, but not a speck of gold. Hmmmm, so maybe I should ignore creek areas with straight narrow stream width, bare bedrock, as they tend to have no gold and just concentrate on wide areas with fast water just after a narrow stretch and where gravels tend to be , especially if cracks can be worked in bedrock? Deeper potholes are usually poor but the shallow ones tend to have gold ,coins, rings or at least they sure did by that swim area. -T

This previous post, the gold was found in a central Indiana stream where some folks think it is all worked out? Took my friend 6-8 months or so to dredge this gold for 2017. He has to drive 200 miles round trip to the spot. Dunno if he got enough gold to pay travel expenses or not? I think he said this photo was 22 grams of gold. I only got fines in this location with sluicing. The dredgers are getting the good stuff pretty much. Is also the spot where the bedrock area is now under several feet of new gravels just washed in and downstream on this large bend about 100 feet across is where the pickers are being dredged up along with multi ounce copper nuggets. The bottom is jagged hand to arm size pieces of broken up bedrock in FAST moving water 1-5 foot deep. My friend says he has gotten like 10 pounds of copper nuggets in and around this stretch of creek, maybe 1/4 mile long.He is using an old Keene single sluice 4 inch dredge with air. Guess we best not tell Chris Ralph that Indiana has more than gold dust? -Tom

Wonder why the A52 is getting so darn expensive these days? hard to justify a sluice much over $100

One of my fellow miners recovered 22 grams of Indiana gold this year, mostly from the one site where I met up with him first time. He has a photo on Facebook. should I post it here? He uses a 4 inch dredge with air and works alone . -Tom

I saw some familiar faces at the show but I wasn't terribly impressed with the turnout vs the show I went to in Onalaska, Wisconsin some years back held in a huge dome shaped building. Not much placer gold to find in Wisconsin and the mining laws are VERY restrictive, BUT that place was packed with many hundreds, if not a thousand, people and vendors. Heck, when they had the raffles, there must have been hundreds of people alone just for that. I went mining afterwards with a group of a dozen like minded prospectors near Greensburg, Indiana. Was hard to compete with guys using 3,4,5, even a necked down 6 inch gold dredge. I stuck to my sluice and easy on the digging with my health issues. I got some fines for my efforts and made a new friend or 2.The highlight of my trip was the farmer who owned the land had a kid streak in him still at age 72...he liked to skip flat rocks on the still surface of the creek, so we got into a contest to see who could skip a rock across to the opposite bank, approx. 80 feet away. He got 10 rocks skipped across the creek onto the bank vs my 8 rocks. I picked up a number of fossils including what I call devils horns and brachiopods. I think the horns are actually a coral ,anywhere from an inch to 3 inches long, curved like a rhinos horn. -Tom

I went sluicing this weekend. The big boys were using 3,4, 5, and a necked down 6 inch dredge in Indiana. No thanks. I was VERY careful about throwing rocks this time whilst bending over. No butt problems this time. I did discover that doing leg lifts helps when the butt / hemorrhoid pain flares up, even just 1 leg at a time, in the evening hours away from the creek. Take it slow and easy. I like the floating tub idea for moving cobbles. It also helps to have the sluice or banker closer to the hole and NOT use a #2 shovel. Less back strain with a 2 foot long shovel and small blade. 2 cement mixing tubs with foam floats attached might work to move rocks too. 2 of them together for a stronger bottom in case 1 cracks and a tow rope handle to pull with. -Tom

Beautiful gold from dredging SJM ...I can only dream...

