It is true there are people who will make many times that which they could earn off of Gold, by mining gemstones. I have been in debate after debate that Gemstones are superior to Gold and Silver. I must disagree and dissent on this opinion.
Firstly, gemstones come in so many varieties of grades and colors, which means there can be no uniformity among stones... You can cut dozens of 1 carat sapphires, but none of them will be worth the same amount to the same people. One might see a flaw in one, and no flaw in another, and so the two stones while weighing the same and cut the same, are not going to be worth the same. On the other hand, an ounce of Gold is always an ounce of Gold, an ounce of Silver always an ounce of Silver.
Secondly, you can't take small stones and melt them into bigger stones... I guess TECHNICALLY you can, but it is far too costly to do and very few institutions, let alone people, have the technology to do so. If something shatters one of your stones, you can't take the fragments and get the same amount of value out of them as you can with gold dust... An ounce of gold dust is worth the same as an ounce of gold nuggets. Gold and Silver can be melted, and poured into bars... If the bars get damaged beyond what is desired, they can be melted and poured anew.
Thirdly, if someone handed you some stones, how would you know which is real? Can you identify a real Diamond amidst Cubic Zirconia? On the other hand, it is very easy to tell the difference between real gold and imitations... Silver also is easy to identify... And there are very simple tests that are available to anyone and can be conducted in moments. Gemstones on the otherhand require expertise to validate and assess.
Any values affixed to gemstones therefore are arbitrary and cannot be defined or substantiated in any capacity. 1 carat of sapphires is not always equal to 1 carat of sapphires. An ounce of gold is always equivalent to an ounce of gold, so uniformity can be assured, making it the superior choice where commodity money is concerned.
Gemstones are synonymous to wealth, sure. However, one must consider that Gold has always held the same purchasing power it ever did have. In ancient Rome you could buy a nice toga, sandals, perhaps a sun dial, and a nice dinner and evening of entertainment with an ounce of gold. Now, an ounce of gold will still buy a nice suit, tie, watch, shoes, dinner, and still have some left over for some good entertainment.
I just don't see how Gemstones can be worth the prices affixed to them. I know they are beautiful and rare, but as use for money, they are not practical. They are poor investments because one stone can be worth millions, and later not even worth sanding grit. Not Gold and Silver... Always, do they retain value.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Why drops in commodity prices are good after big gains:
It may be hard to wrap your mind around this but nothing can go up and up and up without dropping. Instead it goes up for a finite amount of time before dropping. Let's look at silver hitting $50 an ounce. It was thought impossible! Let's look back to 2003. Silver actually went below $4 an ounce. Over that 8 year time looking back you might think it only went straight up.
However for every few steps up there were some steps back. See... There are people who do not truly understand money and metal. These are the ones that may have bought at $10 but have sold out at $20 only to miss seeing the price more than double again. They like to take profits. The smart ones will sell just before it dips and buy just before it resumes an upward trend. Paper money is not profit. Look at the value of the dollar over the last hundred years. Silver is on an upward trend because of the inflationary nature of paper money.
But before I jump too far ahead I want to explain that if it weren't for people taking so called profits, which is why we see huge drops in the metals markets, you and I who are smart enough to buy and hold onto our metal can benefit from a dollar with more purchasing power. After all, the lower gold and silver prices the stronger the money. Just look up gold prices in a weak currency such as the Zimbabwe dollar. The more you can buy with a unit of currency the stronger it is.
The lower commodity prices are, for the most part, the stronger our money is. This does not mean our economy is stronger but it means you will derive more fruits from your labors. Instead of your dollar buying 1/50th an ounce of silver it will now buy 1/35th of an ounce or so.
But this huge selloff could make some nervous and it might for e silver down another ten per ounce. Do you know what this means? Either now or soon will be your last best chance to buy silver because it may head up again and not stop until it hits $80.
I would rather have chances to buy silver at price lower than where it went than to not have those opportunities. Aw hell I guess I'm just trying to say that instead of sellng when everyone else is, buy!
When silver works it's way up it took time and as a result of poor fiscal policy we seen a rapid acceleration this past month or two. Inflation will steal wealh from you without you knowing it. This is why people buy gold and silver. Rome collapsed. Guess what their gold Denari are worth now? The same as they were then. When America collapses, what would you want? Paper that is unfunded such as happened to the confederate dollars in the civil war or do you want gold and silver that stood the test of time all through the ages?
Gold and silver transcends culture, race, background, languages and customs. It speaks a universal word to all peoples: wealth and security against corruption. Remember, when you see big drops In prices, it's not that it's become a bad investment, as much as it means it became a better investment!
However for every few steps up there were some steps back. See... There are people who do not truly understand money and metal. These are the ones that may have bought at $10 but have sold out at $20 only to miss seeing the price more than double again. They like to take profits. The smart ones will sell just before it dips and buy just before it resumes an upward trend. Paper money is not profit. Look at the value of the dollar over the last hundred years. Silver is on an upward trend because of the inflationary nature of paper money.
But before I jump too far ahead I want to explain that if it weren't for people taking so called profits, which is why we see huge drops in the metals markets, you and I who are smart enough to buy and hold onto our metal can benefit from a dollar with more purchasing power. After all, the lower gold and silver prices the stronger the money. Just look up gold prices in a weak currency such as the Zimbabwe dollar. The more you can buy with a unit of currency the stronger it is.
The lower commodity prices are, for the most part, the stronger our money is. This does not mean our economy is stronger but it means you will derive more fruits from your labors. Instead of your dollar buying 1/50th an ounce of silver it will now buy 1/35th of an ounce or so.
But this huge selloff could make some nervous and it might for e silver down another ten per ounce. Do you know what this means? Either now or soon will be your last best chance to buy silver because it may head up again and not stop until it hits $80.
I would rather have chances to buy silver at price lower than where it went than to not have those opportunities. Aw hell I guess I'm just trying to say that instead of sellng when everyone else is, buy!
When silver works it's way up it took time and as a result of poor fiscal policy we seen a rapid acceleration this past month or two. Inflation will steal wealh from you without you knowing it. This is why people buy gold and silver. Rome collapsed. Guess what their gold Denari are worth now? The same as they were then. When America collapses, what would you want? Paper that is unfunded such as happened to the confederate dollars in the civil war or do you want gold and silver that stood the test of time all through the ages?
Gold and silver transcends culture, race, background, languages and customs. It speaks a universal word to all peoples: wealth and security against corruption. Remember, when you see big drops In prices, it's not that it's become a bad investment, as much as it means it became a better investment!
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Belief That Old Mines Were Mined Out
Folks, it upsets me that there are so many old ornery people out there who seem to hate mining with such passion that they say everything to discourage new prospectors, and to perpetuate the myth that mining is bad for the world. They use blatant lies to achieve their end goals, which I am here to set the record straight as best as I can.
The right to be able to prospect for gold and silver and other resources, and develop those resources, are an important fundamental right given to us. Do you know that there are many countries where the people are so dirt poor they can't even clothe themselves, yet those same villages in which they live in some cases sit upon massive Gold deposits that if their government would let them keep the fruits of their labors and allow them to dig for it, they could feed and care for themselves beyond that which even the most generous welfare state could provide? The very thing that has allowed America to prosper, is denied to citizens of third world countries, and you can see the difference, though it is not often talked about, and it is never compared and contrasted. However, there is a movement which seeks to destroy our mining laws, and make regulations so costly to comply with that we will eventually be driven out of business.
Every person that is convinced of the lies told about mining will more than likely become a pawn in the war against mining. There are so many things taught to me in elementary school that I go back and think about them and go wow, was I really that gullible? My own observations disprove much of what I was taught. One big example of disinformation if ever there was one, is when they teach that clearcutting is so bad for the environment that the forest can never recover. You know, I almost believed it had my own grandpa not shown me sections of land that he clear cut himself decades ago, that are now thickly wooded with nice healthy younger growth timber?! To do it excessively would perhaps be bad overall, but in cases where there are certain kinds of timber, or defects found, it is necessary and healthy to clearcut, but the point I am making, it is disinformation to say that the forest cannot recover from clearcutting. In a similar manner, disinformation is spread about Mining.
I recently watched a show in which an old guy was saying "If there were anything left in the old mines, the old timers wouldn't have left them so there is no need to go back in them, because you will find nothing but trouble." Hmmm... It would take someone truly ignorant to say something like this. No, I don't advise going back into the mines. But what I am saying is a VERY slim minority of mines were shut down due to lack of minerals. WWII shut down a great many gold and silver mines because they were not essential resources for the war effort. They were not shut down becuase they were played out. There are many hundreds of such mines. Many were long abandoned and not reopened, because after years of rationing during the war, and with the prosperity this country seen in the 50's, there wasn't that need to toil under ground, because a lot of people saved up a lot of money from the war years.
Also one must take into account the fact that odds were pretty good that most of the guys knowing where these old gold mines were, could have been killed during the war. Another reason mines were left, was because costs sometimes went up, ore grades sometimes dropped, for whatever reason a mine might be unprofitable to operate for a given time because of market conditions. Also, you have another matter of permits... I know of a large mine not far away that has been shut down for a long time because the Forest Service refuses to let them use the road for hauling or something of that nature.
