John-Edmonton

Thanks.....great hobby eh!

Just a demonstration with some possible design changes for some improvements.

The problem with gold around this area, is that it is all flour gold, left behind from glaciers. There is no source. Normally, the gold gets larger in size as you get closer to the source, however that is not the case here. Gold is gold no matter what size it is.🍻 

We just had copus amounts of rain. The North Saskatchewan River flowing through Edmonton rose 12 feet, so I had to find an alternate river to prospect. And it rose about 4 feet and the water is receading. 
 

My buddy and I hit a river today. Sampling gravel indicated maybe 5 specs. The vegetation roots faired much better, so I spent the day only washing roots. Such a simple process too. Just put a chunk of roots with sand and gravel in your hopper, and let the water break it up. I got some great fossils, a ring, and other goodies using my metal detector. I faired OK with the gold too, considering it was not the North Saskatchewan River. "ROOTS ROCK."🍀🍀🍀🍀 (lots of pics)

 Another 4 weeks of tumbling resulted in these results. I was running 3 tumblers.

Very well written story about your adventure. The thunks we do do get a bit of that shiney!😁 That's a nice piece of nuggy you found.

Here's my totals from last week and today's hunt. Man....it's "HOT" working on the North Saskatchewan River. Had to fill up my baseball cap with water periodically to douse myself with water. These were 2, 3 or 4 hour digs. This worked out to be about 14 hours worth. For the 2 hour hunts after work this past week-end, I used the California mini, as it can be carried down to the river and set up in 10 minutes. Also got some dino bone pieces.

9 hours ago, SwiftSword said:

Neat! How much gold is that?

About a gram.

7 hours ago, Valens Legacy said:

Very nice days reward on the gold, and I am glad that you had another place to sluice.

Good luck on your next hunt.

Grandfather used to use a couple of burlap sacks  with some weights to catch some gold when the water was to high. He said that the water moved faster and would also move some of the gold when things got high. When the water went down some we could pull the sacks out of the water and sure enough there was some gold in them.

We kept the sacks close to the banks and held in a position with some nylon cords.

I would like to know if you had ever tried that method and if so did you catch anything.

I haven't even heard of people laying out burlap sacks directly in the river. Makes sense. I am sure it would work in my locations.

44 minutes ago, Beany said:

I love it, great pictures!! (Maybe put both the itty bitty & mini LeTrap in a row with one feeding into the other.) I have both the plastic single wide with an adjustable leg stand and also the double wide plastic Kreeger Sluice (made in the state of California), it only requires 1/2” inch classified screening. With the >>removable plastic header<< it can be used with ‘either’ an electric bilge pump “or” in the river stream.

That would be cool. Could even add the California, which would make it three. I checked out the Kreeger models. Very nice drop riffle design. People are starting to realize that drop riffle designs, when set up properly work really well. They didn't have any drop riffle designs 30+ years ago, other then the Le'Trap. I was too busy raising a family and money was tight back then.

1 hour ago, Dean Stone said:

Is that out of rock or metal? I think i would have it tested by someone that can tell you about it. Looks cool, 

That's rock. The camera flash makes it look like metal. 

 What do you think? Art, artifact or randomly created in the environment. I eyeballed this canoe made of what appears to be ironstone last weekend while highbanking beside a river. I am really fascinated with this find. Native peoples have been in this area for over 10,000 years.

Getting down to the river, I spotted a family of geese, who spotted me at the same time. They observed me for a while, then decided it was safe to pass by. I unofficially hired them as my "CLAIM" guards, to keep others away.

I brought along my metal detector, as I sometimes do, to unwind a bit from all the digging.

Due to the heat and smoke, I choose to screen my concentrates before feeding them into my California mini. I then find a cooler spot in the shade to sit down on an empty bucket and process them in my highbanker.

The smoke was real bad from numerous surrounding fires, with advisories in the news to stay indoors or wear masks outdoors. A stark reminder of covid.

The smoke creates different sun sets, often times turning it to a red, bleeding sun.

Here's a couple of interesting finds. Metal detecting with my Garrett APEX, I dug this  token or coin with an elephant on one side, with some sort  of numeric table on the reverse. When screening buckets, I always stack my buckets two high, so as to not bend over as much, maintaining a straight back while screening the material. Because the gravel is closer to my eyes while screening, I get a closer look for interesting rocks for tumbling. I managed to eye-ball  this beautiful rock fossil  with some sort of plant imbedded it.

Here's the gold I got after 8 5 gallon buckets. 

Very nice presentation. I bet many of us followed a similar path. It always starts with a pan, then ends in a pan.

17 hours ago, glacialgold said:

That's some lovely flour gold! Question: What method did you use to get it so clean and remove all the black sand?

I used a bucket clean-up sluice over a  VDR clean-up sluice , (3x36 inch) removed the magnetic black sand with a magnet, then back-panned the remaining concentrates. The nice thing about drop riffle sluices is that they contain much less concentrates then expanded mesh over minor's moss.

6 hours ago, Gold Seeker said:

Yours is blue, all the ones I saw on Geo Sluice Mining are green, are they the same, which model is yours?

He makes his equipment colors black, green, blue and pink. In this post, I am using my California mini. I usually use my Geo highbanker, as it is larger and has three different capture processes to increase the capture rate. 

9 hours ago, Valens Legacy said:

Way to go on the cleanup with a very nice reward at the end.

Nice little setup you got there, I have been looking to find something that will get me a little more out of what I have been sluicing. How much did that set you back and where did you get it if you don't mind me asking.

Good luck on your next outing and cleanup.

I bought mine from Geo Sluice Mining. His prices are shown. You will pay much less then what I did, as I live in Canada.  

Oh man, I would love to be there Steve! But, no-can-do! Will you be video taping your discussion?

On 5/10/2023 at 1:12 PM, Ridge Runner said:

Hey John  

 Be careful out there when it’s lightning because you get hit by it and it can sure do a lot of damage to a good watch. 
 Laying all jokes aside around water you are the highest target and lightning loves that.

 Lightning has been known to hit a hundred miles away.

 Chuck 

You are probably right. I shouldn't be doing risky things at my age.

I just never lose my sense of "aw" when I see tumbled pieces of petrified wood. I can't help but wonder what that tree looked like some hundred million years ago, what types of animals were in existence and of course was gold plentiful? Below is my latest batch I took out of my rock tumbler after tumbling for over 4 weeks. I loaded up another three tumblers tonight of various types of rocks. They should be ready next month.