I'd sure like to see some photos of your back saving rock moving sleds and contraptions in action. I just installed a new spark plug in my Honda WX15 motor after getting a severe tongue lashing from my buddy last time we went highbanking. We spent 20 minutes trying to get my formerly reliable pump to start which it absolutely refused to do, even with a new carb installed by the lawn mower shop a year ago.. Well, every so often it came to life but refused to keep running. After bearing more verbal abuse than I could stand almost, we went to plan B, sluicing....well, I had a sudden thought? I would pray and ask God to help? I couldn't hardly believe it when I went over and gave that starter one last pull and she fired right up and kept running !!! Thank you God !!! So, due to my friends angry tirade, I invested in spare spark plugs, plug sockets and ratchets, have sets in both highbanker and dredge toolboxes now. The WX15 plug was black and smelled of gas. Dunno why it wasn't tan like it should have been especially with a new carb on it? Incidentally, I got a 3/8 inch no name ratchet wrench, 16 mm deep socket, regular deep spark plug socket, and 2 inch extension, off Amazon and 2 sets of these and shipping was under $25, a true bargain as long as the ratchet holds up. I also was able to get 2-13 inch tall x 4 inch pneumatic wheelbarrow tires with steel ball bearings and axle adapters for a measly 22 bucks shipped from Home Depot Online, shipped to a local store. These would have cost over 50 bucks locally. Am experimenting with a wheeled highbanker, easier to move around.

Anybody got ideas for moving rocks/cobbles out of dredge/highbanker holes besides tossing them out by hand? I suffered severe lower back pain/hemorrhoids from doing this a month ago, and the hole was only 18 inches deep and 3 feet across. Is it possible to rig up a cheap tripod or something with rope and bucket attached to move the rocks off to the side of the hole, but how to dump the bucket? I like gold highbanking and dredging but lower back strains are no fun.And for some reason, rocks seem lighter underwater vs out of the water, why? I assume the backstrain happens when I am leaning over the hole at a sharp angle ,then tossing rocks out of said hole. Why does my lower back not like this? Of course being 60 years old and not in the best of shape probably doesn't help either...are there exercises I can do that might help too? -Tom V.

If we could only get Steve to make videos like Chris Ralphs Adventures in Prospecting videos?

you meet all kinds of characters when chasing gold and Jeff has dozens of gold finding videos, this is one of the better ones...

Jeff Williams is kinda corny but here we learn about finding gold in a desert wash with eyeballs and dowsing rods, how to recognize alkali deposits as a source of shallow water in the desert, rock formations, volcanic plugs, dikes, contact zones and such

There are several scary YouTube videos of quicksand/gravel situations, 1 guy was stuck for 3 days in a gravel pit he was hiking around in, fortunate to be rescued but almost lost his legs to gangrene, another persons horse went in out in a California desert along a sandy creek, took a helicopter to get the horse out, in England they use 2 x4 foot pieces of plywood as stepping stones out to the person in distress. As a teen we walked on quick sand where a dozer operator told us he had compacted it to where it was safe as he was excavating a swamp. It was like walking on rolling jello as I recall, a VERY uneasy feeling.

What do you mean by beach cuts and such? Got any photos? I used to detect at Chicagos Lake Michigan beaches until parking fees went up to like $ 16 an hour and that was it for me...

I was out in a seemingly dried up creek panning for gold in southern Illinois. A lot of the local creeks going under the roadways were about dried up I noticed, even some rivers. I stopped at a creek out in the boondocks that was 40 feet wide and a gravel bottom but hardly had a trickle and a few inches deep of water flowing. I never expected to encounter quicksand in pea size gravels but in one area closer to the bank with seemingly no water present, I went in up to my shins unexpectedly. Being 500 feet from the bridge , on a Sunday, in the country,well screaming for help would not have worked too well with nobody around !! Fortunately, I got out ok and told myself, lets get outta here. No gold was showing up and I was kinda scared. Not worth the risk. I know when we were at Ganes creek gold mine they warned us not to go in areas where they were washing gravels by the big sluice. I never understood why until now. Be careful out there. Its not just quick sand but quick gravels too on what looks like solid ground. Has anybody else had this happen to them? How do you get out if you do go in too deep and nobody around to help you? -Tom

I always heard it was easy pickings after Florida storms? Maybe thats just an old wives tale thing?

Just wondering why we are not hearing of Spanish gold doubloons and such being recovered on Florida beaches with these hurricanes stirring things up?