It is true a lot of small mines were opened up by either small companies that sometimes went bust due to poor planning and lack of proper financing and had to give it up, and it is also true that individuals mined on a small scale basis, when they either got too old or crippled to work, they'd move on and retire, else they died before they could exhaust their mine. Sometimes, people weren't so greedy, and would mine enough to satisfy their needs for the rest of their life and move on.
Government regulation has caused the destruction of much of our mining sector. When they made all kinds of national parks, there were even mining towns smack dab in the middle of them that were evacuated and the mines shut down, and no one is none the wiser. Take Glacier National Park for instance, in the very early 1900's, there was a mining town up there! The town was called Altyn. There is no telling the true extent of the minerals under that park, but observation has shown any area that MIGHT have economically vital amounts of resources, are quickly glombed onto by the Federal Government. Even the area thought to contain the "Lost Dutchman's Mine" is inside a national park or something along those lines!
So the reason I want to inform everyone and motivate everyone that there is good opportunities for prospecting is, because the more of us who are enlightened and aware of these facts, the greater our power in fighting the government's unjust legislations and encroachment upon our land rights. If no one complains, and if no one writes to our representatives and our senators, our mining heritage and rights are essentially lost. Prospecting and mining are things I do not want to have to experience through history books alone, but I wish to enjoy them for as long as I live, and to know that my children if I ever have any, will be able to enjoy it as well. If you ignore your rights, they will go away! Especially when you have a large group of people who are so dedicated to spreading lies and disinformation.
The right to be able to prospect for gold and silver and other resources, and develop those resources, are an important fundamental right given to us. Do you know that there are many countries where the people are so dirt poor they can't even clothe themselves, yet those same villages in which they live in some cases sit upon massive Gold deposits that if their government would let them keep the fruits of their labors and allow them to dig for it, they could feed and care for themselves beyond that which even the most generous welfare state could provide? The very thing that has allowed America to prosper, is denied to citizens of third world countries, and you can see the difference, though it is not often talked about, and it is never compared and contrasted. However, there is a movement which seeks to destroy our mining laws, and make regulations so costly to comply with that we will eventually be driven out of business.
Every person that is convinced of the lies told about mining will more than likely become a pawn in the war against mining. There are so many things taught to me in elementary school that I go back and think about them and go wow, was I really that gullible? My own observations disprove much of what I was taught. One big example of disinformation if ever there was one, is when they teach that clearcutting is so bad for the environment that the forest can never recover. You know, I almost believed it had my own grandpa not shown me sections of land that he clear cut himself decades ago, that are now thickly wooded with nice healthy younger growth timber?! To do it excessively would perhaps be bad overall, but in cases where there are certain kinds of timber, or defects found, it is necessary and healthy to clearcut, but the point I am making, it is disinformation to say that the forest cannot recover from clearcutting. In a similar manner, disinformation is spread about Mining.
I recently watched a show in which an old guy was saying "If there were anything left in the old mines, the old timers wouldn't have left them so there is no need to go back in them, because you will find nothing but trouble." Hmmm... It would take someone truly ignorant to say something like this. No, I don't advise going back into the mines. But what I am saying is a VERY slim minority of mines were shut down due to lack of minerals. WWII shut down a great many gold and silver mines because they were not essential resources for the war effort. They were not shut down becuase they were played out. There are many hundreds of such mines. Many were long abandoned and not reopened, because after years of rationing during the war, and with the prosperity this country seen in the 50's, there wasn't that need to toil under ground, because a lot of people saved up a lot of money from the war years.
Also one must take into account the fact that odds were pretty good that most of the guys knowing where these old gold mines were, could have been killed during the war. Another reason mines were left, was because costs sometimes went up, ore grades sometimes dropped, for whatever reason a mine might be unprofitable to operate for a given time because of market conditions. Also, you have another matter of permits... I know of a large mine not far away that has been shut down for a long time because the Forest Service refuses to let them use the road for hauling or something of that nature.
It is true a lot of small mines were opened up by either small companies that sometimes went bust due to poor planning and lack of proper financing and had to give it up, and it is also true that individuals mined on a small scale basis, when they either got too old or crippled to work, they'd move on and retire, else they died before they could exhaust their mine. Sometimes, people weren't so greedy, and would mine enough to satisfy their needs for the rest of their life and move on.
Government regulation has caused the destruction of much of our mining sector. When they made all kinds of national parks, there were even mining towns smack dab in the middle of them that were evacuated and the mines shut down, and no one is none the wiser. Take Glacier National Park for instance, in the very early 1900's, there was a mining town up there! The town was called Altyn. There is no telling the true extent of the minerals under that park, but observation has shown any area that MIGHT have economically vital amounts of resources, are quickly glombed onto by the Federal Government. Even the area thought to contain the "Lost Dutchman's Mine" is inside a national park or something along those lines!
So the reason I want to inform everyone and motivate everyone that there is good opportunities for prospecting is, because the more of us who are enlightened and aware of these facts, the greater our power in fighting the government's unjust legislations and encroachment upon our land rights. If no one complains, and if no one writes to our representatives and our senators, our mining heritage and rights are essentially lost. Prospecting and mining are things I do not want to have to experience through history books alone, but I wish to enjoy them for as long as I live, and to know that my children if I ever have any, will be able to enjoy it as well. If you ignore your rights, they will go away! Especially when you have a large group of people who are so dedicated to spreading lies and disinformation.
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Basics of Fire Assays and How They Work
Well, I have been studying up on assays tonight, just because it is something I want to start doing for myself. I have a good number of prospects going, and it would be nice for me to be able to find out what I have without having to send a million samples out :P Well, not literally but I have enough rock on hand I probably could!
So I thought I would talk a little bit about what Fire Assays are, and how they are done, in general terms of course. Maybe I will give specific how to guide later on, but this is strictly for informational purposes to give you insight into how your ore results are derived. It is quite a fascinating process!
First step, is to take a representative ore sample... Generally you want to get an average over the entire exposed vein, that way you can have a more accurate estimate of what the value is, since you will tend to have about the same proportions of waste rock to actual metal, but it will vary from place to place along the deposit of course.
The next step is to finely pulverize the sample, and mix it thoroughly. Then a specified proportion is taken from it, usually 29.167 Grams, for which is called an "Assay Ton", results are reported in amounts per short ton which is 2,000 pounds, and there are 29,167 ounces Troy in a short ton. In this manner, calculating the results is simple. Every milligram of metal recovered is one ounce per ton. So if you have 9 milligrams of gold and 25 milligrams of silver, your ore is said to have 9 ounces gold and 25 ounces silver per ton.
The fluxes are mixed according to the type of ore and the form the metals are in, whether they be oxides or sulfides. Then the ore is placed on top of the flux, and heated at 2,000 degrees for a period of around 45 minutes... The molten charge is then poured into a conical mold, and after it cools, it is dumped out, and the metal cone, called a prill, is busted free from the slag with a hammer, and generally from there it is pounded into a cube, placed on a cupel, and that is heated until all the lead from the flux (which collected all the precious metals in the ore sample), is absorbed into the bone ash or magnesia cupel. Anything left on the cupel after the lead is gone, is precious metals. The silver can be parted from any gold by dissolving in nitric, and then precipitating it out, any metal left that didn't dissolve, is gold or platinum group metals.
What you end up arriving at is a sample of pure gold and a sample of pure silver that can be weighed and calculated. Of course there may be easier ways of determining the proportions of what comprises the metal left from cupelling, but for someone low tech like me, chemicals is probably the easiest way to go.
And that's pretty much how an assay works in a nutshell. I know there are people out there who want to know the nuts and bolts of how things work... A little later on I might go into more detail and talk about some of the chemical processes that happen inside the crucible when the smelting is going on... But it's a little more complicated than I feel like going into at the moment. Thanks for reading!
So I thought I would talk a little bit about what Fire Assays are, and how they are done, in general terms of course. Maybe I will give specific how to guide later on, but this is strictly for informational purposes to give you insight into how your ore results are derived. It is quite a fascinating process!
First step, is to take a representative ore sample... Generally you want to get an average over the entire exposed vein, that way you can have a more accurate estimate of what the value is, since you will tend to have about the same proportions of waste rock to actual metal, but it will vary from place to place along the deposit of course.
The next step is to finely pulverize the sample, and mix it thoroughly. Then a specified proportion is taken from it, usually 29.167 Grams, for which is called an "Assay Ton", results are reported in amounts per short ton which is 2,000 pounds, and there are 29,167 ounces Troy in a short ton. In this manner, calculating the results is simple. Every milligram of metal recovered is one ounce per ton. So if you have 9 milligrams of gold and 25 milligrams of silver, your ore is said to have 9 ounces gold and 25 ounces silver per ton.
The fluxes are mixed according to the type of ore and the form the metals are in, whether they be oxides or sulfides. Then the ore is placed on top of the flux, and heated at 2,000 degrees for a period of around 45 minutes... The molten charge is then poured into a conical mold, and after it cools, it is dumped out, and the metal cone, called a prill, is busted free from the slag with a hammer, and generally from there it is pounded into a cube, placed on a cupel, and that is heated until all the lead from the flux (which collected all the precious metals in the ore sample), is absorbed into the bone ash or magnesia cupel. Anything left on the cupel after the lead is gone, is precious metals. The silver can be parted from any gold by dissolving in nitric, and then precipitating it out, any metal left that didn't dissolve, is gold or platinum group metals.
