Goldgrabber

Here's day 2 of my recent gold prospecting trip to Scotland, enjoy

These sluices are made specifically to order by the admin of a UK prospecting forum, he can make them any colour but found blue showed the gold the best.  Yes you can pump unclassified material straight into the sluice if the flow is correct and it will wash any larger stones over the top while any gold material drops into the drop riffles.  I usually still classify my material because I usually can't get set up next to where I'm working but this was a rare opportunity to pump directly into it

Here's a video covering day 1 of my most recent gold prospecting trip to Scotland (last weekend), the video covers about 4 hours of prospecting, pumping material, sluicing and panning it out, I hope you enjoy :)

Here's a video I made showing my 4" manual gold pump filling a classifier in 60 seconds with just 4 draws on the pump.  The video also shows underwater shots of the pump in action so you can see the draw it has, these pumps are great for use in places where mechanical pumps are not allowed (like the UK and some US states etc), I hope you like it.

Thanks, yeah there's decent gold is Scotland and Wales, just not much in England

Here's the video I made on the last day of my gold prospecting trip from last month, including some pickers and photo's of the final clean up

Here's a video I made on day 4 of my gold prospecting trip to Wanlockhead, Scotland in March 2016. In this video I show how we have managed to divert the river water away from the hole we're working, which allowed the water level to drop by over 30cm (1ft), allowing us to work the hole a lot easier. especially for my friend who's waders failed so he couldn't stand in very deep water. We went prepared ready to make this diversion as we had a plan of where we were going to work and how to work it and having worked the hole previously, we knew we would need some kind of diversion for the water if we stood any chance of seeing bedrock at the bottom of the hole. Also in the video is a y lovely picker I saw at the top of my gold sluice flare along with pictures of what I picked out of my sluice for the day. I hope you like the video and if you do, please feel free to like, comment and share it, thanks :D

I hope the video displays properly this time, if not, can an admin amend if required

Here's a video I made testing my home made DIY gold sluice processing material recovered from a hole we dug in Wanlockhead, Scotland in March 2016. On the very first clean up this sluice found the first picker of the trip so I was really pleased with how it ran. This video is describing the sluice, the configuration and also processing material through it where you can see material being trapped by the different types of gold sluice matting I have used. The razorback matting is the most awkward to clean out as it has fine ribs in and I have glued the mats down (although 90% still cleaned out of it fine), everything else cleaned out in seconds which was the idea behind my design, to tip, pour water over and clean it out quickly.

Thanks, this was just day 1 off the top layer, I found a lot more of this size or bigger as we got deeper in the hole

Here's a short video from my first gold prospecting trip of 2016. This trip was to Wanlockhead, Scotland close to Leadhills, we have visited this area a number of times and my friend wanted to revisit a boulder he had previously worked so we went with a 7 day plan to get to bedrock. In this video, I was testing my new sluice I have made specifically to use in narrow streams rather than this wide river, but as it was new I had to test it out and from my very first bucket of concentrate, using my DIY narrow stream sluice for the first time, the sluice managed to stop this lovely little picker right at the top of the vortex matting. I was really pleased with how this sluice operated and I have another video to come showing material going through it so you can see just how it runs, but I couldn't help filming not just the first visible gold of the trip, but also the first picker too. This trip was one of my most successful trips to date and I have more videos to come showing the area we worked and the gold I found, so if you haven't already, why not subscribe to my channel to keep up to date with my videos.

its its got me thinking I should quit a few times per day lol

Here's a video I shot at a friends farm permission in mid Feb 2016 using my Minelab X-Terra 705 metal detector. The day wasn't the best to start with, the minelab x-terra 705 was finding lots of trashy junk items in the field, I detected for over 2 hours with the minelab and nothing but trash was found, but typically just as I was starting to get sick of the trash and thinking of calling it a day, I started heading back to the car when coin after coin started popping out, finding 6 coins in literally the last 30 mins of detecting on the walk back to the car, it saved the day which would have otherwise been wrote off. Goes to show not to stop detecting until you're packing up as you never know what you might swing across.

I'm tempted to go back to the same place today, the sun's out so its tempting me

Oops, this is a double thread post by accident, if an admin can delete this thread, it'll clean things up

A short video from a metal detecting trip using my Minelab X-Terra 705 metal detector on some local wasteland. My friends have detected this area over the years but I thought I would give it a go myself, I didn't have the best day finds wise but the Minelab X-Terra 705 did manage to find me my first love token made from an old coin. Because I hadn't heard of such a thing before today, I didn't realise what it was and when I dug it, I tried to bend it back in to normal shape, not realising it had been purposely bent to the shape it was, now I know for next time if I dig a bent coin, not to instantly try ans straighten it, live and learn ehh...