I was feeling sickly all year, still am, but winter will be here soon, so....I put in for a week off next week to play. I will be taking my homemade 2 inch suction nozzle dredge out for her maiden voyage in an Indiana creek. I need to know how to anchor the dredge so the creek doesn't take it when I let go of the hose? I will be dredging along an inside bend maybe 100 feet long x 25 feet out into the water and there are trees within 25 feet. This area was all 3-5 feet deep to visible bedrock a month ago. Now its all filled in with small gravels, no bedrock in sight. I happen to know the area upstream is gold bearing gravels so am hopeful this will be easy to dredge with few jams and gold to boot. The water is barely ankle to knee deep now. How long does it take for gold to settle down thru the gravels to bedrock after a flood, days, weeks, months, years? How do I find the paystreak? I do have a waterproof Garrett AT Pro, dunno if that's a waste of time or not? Do I just get to dredging a hole or is there a method to use? I don't want to dredge , then end up re-dredging my tailings. Just long arm dredging here, no air. I do have a plastic pipe I could attach to the nozzle to get down 3-4 feet. -Tom

I live next door to Fermi Lab practically, 3 miles north of me.

We metal detected bedrock cracks in a river at Logansport and got an 1873 seated dime.It was black. Look at my old posts for the photo. We used my Detector Pro Headhunter Diver and a waterproof TRW pinpointer.The coins were in small potholes in the bedrock areas between bridges, often loaded with sharp nails. Glad I had my tetanus shots up to date. Fast river water and slick bedrock so had to move slowly doing this. I just bought a 3 x 6.5 Core Shrew elliptical coil for my AT Pro waterproof Garrett detector. Has anybody used this coil/detector combo and results? Hope it does well in trashy parks and in the river. Should fit in between rocks and in crevices easier than the round coils.

That's quite a hike down Salt creek mister GB. I've gotten downstream to 2 pools of waist deep water with soft bottom, that I barely made it past, then past the fork and past the ford. I was heading towards that bridge you spoke of but wasn't sure just how far I could go? Heard some motorcycles along a path in the woods opposite the cornfields and sluiced a little gold thereabouts where my copper dowsing rods were crossing over a line of gravels . My map dowsing liked a particular gravel bar down towards the bridge but I never made it that far. NEVER leave on a trek without water and some Gatorade. Dehydration and dizziness are no fun when you are alone and no good water in the creek to drink. I wonder if one of them straw filter purifier things actually work for water in the field? I had a bad case of Giardia once after a visit to the Crisson Gold Mine in Georgia. Miners in Maine told me to wet my finger with saliva and then touch the gold and it would stick to my fingertip. This does work but as I discovered is BAD news in dirty water. Spent 2 days in the hospital a few months later and 18 months of nonstop bathroom suffering afterwards. My aunt told me the cure was an old fashioned antibiotic called Flagyll. It solved the Giardia mess in a weeks time. I was about to punch my doctor in the nose for not having tried this when in the hospital.He claimed there was nothing wrong with me at the time despite my puking and other nasty things. Heck, I puked all over the nurse in the ER after she asked if I had ever fainted before? send me a PM and we will have to go mining together ,preferably before hunting season starts. I once encountered 2 squirrel hunters in Morgan Monroe SF who had never heard of gold hunters there. They were armed with what looked like cannons strapped to their backs and camo. Poor squirrels.... I was unaware we could go 1/2 mile upstream at Gatesville? Was always told the cutoff was 50 feet behind the old fire station. Incidentally, there is a layer of blue clay in behind the old fire station, and I've seen pickers being dredged off the top of this clay. Its about a 50 foot stretch between 2 sharp creek bends there with the blue clay under the gravels. Must act like a false bedrock. Watch out for sharp rebar.I cut myself pretty good and had to get a painful tetanus shot later. I've heard 3 people say how they struck it rich in there.The floods must redeposit the gold there every year perhaps? At least 2-3 ounces recovered over the years by various people I am aware of on that blue clay layer they told me. I only got specks so maybe it was already mined out for the year. Water is 2 -3 feet deep there. Steve, I have a photo or 2 in Chucks book, Galena specimens I metal detected in sw Wisconsin.