What you end up arriving at is a sample of pure gold and a sample of pure silver that can be weighed and calculated. Of course there may be easier ways of determining the proportions of what comprises the metal left from cupelling, but for someone low tech like me, chemicals is probably the easiest way to go.
And that's pretty much how an assay works in a nutshell. I know there are people out there who want to know the nuts and bolts of how things work... A little later on I might go into more detail and talk about some of the chemical processes that happen inside the crucible when the smelting is going on... But it's a little more complicated than I feel like going into at the moment. Thanks for reading!
Friday, April 22, 2011
More Truth about Mercury
Ok folks... I just remembered... That I had processed a large batch of black sands with mercury. Then I had the black sand assayed using the XRAY Spectrographical Analysis or whatever it's called... It counts the particles of every element present by bombarding the sample with nuclear radiation and identifying each individual signature. Anyways...
The assay concluded that there was less than a trace of gold left in the sands. The mercury had virtually extracted all of it. The assay results indicated no mercury was present in the sample, if so, it was far less than a trace.
So, it is proof positive that safe and responsible handling results in no soil contamination... That the processed materials are safe to dispose of...
The assay concluded that there was less than a trace of gold left in the sands. The mercury had virtually extracted all of it. The assay results indicated no mercury was present in the sample, if so, it was far less than a trace.
So, it is proof positive that safe and responsible handling results in no soil contamination... That the processed materials are safe to dispose of...
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Mercury: Fact vs. Myth
Mercury, AKA Quicksilver, has garnered itself a reputation as a toxic killer. Much of it's reputation is a wise precautionary measure, but if handled responsibly, and respected, it is perfectly safe to use in the amalgamation of Gold and other metals in concentrates. HOWEVER... Due to liabilities, I must include this Disclaimer:
"You acknowledge that in no way shape or form is the author of this blog recommending or instructing you to use Mercury. You further hold the author free of any liabilities arising from your use or misuse of the substance. The material presented here is as is, and should be taken in it's historical, and scientifical capacities for the purpose of education, and correction of disinformation."
Mercury is liquid at room temperature. It will evaporate and escape from many containers. If you leave a bowl of mercury out for a period of time, it will be empty, as it has gone into the air. It is when it is a vapor that it is the most dangerous to the human body. It is then inhaled, and every breath takes in more and more of it into the blood stream. It passes through the brains barriers that normally prevent toxins from getting up there, and it lodges as droplets in the brain itself. This causes neurons to short out and all kinds of havoc. Not to mention it proabably puts pressure on the brain while it's accumulating.
Mercury causes insanity, hairloss, toothloss... Symptoms of heavy metals poisoning include lethargy, memory loss, and it would be logical to assume that it would affect your heart, pulse, and bloodpressure as well. It basically effects the entire nervous system. It can even affect breathing patterns.
THE GOOD NEWS is, nature has built in many safeguards that we can thank God for... See, it's mostly the people who reject God who do not understand that there are in fact safety measures that protect the average person from heavy metals poisoning. God knows that Lead and Mercury are "all natural"... That they can be present in any number of waterways in the world, not from man introducing them, but they are in fact naturally occuring in the mountains and streams, and the very rocks themselves. There are numerous ways of detoxifying... The easiest of which is a healthy diet, some foods such as baked beans contain sulfated amino acids that help collect and remove lead and mercury from our bodies...
Interesting is it not that the main staple of the gold prospector in the past has always been Beans? I do find that interesting. You do not hear of gold miners going crazy from mercury. Only the hatters that gone mad. But miners generally cooked off enough mercury that if they did it in their cabins, the concentration of it was sufficient to kill them in one night! But the ones that were smart enough not to, didn't have much trouble with toxicity. That, and they probably took in more lead from the low grade whiskey they drank than they did mercury from mining and amalgamating. But I believe though I cannot prove it, that their diet allowed them to be exposed to the metals with little negative effect.
Mercury is less dangerous in it's metallic form, since it's high surface tension makes it harder to be absorbed into your skin, but not impossible of course. Though promptly washing your hands after coming into contact with it should be sufficient to prevent it entering your system. When handling you should use protective gloves... And if you are worried about the vapors, you should wear a respirator that utilizes active carbon filters.
Cyanide in my opinion is worse than mercury. It is usually dissolved in water. Water and very thin liquids are more readily absorbed by your skin. Also, because such solutions are for the most part colorless, it is hard to tell what water has been contaminated by the cyanide without testing it somehow. Cyanide bonds with your hemoglobin in your blood preventing your red blood cells from picking up oxygen from your lungs. It literally can kill you in a matter of minutes if you are exposed to enough of it. You basically suffocate even though you can breathe all the air you want.
It takes far more mercury eposure to be fatal... It even took the hatters years before they went insane, and they handled it every day, large amounts of it. The average prospector only needs to handle it once in a while, giving the body time to cleanse itself through proper supplementation and dieting. There are things like green clay that I have used that work wonderfully well in cleansing the body of toxins, and there are also activated charcoal capsules that do the same job. If you notice, when a dog isn't feeling well, if there is a firepit outside, it will often go and eat charcoal from the firepit. You can also see deer and other animals eating charcoal in areas that have been subjected to forest fire. It is because it heals and cleanses the things that make illness. Nature has indeed numerous safeguards built into itself to handle the toxins. Along with responsible and careful handling of dangerous substances, they are not likely to cause harm.
In the 1800's, it was common practice to use mercury in the riffle traps of a sluice box. Problem was, the mercury would eventually run out of the sluice, taking sometimes gold with it... But when the old timers cleaned up, they may have baseball size globs of gold amalgam... Though thousands of pounds of mercury in some cases have entered waterways. Which, by the way, is where suction dredging helps... I know some dredgers who have pulled a lot of mercury out of their waterways... Do you know anyone else that is willing to not charge the taxpayers for doing it? :)
It is against the law in all states to use mercury within a certain distance of a stream, and in many states to use mercury at all. Now, the only time it is used is when there is a large amount of concentrates with super fine flour gold, that a prospector saves up, and say, during the winter, decides to amalgamate his concentrates. A couple times a year is all that you need to really handle the stuff, and if done with proper ventilation, and safety gear, it is without consequence.
Instead of burning off the mercury like the old timers did, it is better to use even a dilute nitric acid to dissolve away the mercury. Not only does it dissolve the mercury, but impurities in the gold... And then you can precipitate the mercury back out... Nothing is really lost in this manner. I have found also that keeping water with your mercury prevents it from evaporating... So all my containers of mercury are sealed, but also have a good amount of water... The premise here is the water will have to evaporate before the mercury, and worst case, a small amount of mercury will go into solution with the water, but it is miniscule.
I don't see anything wrong with using mercury in a responsible manner... But I do not advocate doing so. I have the utmost care and respect while handling it when I DO have to handle it. But one things for sure, it is far less toxic than tobacco and alcohol, those are pollutants that people voluntarily consume as a recreation. Mercury is a workhorse. It allows productivity. It provides usefulness. If you have ever broken a compact fluorescent light bulb, or even a standard fluorescent, then you have probably inhaled more mercury vapor than I ever have :) Just think...
When you throw a CFL away... And it goes to the land fill... What do you think happens when those big D9 Caterpillars push and crush the garbage into the landfills? The bulbs break and the mercury in them goes into the environment. So I maintain that under the guise of "saving the environment", you environmentalists who are trying to take my mercury away from me, are doing far more harm than I am. You will have millions of CFL bulbs entering our landfills... It is a shame. I started out with 1 pound of mercury... And I still have a pound of mercury. But think of how many pounds of mercury you environmental commies are releasing into the environment under the pretense of saving it? Give me my Edison Incandescent and the environmental impact is no where near as bad as you say it is.
I am going to get off of my soapbox now... But please understand, there is a political agenda behind the mercury fear mongering. It is not to be feared, but like guns, it needs to be respected. Only those who disrespect things, whether it be chemicals, drugs, alcohol, animals, people, run into problems. ALL things must be respected, or they will be your undoing, somehow. Which brings me to the point of: Always reclaim your worksites so that we may show our good track record as a defense of our landrights... There is no one more caring of the environment than the Gold Prospector.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention something... It is imperitive I inform my readers of this. The amounts of mercury we worry about ingesting are miniscule, compared to the number one source of the toxin. No, it is not tap water, fish from the oceans and streams, nor is it from any other source, but the deadliest: The flu vaccine. Thimerosol is a Mercury based ingredient that is used in vaccines. In fact, it is 50% mercury by weight, and comprises the majority of the shots themselves. If you think that mercury should be banned from gold mining, think again. Very few people are suffering from the effects of mercury contamination due to mining in the environment, as compared to the hundreds of millions in the world WHO VOLUNTARILY, and sometimes involuntarily take these shots, year after year. Mercury is bioaccumulative. The mercury in next years vaccine, adds to the mercury from past years vaccines that you have taken. Until such point that you develop all kinds of nervous system failures. Perhaps neuropathy, chest pains, kidney and liver problems, and you know what else? Guillane Barre syndrome can be caused by flu shots, and it is most likely due to the Mercury content of the shots.