Here's a short video of another woodland hunt using my Minelab X-Terra 705 metal detector. I have visited this woodland a couple of times now and usually find anything from old to modern coins, lead bullets and rifle casing etc through to unusual stuff and this trip didn't disappoint, finding a metal ashtray made in Chille of all things along with a large cache of shotgun shells.....

Yeah my 4" is based on the same principal of my 2 1/2" pump, which in turn is based around the Henderson pump.  for the 2 1/2" version, using a normal tennis ball works a treat to create the inner vacuum as it fits perfectly in a 2 1/2" pipe with a tiny bit of compression to get a good seal.  Really simple devices to build and make and far cheaper than buying pre-made ones as they all work on the same principal.  

Here's how I made my standard 2 1/2" version, a basic Henderson pump if you will:

and when in the field,  if you get inventive, you can put attachments on the end to turn it into a sniping pump like this attachment I made from rubbish I had while away prospecting:

it's not as heavy as you'd think, my friend and I ran his on a couple of occasions last year and it worked a treat, filling a 1/4" classifier in 3-4 pumps rather than 3-5 minutes with a standard 2 1/2" pump.  We take the 2 1/2" pumps with us too but if there's a large area where the bigger pump fit's, then it shift so much more material per draw it's well worth the extra effort.

Here's a video of my friends 4" pump in action last year, made to the same spec as the video (minus the bend on the end) so you can see how well it works and how much material it shifts:

a bend on the end of the pump like in my first video will also stop all the material falling out as can be seen in this example vid

Here's a video showing how I've redesigned and made my monster 4" manual gold pump/dredge. I have a previous build version of this 4" manual gold pump on my youtube channel but due to trial & error, I have improved upon the previous design to make my 4" manual gold pump lighter, lose less material and create a smoother suction vacuum.

These pumps are great to use where you are not allowed to use any mechanical processing to remove material from rivers & streams as this is a purely manual process. One of these 4" manual gold pumps can fill a 1/4" classifier in just 3-4 draws depending on the material being worked, so they can save a lot of time compared to smaller versions of the pump which can take 5-10 minutes to fill the same classifier.

The cost to make one of these pumps is really minimal, especially if you can scavenge suitable parts because it doesn't have to look pretty as long as it works as its supposed to, I think this cost me about £15 in total to make ($25). I will be taking this pump out with me when my prospecting season starts in the coming weeks and hope to make some more videos to show how it works but if anyone wanted to make one as a project, I highly recommend it as it's a fun build with impressive results.

The speed of the water going through this shouldn't be a problem as its designed for use in very narrow streams which don't have large water flows going down them, can't wait to get out and use it and see how it performs

Here's a video describing how I have made a narrow river /. stream gold sluice. This gold sluice has been made with a combination of Vortex, Hi-Low & Gold Hog Razerback & Scrubber mats. The sluice is made of 2mm Aluminium which I had made & shaped at a local steel fabricators and the mats were off-cuts from someone else's sluice build, the other person had no use for them but they were the perfect size for what I wanted to make so the materials for this sluice haven't cost a lot at all.

This gold sluice has been specifically made narrower than most sluices because I already have a gold sluice for general working conditions, this gold hog matted gold sluice has been made specifically to run in narrow streams and burns, where a normal size/width sluice would not fit. I have previously made a similar rain gutter sluice using ribbed matting but that only seemed to trap the finest of material due to the matting used, so this time I figured I'd use tried and tested matting to ensure the gold sluice will stand the best chance of finding gold from the material as possible.

Here's a video showing a metal detecting trip using my minelab X-Terra 705 on a friends farm permission. The week prior, I found my first silver coin and this time out, I found my oldest coin to date, a George II half penny. The date is too worn but the coins were made betweek 1729-1754 so it's getting close to 300 years old. It was the only coin I found on the hunt but also found lots of things I thought were coins on their way out, until a bit of cleaning revealed most was junk. 

cheers guys, less than 6 months in with a nice silver under the belt, now for the gold ones

A nice woodland hunt video where I found 6 nice coins with the oldest dating back to 1908. Along with the coins I found a couple of bullets, rifle casings, toy guns and a few other bits and bobs. The metal detecting dig was done with my Minelab X-Terra metal detector which I've been using the last couple of months and the Minelab X-Terra hasn't let me down yet. There is a photo of the coins at the end of the video showing more detail and I'll be back out with the xterra 705 soon.