Bear

I have not seen any that came from Keene drilled and tapped. I drilled and tapped a P180 before. I was a little worried because the petcock didn't have a lot to grab on to. This nub allowed me to cut a lot of threads.

I showed the top of the pump because on Keene's websight there is a picture where a pump is drilled and tapped with a pressure gage in it.

It looks like the HP-500 pumps from Keene are made to drill and tap for drain plugs.

I wrote about this before on this forum. I use my SDC while dredging in an old cut. Because there is very little flow the water becomes like chocolate milk so visibility is an issue. The schist bedrock is completely rotted to clay or broke rock. You can dredge deep into the bedrock for a few feet but takes a lot of time. I usually take about 18" of clay/rock. I always check the bottom or sides of the hole with the SDC completely submerged and have found nuggets either on the sides or where I didn't go deep enough.

Here is a contact zone between what appears from a distance to be basalt and granite in Southern California. As Steve said this one is obvious. I took this picture from the road but I am unable to go out there. I am down at fort Irwin training. There are hard rock mines in the area that have produced gold with a little placer production too.

I have seen this stuff before online but never used it. I have a platypus double D that I used (not for a while) on a GP Extreme. I think it came with that stuff on it. After it wore out I used electrical tape to seal it up. I never noticed a difference in performance.

Thank you, I love to read these

Congrats, I have seen a lot of native gold that would break as Steve pointed out for various reasons. I know a guy that had a half ouncer that was put on a bail for a neckelas. What seemed like a solid nugget through the years of wearing it flaked a lot of gold off of it.

That is some nice rough gold with Quartz attached! Have you dredged up stream of the vein?

Brian, I should have put your last name but I learned this from you on the Akmining forum

I hope you find one. They do recover really fine gold. I like to use the le trap pan for final clean up. The front area where it is scored works great to get all of the black sand out. The first pic is from a couple days. The second pic is from what was in the sluice from the pic I posted earlier.

I use a le trap in my 6" as well. This is a technique that I learned from Brian on the Akmining forum. After all the carpet and removable rifles are out of the sluice I place it up against the flair where the water flows right into the sluice. The le trap that I am using is at least 20 years old. It was made in Canada, later they were made in the states. I don't know where you can find the now. Here is a photo of a small clean up.

I know you can find native copper out there. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time in that area. My Uncle, cousin and I found a little chunk in piece of rock stained by chryscolla with a original gold bug. There are a lot of mines in that area though most of them appeared to be hard rock but I have not been out there for 20 years.

Wow, what an incredible piece. Congratulations. I would have left it dirty!!

Those are cool finds. Dahlonega is a neat area. I lived there for a little over a year while I was instructor at Camp Merrill. Lots of mining in the area of both gold and copper from 1828 to the present. There are four periods of heavy placer mining. The initial rush, after gold was discovered in California and new techniques were brought back, the Derepression with more modern equipment and the late 1970s/1980s. I detected quite a bit but only found a lot of junk. I also dredge all kinds of stuff out of the Etowa and the Yahoola but nothing cool except for a lot of amalgam and a few small nuggets. Anything that was iron was just a conglomerate of rust and rocks. The best was most of the year I didn't need to wear a wet suit, the water was so hot.