I will continue to process my concentrates as I see fit. I know how to do it safely and without harm. But by God, I will never take a flu shot as long as I live. Oh, and you know what? I have only gotten the flu once every couple or few years, and when I did, it was over in a day or two. Big deal. I am not suffering like those who take the flu shots, for days at a time, nor am I poisoning myself just to avoid something that nature gives us... See, the flu is more or less necessary. It is seldom powerful enough to kill, but it does make one miserable. What happens is, it causes your body to exercise the immune system and keep it strong. But again, is this not what a vaccine does? It makes you sick so that way your defenses against that sickness are built up. IT IS SOMETHING YOU WILL CATCH ANYWAY WITHOUT NEEDING TO TAKE MERCURY BASED VACCINES!
"You acknowledge that in no way shape or form is the author of this blog recommending or instructing you to use Mercury. You further hold the author free of any liabilities arising from your use or misuse of the substance. The material presented here is as is, and should be taken in it's historical, and scientifical capacities for the purpose of education, and correction of disinformation."
Mercury is liquid at room temperature. It will evaporate and escape from many containers. If you leave a bowl of mercury out for a period of time, it will be empty, as it has gone into the air. It is when it is a vapor that it is the most dangerous to the human body. It is then inhaled, and every breath takes in more and more of it into the blood stream. It passes through the brains barriers that normally prevent toxins from getting up there, and it lodges as droplets in the brain itself. This causes neurons to short out and all kinds of havoc. Not to mention it proabably puts pressure on the brain while it's accumulating.
Mercury causes insanity, hairloss, toothloss... Symptoms of heavy metals poisoning include lethargy, memory loss, and it would be logical to assume that it would affect your heart, pulse, and bloodpressure as well. It basically effects the entire nervous system. It can even affect breathing patterns.
THE GOOD NEWS is, nature has built in many safeguards that we can thank God for... See, it's mostly the people who reject God who do not understand that there are in fact safety measures that protect the average person from heavy metals poisoning. God knows that Lead and Mercury are "all natural"... That they can be present in any number of waterways in the world, not from man introducing them, but they are in fact naturally occuring in the mountains and streams, and the very rocks themselves. There are numerous ways of detoxifying... The easiest of which is a healthy diet, some foods such as baked beans contain sulfated amino acids that help collect and remove lead and mercury from our bodies...
Interesting is it not that the main staple of the gold prospector in the past has always been Beans? I do find that interesting. You do not hear of gold miners going crazy from mercury. Only the hatters that gone mad. But miners generally cooked off enough mercury that if they did it in their cabins, the concentration of it was sufficient to kill them in one night! But the ones that were smart enough not to, didn't have much trouble with toxicity. That, and they probably took in more lead from the low grade whiskey they drank than they did mercury from mining and amalgamating. But I believe though I cannot prove it, that their diet allowed them to be exposed to the metals with little negative effect.
Mercury is less dangerous in it's metallic form, since it's high surface tension makes it harder to be absorbed into your skin, but not impossible of course. Though promptly washing your hands after coming into contact with it should be sufficient to prevent it entering your system. When handling you should use protective gloves... And if you are worried about the vapors, you should wear a respirator that utilizes active carbon filters.
Cyanide in my opinion is worse than mercury. It is usually dissolved in water. Water and very thin liquids are more readily absorbed by your skin. Also, because such solutions are for the most part colorless, it is hard to tell what water has been contaminated by the cyanide without testing it somehow. Cyanide bonds with your hemoglobin in your blood preventing your red blood cells from picking up oxygen from your lungs. It literally can kill you in a matter of minutes if you are exposed to enough of it. You basically suffocate even though you can breathe all the air you want.
It takes far more mercury eposure to be fatal... It even took the hatters years before they went insane, and they handled it every day, large amounts of it. The average prospector only needs to handle it once in a while, giving the body time to cleanse itself through proper supplementation and dieting. There are things like green clay that I have used that work wonderfully well in cleansing the body of toxins, and there are also activated charcoal capsules that do the same job. If you notice, when a dog isn't feeling well, if there is a firepit outside, it will often go and eat charcoal from the firepit. You can also see deer and other animals eating charcoal in areas that have been subjected to forest fire. It is because it heals and cleanses the things that make illness. Nature has indeed numerous safeguards built into itself to handle the toxins. Along with responsible and careful handling of dangerous substances, they are not likely to cause harm.
In the 1800's, it was common practice to use mercury in the riffle traps of a sluice box. Problem was, the mercury would eventually run out of the sluice, taking sometimes gold with it... But when the old timers cleaned up, they may have baseball size globs of gold amalgam... Though thousands of pounds of mercury in some cases have entered waterways. Which, by the way, is where suction dredging helps... I know some dredgers who have pulled a lot of mercury out of their waterways... Do you know anyone else that is willing to not charge the taxpayers for doing it? :)
It is against the law in all states to use mercury within a certain distance of a stream, and in many states to use mercury at all. Now, the only time it is used is when there is a large amount of concentrates with super fine flour gold, that a prospector saves up, and say, during the winter, decides to amalgamate his concentrates. A couple times a year is all that you need to really handle the stuff, and if done with proper ventilation, and safety gear, it is without consequence.
Instead of burning off the mercury like the old timers did, it is better to use even a dilute nitric acid to dissolve away the mercury. Not only does it dissolve the mercury, but impurities in the gold... And then you can precipitate the mercury back out... Nothing is really lost in this manner. I have found also that keeping water with your mercury prevents it from evaporating... So all my containers of mercury are sealed, but also have a good amount of water... The premise here is the water will have to evaporate before the mercury, and worst case, a small amount of mercury will go into solution with the water, but it is miniscule.
I don't see anything wrong with using mercury in a responsible manner... But I do not advocate doing so. I have the utmost care and respect while handling it when I DO have to handle it. But one things for sure, it is far less toxic than tobacco and alcohol, those are pollutants that people voluntarily consume as a recreation. Mercury is a workhorse. It allows productivity. It provides usefulness. If you have ever broken a compact fluorescent light bulb, or even a standard fluorescent, then you have probably inhaled more mercury vapor than I ever have :) Just think...
When you throw a CFL away... And it goes to the land fill... What do you think happens when those big D9 Caterpillars push and crush the garbage into the landfills? The bulbs break and the mercury in them goes into the environment. So I maintain that under the guise of "saving the environment", you environmentalists who are trying to take my mercury away from me, are doing far more harm than I am. You will have millions of CFL bulbs entering our landfills... It is a shame. I started out with 1 pound of mercury... And I still have a pound of mercury. But think of how many pounds of mercury you environmental commies are releasing into the environment under the pretense of saving it? Give me my Edison Incandescent and the environmental impact is no where near as bad as you say it is.
I am going to get off of my soapbox now... But please understand, there is a political agenda behind the mercury fear mongering. It is not to be feared, but like guns, it needs to be respected. Only those who disrespect things, whether it be chemicals, drugs, alcohol, animals, people, run into problems. ALL things must be respected, or they will be your undoing, somehow. Which brings me to the point of: Always reclaim your worksites so that we may show our good track record as a defense of our landrights... There is no one more caring of the environment than the Gold Prospector.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention something... It is imperitive I inform my readers of this. The amounts of mercury we worry about ingesting are miniscule, compared to the number one source of the toxin. No, it is not tap water, fish from the oceans and streams, nor is it from any other source, but the deadliest: The flu vaccine. Thimerosol is a Mercury based ingredient that is used in vaccines. In fact, it is 50% mercury by weight, and comprises the majority of the shots themselves. If you think that mercury should be banned from gold mining, think again. Very few people are suffering from the effects of mercury contamination due to mining in the environment, as compared to the hundreds of millions in the world WHO VOLUNTARILY, and sometimes involuntarily take these shots, year after year. Mercury is bioaccumulative. The mercury in next years vaccine, adds to the mercury from past years vaccines that you have taken. Until such point that you develop all kinds of nervous system failures. Perhaps neuropathy, chest pains, kidney and liver problems, and you know what else? Guillane Barre syndrome can be caused by flu shots, and it is most likely due to the Mercury content of the shots.
I will continue to process my concentrates as I see fit. I know how to do it safely and without harm. But by God, I will never take a flu shot as long as I live. Oh, and you know what? I have only gotten the flu once every couple or few years, and when I did, it was over in a day or two. Big deal. I am not suffering like those who take the flu shots, for days at a time, nor am I poisoning myself just to avoid something that nature gives us... See, the flu is more or less necessary. It is seldom powerful enough to kill, but it does make one miserable. What happens is, it causes your body to exercise the immune system and keep it strong. But again, is this not what a vaccine does? It makes you sick so that way your defenses against that sickness are built up. IT IS SOMETHING YOU WILL CATCH ANYWAY WITHOUT NEEDING TO TAKE MERCURY BASED VACCINES!
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Mining "Boxes" and other equipment explained... Links to plans to build them!
I know times are tough for everyone right now, and most of you might not have a couple hundred extra to spend on mining equipment, but are quite capable of building your own stuff but you would like some plans and explanations allowing you to do so. In many cases, with experience, a person is able to design and build equipment best suited to the ground they are working.
Not all sluice box configurations will work good for all streams or material. For instance, in my area, most of the gold is very fine, so I will use my LeTrap sluice box... It is molded plastic, no carpets to clean out, and it traps even the most fine gold... Particles so small you may never even know they are there without a magnifying glass.. In fact, I have gotten stuff so fine, that even at 10X magnification all you see is a yellow glint in bright sunlight letting you know it's there. But it takes a lot of current to use, and it is pretty much a two man operation to clean up, since one person alone is quite capable of losing all the concentrates from one accident.
If the gold is coarse, and I can't classify as small as I do for the LeTrap, I will run my Keene A51 Hand Sluice. I have replaced the ribbed carpet with 3M Nomad Miners Moss... Looks like rubber spaghetti molded together in a mat. This stuff is very effective. But I learned that efficiency goes up when you use it only with the hungarian riffles and remove the expanded metal.
So, what I want to do here now, is give you a run down of various equipment, and common configurations and why they work so well and what types of conditions they are best suited for. And of course, I will provide links to pages that show you how to build these pieces of equipment.
ROCKERBOX
A somewhat forgotten but highly effective piece of equipment revered by the oldtimers, the trusty rockerbox. These are probably the most easy to make if you have a table saw, though I made one entirely by using a band saw. In the old days, they would use rockerboxes. They were best suited to two man operations, since one person could dig while the other person rocked the box and dipped the water. The material was dropped into a small hopper with holes in the bottom. Water was dipped from the river and poured over the material, and the box was rocked side to side. This allowed the gold to settle out in the carpet as well as help shake the material in the hopper. Once all the stuff that could pass through, did, the hopper was emptied and new material added.
Rocker boxes had the advantage of being able to be used in areas where waterflow was not high enough to allow sluices to be used, and they could be worked well by one person. They were highly portable, cheap to make since their primary material was wood, and could be made in just about any size needed. The amount of material moved in a day is greatly increased over that of a gold pan... But I would say more material can be processed with a sluice. And in general, the bigger the sluice, the more material you can run.
There aren't many commercially made rockers available, but there are some that fit in small totes that allow you to reuse your water... A good option for the desert if you don't want to pack batteries AND water. But generally, your best and cheapest bet is to make your own.
Here are a couple links to different plans for building one:
Old style rocker
http://nevada-outback-gems.com/design_plans/DIY_rocker/Rocker_box.htm
River Rocker
http://www.minnesotagoldprospectors.org/RiverRockerBox.pdf
Another old rocker design, as well as interesting information:
http://lapidaryworld.com/pdf/gold_rocker_box.pdf
-----------------------------------
SLUICE BOXES
The Sluicebox is the most common box used by prospectors and miners. It is probably one of the oldest tools used as well, second in age only to the gold pan to be sure. They can be made in any length and width that is practical to use. The longer the box and the wider it is, the better the gold recovery... Wider is better for fine gold, along with a slower flow of water. But longer is good because it increases the likelihood any gold going past the top third of the sluice will settle out before dropping off the end. Most gold will get caught in the first third or so of the sluice if it is set up properly.
They used to be made out of wood, lined with burlap or canvas, and they would use all sorts of systems as riffles... From the famed Hungarian style riffles, to using blocks laying accross the sluice, in some cases they used railroad track or rocks to make their rifles. Anything that would give gold a place to hide and trap in. The old sluices were generally made with great lengths, and they would run sometimes weeks at a time before cleaning up. The efficiency was not the best, but the great lengths and sheer size gave the gold ample time to get caught. Any losses would have been due to cracks in the wood, or perhaps old discarded burlap or canvas. Most old timers would burn their old carpets and pan the ash to get all their gold... And sometimes burnt their old rocker boxes and sluices too! Wood can track a stunning amount of fine gold... However, before torching an old rocker box from the gold rush years, please consider that it's collectors value probably far outweighs any gold still caught in the wood!!!
The general rule of thumb for running a sluice, is one half to one inch of drop per foot of sluice... Depending on how fast the water is and the size of the gold you are finding. Fine gold generally needs a flatter angle. You don't want your riffles loading up with blonde sands, but if you are seeing only black sands collecting, you might adjust it so just a slight amount of light sands cover the black.. If you can catch some lighter sands, you are probably catching your gold. A good way to test a sluice set up, is to throw a penny or other coin into the head of the sluice box. If it gets trapped in the first riffle or two, your set up is probably good. Your first scoop of material should take a few seconds to clear the head of the box. It shouldn't rush through super fast, but it shouldn't just sit there on the bottom either without much happening. Feeding a sluice steadily is important. If you leave any sluice unattended for great lengths of time, it is possible gold will blow out, since the material behind the riffles is constantly churning. Any exposed gold that isn't covered by concentrate is at risk of being lost... But it might take a significant amount of time before something like this happens. If you are going to leave your sluice alone for more than an hour or two, I recommend cleaning up.
There are many commercially made sluices available... I find the best deals are on eBay, or you can go to shops that I have done business with in the past and am very pleased with the speed and professionalism they give. www.minerox.com is based in Riggins Idaho, and I have done much business with them, all without incident. They have just started offering sluice boxes. And I know the URL might bring something bad to mind, but www.lifestylestore.com is actually a prospector supply shop! Their prices are generally unbeatable, and I am more than happy to keep ordering from them. Please note, I AM NOT in ANY WAY affiliated with these companies. I am a very satisfied customer who doesn't like dealing with companies that don't treat their customers right, and these two have treated me the best out of any. www.angusmackirk.com is another great supplier, based in Boise, Idaho... I have done business with him one time and am very pleased with the transaction. His sluices are similar in design to the LeTrap... Molded plastic riffles, no carpet, ensuring a 100% cleanup.
Right now, I recommend using the LeTrap... In my opinion it is the best sluice ever made. I like it better than my Keene sluices... But when I am by myself, I do not like using it because it is plastic, and because water weighs a LOT, it is hard to get it out of the water, and a few times I have had an accidents with losing my concentrates since there is no carpet. However, two people have no problem hoisting it out of the stream without problem. It catches every particle of gold, though if you are getting large flat flakes, I urge you to reduce the water flow, but it works best when you see material bouncing around in front of the riffles. Also, it pays to keep it well balanced, if you have the sluice twisted, material will collect strangely in the riffles and you are at risk of having your concentrates washed out. It is a bit finnicky to set up, but once it's set up, I recommend running it until it's time to go home. It's well worth the trouble.
My second recommendation are Keene's sluices... The factory configurations work great, but I found I was getting better results using miners moss, and I have since learned you need to have a second layer under the miners moss or the gold will work its way out of the sluice since once through the nomad, the sluice is slick aluminum and gold slides out easily with vibration of the water flow... Putting tool box liner under the nomad worked perfect. And I have just learned that expanded metal is a bad idea to use with the miners moss, so I will test my sluice without it and compare results to that of the LeTrap.
You can expect to pay anywhere from $75 to $150 for a sluice box... Keene's A52 would be a great choice if you didn't want to go with a molded plastic sluice like the LeTrap. And if you didn't want a huge sluice, then the A51 Hand Sluice is a good choice... A bit more compact and easier to pack around. The plans are a bit hard to find lately, later I will post my own, but here are a couple good links.
Building a sluice isn't too bad of a job, and here are some links to some plans:
http://webspace.webring.com/people/fw/wyogold/sluicebox_st1.html
http://nevada-outback-gems.com/design_plans/DIY_hand_sluice/hand_sluice.htm
-------------------------------------
I hope you have found this post useful... I will keep bringing you good information and resources on a regular basis, so please, feel free to bookmark my blog, or subscribe to it for future updates. I am unsure what my next post will be on, but I will do some thinking, and it should be here in a few days! Good luck and may your pan always have some yellow in it!
Not all sluice box configurations will work good for all streams or material. For instance, in my area, most of the gold is very fine, so I will use my LeTrap sluice box... It is molded plastic, no carpets to clean out, and it traps even the most fine gold... Particles so small you may never even know they are there without a magnifying glass.. In fact, I have gotten stuff so fine, that even at 10X magnification all you see is a yellow glint in bright sunlight letting you know it's there. But it takes a lot of current to use, and it is pretty much a two man operation to clean up, since one person alone is quite capable of losing all the concentrates from one accident.
If the gold is coarse, and I can't classify as small as I do for the LeTrap, I will run my Keene A51 Hand Sluice. I have replaced the ribbed carpet with 3M Nomad Miners Moss... Looks like rubber spaghetti molded together in a mat. This stuff is very effective. But I learned that efficiency goes up when you use it only with the hungarian riffles and remove the expanded metal.
So, what I want to do here now, is give you a run down of various equipment, and common configurations and why they work so well and what types of conditions they are best suited for. And of course, I will provide links to pages that show you how to build these pieces of equipment.
ROCKERBOX
A somewhat forgotten but highly effective piece of equipment revered by the oldtimers, the trusty rockerbox. These are probably the most easy to make if you have a table saw, though I made one entirely by using a band saw. In the old days, they would use rockerboxes. They were best suited to two man operations, since one person could dig while the other person rocked the box and dipped the water. The material was dropped into a small hopper with holes in the bottom. Water was dipped from the river and poured over the material, and the box was rocked side to side. This allowed the gold to settle out in the carpet as well as help shake the material in the hopper. Once all the stuff that could pass through, did, the hopper was emptied and new material added.
Rocker boxes had the advantage of being able to be used in areas where waterflow was not high enough to allow sluices to be used, and they could be worked well by one person. They were highly portable, cheap to make since their primary material was wood, and could be made in just about any size needed. The amount of material moved in a day is greatly increased over that of a gold pan... But I would say more material can be processed with a sluice. And in general, the bigger the sluice, the more material you can run.
There aren't many commercially made rockers available, but there are some that fit in small totes that allow you to reuse your water... A good option for the desert if you don't want to pack batteries AND water. But generally, your best and cheapest bet is to make your own.
Here are a couple links to different plans for building one:
Old style rocker
http://nevada-outback-gems.com/design_plans/DIY_rocker/Rocker_box.htm
River Rocker
http://www.minnesotagoldprospectors.org/RiverRockerBox.pdf
Another old rocker design, as well as interesting information:
http://lapidaryworld.com/pdf/gold_rocker_box.pdf
-----------------------------------
SLUICE BOXES
The Sluicebox is the most common box used by prospectors and miners. It is probably one of the oldest tools used as well, second in age only to the gold pan to be sure. They can be made in any length and width that is practical to use. The longer the box and the wider it is, the better the gold recovery... Wider is better for fine gold, along with a slower flow of water. But longer is good because it increases the likelihood any gold going past the top third of the sluice will settle out before dropping off the end. Most gold will get caught in the first third or so of the sluice if it is set up properly.
They used to be made out of wood, lined with burlap or canvas, and they would use all sorts of systems as riffles... From the famed Hungarian style riffles, to using blocks laying accross the sluice, in some cases they used railroad track or rocks to make their rifles. Anything that would give gold a place to hide and trap in. The old sluices were generally made with great lengths, and they would run sometimes weeks at a time before cleaning up. The efficiency was not the best, but the great lengths and sheer size gave the gold ample time to get caught. Any losses would have been due to cracks in the wood, or perhaps old discarded burlap or canvas. Most old timers would burn their old carpets and pan the ash to get all their gold... And sometimes burnt their old rocker boxes and sluices too! Wood can track a stunning amount of fine gold... However, before torching an old rocker box from the gold rush years, please consider that it's collectors value probably far outweighs any gold still caught in the wood!!!
The general rule of thumb for running a sluice, is one half to one inch of drop per foot of sluice... Depending on how fast the water is and the size of the gold you are finding. Fine gold generally needs a flatter angle. You don't want your riffles loading up with blonde sands, but if you are seeing only black sands collecting, you might adjust it so just a slight amount of light sands cover the black.. If you can catch some lighter sands, you are probably catching your gold. A good way to test a sluice set up, is to throw a penny or other coin into the head of the sluice box. If it gets trapped in the first riffle or two, your set up is probably good. Your first scoop of material should take a few seconds to clear the head of the box. It shouldn't rush through super fast, but it shouldn't just sit there on the bottom either without much happening. Feeding a sluice steadily is important. If you leave any sluice unattended for great lengths of time, it is possible gold will blow out, since the material behind the riffles is constantly churning. Any exposed gold that isn't covered by concentrate is at risk of being lost... But it might take a significant amount of time before something like this happens. If you are going to leave your sluice alone for more than an hour or two, I recommend cleaning up.
There are many commercially made sluices available... I find the best deals are on eBay, or you can go to shops that I have done business with in the past and am very pleased with the speed and professionalism they give. www.minerox.com is based in Riggins Idaho, and I have done much business with them, all without incident. They have just started offering sluice boxes. And I know the URL might bring something bad to mind, but www.lifestylestore.com is actually a prospector supply shop! Their prices are generally unbeatable, and I am more than happy to keep ordering from them. Please note, I AM NOT in ANY WAY affiliated with these companies. I am a very satisfied customer who doesn't like dealing with companies that don't treat their customers right, and these two have treated me the best out of any. www.angusmackirk.com is another great supplier, based in Boise, Idaho... I have done business with him one time and am very pleased with the transaction. His sluices are similar in design to the LeTrap... Molded plastic riffles, no carpet, ensuring a 100% cleanup.
Right now, I recommend using the LeTrap... In my opinion it is the best sluice ever made. I like it better than my Keene sluices... But when I am by myself, I do not like using it because it is plastic, and because water weighs a LOT, it is hard to get it out of the water, and a few times I have had an accidents with losing my concentrates since there is no carpet. However, two people have no problem hoisting it out of the stream without problem. It catches every particle of gold, though if you are getting large flat flakes, I urge you to reduce the water flow, but it works best when you see material bouncing around in front of the riffles. Also, it pays to keep it well balanced, if you have the sluice twisted, material will collect strangely in the riffles and you are at risk of having your concentrates washed out. It is a bit finnicky to set up, but once it's set up, I recommend running it until it's time to go home. It's well worth the trouble.
My second recommendation are Keene's sluices... The factory configurations work great, but I found I was getting better results using miners moss, and I have since learned you need to have a second layer under the miners moss or the gold will work its way out of the sluice since once through the nomad, the sluice is slick aluminum and gold slides out easily with vibration of the water flow... Putting tool box liner under the nomad worked perfect. And I have just learned that expanded metal is a bad idea to use with the miners moss, so I will test my sluice without it and compare results to that of the LeTrap.
You can expect to pay anywhere from $75 to $150 for a sluice box... Keene's A52 would be a great choice if you didn't want to go with a molded plastic sluice like the LeTrap. And if you didn't want a huge sluice, then the A51 Hand Sluice is a good choice... A bit more compact and easier to pack around. The plans are a bit hard to find lately, later I will post my own, but here are a couple good links.
Building a sluice isn't too bad of a job, and here are some links to some plans:
http://webspace.webring.com/people/fw/wyogold/sluicebox_st1.html
http://nevada-outback-gems.com/design_plans/DIY_hand_sluice/hand_sluice.htm
-------------------------------------
I hope you have found this post useful... I will keep bringing you good information and resources on a regular basis, so please, feel free to bookmark my blog, or subscribe to it for future updates. I am unsure what my next post will be on, but I will do some thinking, and it should be here in a few days! Good luck and may your pan always have some yellow in it!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Gold Dredging: How it works, and myths debunked!
Suction dredging suffers from the stereotypes of the 1800's mining practices, particularly the ones that were extremely destructive, but also ones that are not representative of what is done in today's world. It is the author's wish to set the record straight on something that is so important to so many Americans. It is not just about gold or money. It is about the great outdoors, and our rights to live happily doing the things which we enjoy. It is about freedom.
No longer do you see the giant monitors blasting away entire mountains into sluice boxes, nor are there bucket line dredges marching up a creek bottom processing every last cubic yard of material it can reach. No longer do miners add mercury behind the riffles of their sluice boxes to trap the flour gold. Technology has rendered these time tested methods obsolete and inefficient.
Instead, they are replaced by the weekend prospector searching for Gold, with shovel, pan and sluice. The more advanced prospector will take along a suction dredge, consisting of a grizzly to screen off the larger rocks, the sluice box to trap all the heavy materials, as well as the hoses and small engine that operate with the pump.
It is the goal of this author to clear up the myths surrounding gold dredging, inasmuch as many of them are not founded on a factual basis, and are used for the sole purpose of shutting down harmless pursuits of happiness, and in many cases, the livelihood that many families depend on.
First, I will explain what gold dredging is. Dredging involves the use of high pressure stream of water that is drawn from the stream, and injected backwards up the hose the suction nozzle is attached to. This causes a venturi effect, causing suction pulling water and surrounding gravels up into the header box of the sluice, where the material is screened over a grizzly, and the gold and heavy materials are trapped in the riffles and carpeting of the sluice. The tailings are discharged from the end of the sluice back into the stream, which consist mostly of clean sand, gravel, and larger rocks.
As the dredger excavates towards bedrock, where some 97% of the gold rests upon, a hole can grow to several feet across, and several feet down. Depending on the depth of the stream, the dredger may be wearing a wetsuit and using a hookah system for breathing which is fed from an air-compressor running off the dredge's engine. At the end of the day, the dredge is cleaned up, and the concentrates can then be panned out. Over the course of a few days, the stream naturally washes the tailings down stream and starts reclaiming the hole that was dredged out. In the spring, it is impossible to identify previous dredging sites as all traces are naturally reclaimed and filled in. But let me stop there, and begin with some of the myths that miseducated and uninformed people tend to throw at the recreational and small scale miners in regards to the environment.
1. Gold dredging pollutes the environment.
Answer: Many dredges will not even use a whole gallon of gas in an entire day. You probably burn more fuel in your golf carts putting around the green in a few weekends than a dredger will use in an entire season. In addition to this, regulations strictly prohibit the fueling of dredges within the wetted perimeter of the stream and in some cases, within a certain distance of the high water line, and any defective and leaking equipment likewise is forbidden from entering the waterway. I have been to many dredging sites and boat launches and will testify from firsthand observation, there were far more spills at boat launches than I have ever seen at a dredging site.
However, the issue isn't just about emissions and chemical pollution either. There are concerns with the actual excavation process. Some people worry about fish being sucked through a dredge, and others worry about the sediments entering the water from dredging. I will take this time to explain some facts about dredging when it comes to this issue.
Fish do not come near a person who is in the water, not to mention something that is humming and vibrating on the surface. However, it is theoretically possible a fish COULD somehow get into a dredge nozzle. If this happened, which I have never seen or heard of a single case of this, it would be sucked through the nozzle, and because it is not heavier than the sand and gravel, it would be washed out the sluice back into the stream, living happily ever after. Because the water and gravel being sucked through the nozzle does not go through any moving equipment directly, there is no opportunity for the fish to be chopped up and spit out. I have heard of people claiming otherwise, and thought I better say something about how ridiculous this is.
And then you have the discharged material from the dredge which people claim dirty up the water. There are some very important points I want to make regarding this. Almost all areas that have a low flow of water that allow deep layers of silt and sediment to build up are not good areas to dredge in, because the moment the stream slows down, that is where all the gold is going to be deposited anyways. The areas that are dredged have gravels that are clean, and not prone to the buildup of silt and sediment. As a result, when it is dredged, all materials discharged dissipate within a few dozen yards down stream, and most of the time, you will not see any muddy water being discharged. That which is discharged is insignificant when spring runoff is considered and overall there is a negligible impact on turbidity.
Further, I have witnessed many occasions where I have had schools of fish eagerly waiting in the discharge of my sluice. I often wondered why, and it was when I seen all kinds of grubs and worms in several scoops of gravel that I realized they were getting a free meal. Dredging turns up the gravel, releasing what may have built up, allowing the gravels to be cleaned, and result basically in aerating the gravel and feeding the fish. If the discharge were indeed harmful to the fish, they would not be in the middle of it, and never have I seen any fish die as a result of a dredging or sluicing operation.
And if you want to talk about pollution... You have no room to talk. Have you ever wondered about the things people throw in the streams? The cans, bottles, even the fishing tackle and mercury left over from the oldtimers? Well, guess what! Dredgers have been removing all these pollutants that they encounter for years! And it doesn't cost the taxpayers any money! Imagine that, a group of people who HAVE FUN cleaning up the environment without the government needing to set up a superfund cleanup! I have recovered many pounds of mercury, lead, and dozens of fishing lures and hundreds of rounds of lead projectiles from the gravels of the streams I work. But if the regulations get too literal about putting everything back the way it was when I get done mining, as they are already heading that way, wouldn't it be a shame if I had to put all those pollutants back in the stream? And wouldn't it be a shame if I had to stop mining and never clean the stream up in the first place?
2. Gold miners are greedy.
Answer: If we were greedy we wouldn't be doing honest work. If you spend a day packing a dredge into a remote canyon and a few days in the water pushing the nozzle around, and another day packing it out, there are easier ways to be greedy. You can ask every miner out there, 99/100 will tell you it is the love and passion of the activity that drives them, not the financial gain, because most of us prospectors never really see a financial gain. It is all about our freedom to enjoy the great outdoors, the last shreds of our mining heritage, and to relive the old days of gold mining. If you think we are greedy to be out chasing gold, you need to take a number two shovel, and go spend a few hours digging in the streams, and then weigh what you find and see how much you made, and then decide how honest a man that this work makes you into. If you want the truth of the matter, Robert W. Service hit the nail right on the head when he wrote the "Spell of the Yukon", the full version of the poem can be found at www.robertwservice.com, but the last paragraph which I will quote follows:
There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
3. Gold miner's don't protect the environment.
Answer: I have yet to see a prospector who hasn't packed their own trash out of the woods, and I have yet to see one that has failed to pack other peoples trash out as well. The golden rule that all the prospectors I know follow is, if you find garbage, take it with you. On the other hand, I have seen many self- professed environmentalists not even bother to pick up a can or a bottle. I'm not trying to go on the offensive here, but we prospectors have been attacked an awful lot and I want the record to be set straight. Almost all prospectors go above and beyond the state's environmental requirements, which in some states are flat out ridiculous, but still, we do everything in our power to not anger the powers that be and respect the laws and regulations. Almost all of us fill our holes back in, and put the boulders back where they belong when we are done. Our reputation is important to us.
4.Gold dredging introduces contaminants into the stream.
Answer: Hmmmm... You know, a dredge only processes material that already exists in the stream bed. It goes in with a clean sluice, and comes out with concentrates taken from the stream. Nowhere is new "material" or "contaminants" generated by the act of dredging, and in fact, it removes contaminants from the stream as stated earlier, the lead, mercury and other things found in the stream
gravels.
5. Gold mining kills fish.
Answer: I'm not saying it has never happened, but there is no way that operating a dredge has killed any fish. At the worst, they might possibly be sucked through nozzle and discharged. By law, the water intake that goes into the pump, is required to have a screen on it sufficiently small holes to where not even a minnow can be sucked in. I would also point out, how many fish has fishing killed? If you live in say, California, ask the best fisherman you know what the best streams for big fish are down there... Then look up the mining history of that stream. You will find that the streams regularly mined by suction dredges often have the best fishing. This is because dredging cleans the gravels, and clean gravels are better for fish to spawn in. The laws prohibit dredging during times when fish are in fact spawning, so if dredging is responsible for killing off fish spawns, then it is illegally done anyways.
The summary of what I am pointing out is this:
All dredging does is move material from one spot in the stream and put it in another spot, taking out heavy metals in the process. Nothing is directly or indirectly harmed. After a few hours of a dredge hole being abandoned, you will see it starting to cave back in... And sometimes the process is aided by people rolling the boulders back into the hole that were removed during the dredging. When heavy rains or spring runoff hit, the tailings are washed down stream along with the rest of the materials that nature washes away. Nothing happens in the course of dredging that nature doesn't do itself. For one thing, if dredging did kill fish, think of what spring runoff must surely do to them with all that mud and debris! But no, the fish were made to survive the spring runoff! Dredging does not require government funding and it is effective at cleaning up pollution that otherwise would cost taxpayers billions to do. There is a small army of prospectors that hit the streams, and over time, the amount of trash and mercury removed are astounding! All we ask for our work is the gold that we find, and to be allowed to continue prospecting for the sake of prospecting.
By the act of dredging, we remove contaminants that leach into the waterway that potentially can cause problems resulting in healthier environment for our fish, as well as for those who rely on our waterways for drinking water. We remove garbage that serve to trap and injure fish as well, such as lost fishing tackle and etc. I also want to point out, by keeping the gravels aerated, aquatic plants are allowed to thrive, which in turn allows fish to thrive as well. If you doubt that dredging allows streams to be improved in their quality and condition, then I suggest you compare streams that are actively dredged to ones that are not allowed to be dredged.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
HOW TO Get Started Prospecting
Well, I wanted to follow a somewhat logical development with this blog... I want to start out basic and slowly advance into more stuff, more areas. Mining is such a huge area... Not only do you have the sciences that govern it such as Geology... But there is large amounts of history and then you also have the politics that shape the mining industry and affect the very lives of countless people. Then there are many viewpoints to present information from... Not only is there that of the small miner such as you and I, but then there is the large company's point of view, and then you have the government's point of view... After a while, you start finding there is considerable controversy in the world of mining... I am very passionate about mining. Of all the things that humans do in their lives, mining is perhaps one of the least destructive activities contrary to popular belief which I intend to prove. Mining is the most important part of any society, for the simple act of picking up crude stones to fashion into crude implements with which man first planted crops, is a form of mining. So it can be argued that Agriculture is second to mining.
So, let's start with the basics... Let's get everyone up to speed on various things... I generally ramble, but I will try hard not to. This post is going to deal with getting started in prospecting... We never will have too many people engaged in prospecting activities, and nothing makes me happier than to share this passion with the world.
The reactions I get vary from total shock that people actually spend time looking for gold, to totally impressing people. It is pretty much the final frontier of adventure in the world which we live. Unless you get to go into space, or unless you get to travel to the depths of the oceans, this may very well be the closest you get to true adventure.
All you need to start out is a basic understanding of the tools needed, and where you can and can't look for gold.
First of importance, is the gold pan. I recommend a 14" Keene plastic gravity trap gold pan... It isn't too big and it isn't too small, it is light and easy on the wrists, and easy to learn the motion and movements necessary to wash the gravels in your pan. Panning is the most important part of any mining operation. Even the great big bucket line dredges that roamed Alaska and a few western states in the bygone days, all ended up down to the panning to isolate the last few flakes of gold from the cleanups. I recommend going to http://www.goldprospectors.org/, and click on media, watch shows... There is much great instruction to be found in all the episodes they have up and should give you a good example of how panning works.
After that, you need a shovel, a bucket, and generally a screen is recommended. The smaller you can screen the gravel, the easier it is for the gold to sink and work it's way down to the bottom of your pan or sluice. Big rocks cannot be displaced by fine gold... So fine gravel makes for great gold recovery, but always check your screens just in case! If you are just panning, it is possible to work up to a quarter or half a yard of gravel in say a 12 hour day. Not very fast, but if you are very selective about the quality of the gravel you are panning, it may actually pay nicely. Some people are good enough at locating the gold in a stream that they can actually get a tenth of an ounce per pan!!!
However, a sluice will essentially run as much material as you can dig and screen. All it requires is say half an inch to an inch of drop for every foot of sluice box. It is lined with carpet or miners moss known as Nomad by 3M. On top of that is generally placed expanded metal, and then hungarian style riffles which create eddies as the current of water flows over them, allowing the gold to get caught along with the heavy sands. The light sands flow right out of the end. A sluice can handle many yards of gravel a day, but a two man crew will have their hands full trying to dig and process more than a few yards of gravel in a day. Quality is more important than quantity. You can run dump truck loads of gravel but if there's no gold, the guy who is looking for the best ground will do better with only a pan. I recommend going to http://www.keeneeng.com/ to look at equipment and get an idea as to what's out there.
As you advance through your prospecting, you may find you want to do some suction dredging. I believe my next post for sure will be covering suction dredging. I know this post was, but I felt it important to give you more of a basic background first. Suction dredging is heavily regulated, in some cases it is overly regulated, but that is why it is even more important we abide by the regulations where possible, because they are waiting for us to slip up so they can take one example and hang the whole lot of us as environmental villains. Unfortunately the people who understand it the least, have the most say about things like this.
Suction dredges range from an inch and a half all the way up to perhaps 12" or more... Though anything over 4" cannot be handled by one person, and anything over 6 or 8 is generally a commercial operation.
Then there are highbankers and power sluices. This just pumps water through a sluice box, but it has a hopper so all you do is shovel and it pretty much washes and screens the material by itself, allowing you to run as fast as you can shovel. But they do need permits in most places.
Recirculating equipment that is battery powered and self contained is a great way to avoid the regulations!!! But your productivity will be reduced as your water will need changed off and on.
Most federal lands are open to prospecting and, in the Western states, you can still file mining claims in accordance with the 1872 mining laws. But you also have state laws to go by as well. It is an interesting predicament. The state owns the waterways, but the feds own the land in the case with Forest Service and BLM. You cannot except under VERY rare circumstances perhaps, conduct any operations within national parks, or wildlife refuges, and it is indeed a very big crime if you are trying to mine in these areas without proper paperwork. I am aware they have regulations and guidelines for getting permission, but that doesn't mean they actually grant permission!!!
Private property is fine, as long as you have the land owners permission. Back east, unfortunately you are going to have to generally find private land owners willing to let you prospect, perhaps in exchange for a percentage split of any finds. Be polite, and respect their wishes. The better impression we as prospectors can give, the more likely they will say "Wow, these gold prospectors are great people, they are welcome any time!"
Many people are mistaken and say "gold miners are greedy"... No, that's not true at all. How many people do you know voluntarily spend their lives pushing a number two shovel day in and day out many times not finding but a few colors in their pan. Robert W. Service summed it up quite nicely in "Spell of the Yukon":
So, let's start with the basics... Let's get everyone up to speed on various things... I generally ramble, but I will try hard not to. This post is going to deal with getting started in prospecting... We never will have too many people engaged in prospecting activities, and nothing makes me happier than to share this passion with the world.
The reactions I get vary from total shock that people actually spend time looking for gold, to totally impressing people. It is pretty much the final frontier of adventure in the world which we live. Unless you get to go into space, or unless you get to travel to the depths of the oceans, this may very well be the closest you get to true adventure.
All you need to start out is a basic understanding of the tools needed, and where you can and can't look for gold.
First of importance, is the gold pan. I recommend a 14" Keene plastic gravity trap gold pan... It isn't too big and it isn't too small, it is light and easy on the wrists, and easy to learn the motion and movements necessary to wash the gravels in your pan. Panning is the most important part of any mining operation. Even the great big bucket line dredges that roamed Alaska and a few western states in the bygone days, all ended up down to the panning to isolate the last few flakes of gold from the cleanups. I recommend going to http://www.goldprospectors.org/, and click on media, watch shows... There is much great instruction to be found in all the episodes they have up and should give you a good example of how panning works.
After that, you need a shovel, a bucket, and generally a screen is recommended. The smaller you can screen the gravel, the easier it is for the gold to sink and work it's way down to the bottom of your pan or sluice. Big rocks cannot be displaced by fine gold... So fine gravel makes for great gold recovery, but always check your screens just in case! If you are just panning, it is possible to work up to a quarter or half a yard of gravel in say a 12 hour day. Not very fast, but if you are very selective about the quality of the gravel you are panning, it may actually pay nicely. Some people are good enough at locating the gold in a stream that they can actually get a tenth of an ounce per pan!!!
However, a sluice will essentially run as much material as you can dig and screen. All it requires is say half an inch to an inch of drop for every foot of sluice box. It is lined with carpet or miners moss known as Nomad by 3M. On top of that is generally placed expanded metal, and then hungarian style riffles which create eddies as the current of water flows over them, allowing the gold to get caught along with the heavy sands. The light sands flow right out of the end. A sluice can handle many yards of gravel a day, but a two man crew will have their hands full trying to dig and process more than a few yards of gravel in a day. Quality is more important than quantity. You can run dump truck loads of gravel but if there's no gold, the guy who is looking for the best ground will do better with only a pan. I recommend going to http://www.keeneeng.com/ to look at equipment and get an idea as to what's out there.
As you advance through your prospecting, you may find you want to do some suction dredging. I believe my next post for sure will be covering suction dredging. I know this post was, but I felt it important to give you more of a basic background first. Suction dredging is heavily regulated, in some cases it is overly regulated, but that is why it is even more important we abide by the regulations where possible, because they are waiting for us to slip up so they can take one example and hang the whole lot of us as environmental villains. Unfortunately the people who understand it the least, have the most say about things like this.
Suction dredges range from an inch and a half all the way up to perhaps 12" or more... Though anything over 4" cannot be handled by one person, and anything over 6 or 8 is generally a commercial operation.
Then there are highbankers and power sluices. This just pumps water through a sluice box, but it has a hopper so all you do is shovel and it pretty much washes and screens the material by itself, allowing you to run as fast as you can shovel. But they do need permits in most places.
Recirculating equipment that is battery powered and self contained is a great way to avoid the regulations!!! But your productivity will be reduced as your water will need changed off and on.
Most federal lands are open to prospecting and, in the Western states, you can still file mining claims in accordance with the 1872 mining laws. But you also have state laws to go by as well. It is an interesting predicament. The state owns the waterways, but the feds own the land in the case with Forest Service and BLM. You cannot except under VERY rare circumstances perhaps, conduct any operations within national parks, or wildlife refuges, and it is indeed a very big crime if you are trying to mine in these areas without proper paperwork. I am aware they have regulations and guidelines for getting permission, but that doesn't mean they actually grant permission!!!
Private property is fine, as long as you have the land owners permission. Back east, unfortunately you are going to have to generally find private land owners willing to let you prospect, perhaps in exchange for a percentage split of any finds. Be polite, and respect their wishes. The better impression we as prospectors can give, the more likely they will say "Wow, these gold prospectors are great people, they are welcome any time!"
Many people are mistaken and say "gold miners are greedy"... No, that's not true at all. How many people do you know voluntarily spend their lives pushing a number two shovel day in and day out many times not finding but a few colors in their pan. Robert W. Service summed it up quite nicely in "Spell of the Yukon":
There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
The full poem can be found at http://www.robertwservice.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=83 and I recommend you read it, it's well worth the time.
All I want, is to find the gold. I don't care how much of it I find, or how much I get. But I want to see lots of it in my pan. It's one thing to have gold, but it is quite another experience to actually find it. I cannot describe the thrill... But it truely will give you a gold fever when you see your first flake in the pan. Your next question... How do I know it's gold? Heh... Yeah, I worried about that too when I started. I went months not knowing what it looked like, and you know why? Because I never found any! When I finally did, oh man, there is NO mistaking it for anything else after that. It is a very rich buttery yellow color in most places... Some places, it can actually be a dull bronze color, but you can tell by how it hangs on the bottom of the pan when you swirl it around if it's gold or not. If you still have doubts, take a color, smash it with a hammer. If it shatters, it's not gold. If it flattens out into a bigger flake, well, you've definitely got something!
Which leads to another question. What areas should I look in? Well, you want to do some research. You want to look for gold where gold has been found in the past. It is a peculiar geology, and not all sources of gold deposits have ever been found. In fact, one of the streams I prospect that has been known for two ounce nuggets, the motherlode source has never been found. No one KNOWS WHERE the gold is originally from. They just know it's there. And a great many geologic events shaped the world over the centuries and milennias. It could be from anywhere, but gold is where you find it. Now, I am not saying there aren't streams that went undiscovered. I myself have found gold in a stream previously certifiably free of gold, and am proud of it. Unfortunately, I discovered also that it is mostly limited to an ancient streambed that crossed the creek. Before I could get to work on it, well, I lost access to that piece of land.
You want to see what general areas had gold production. How much gold was produced. Was it mostly byproduct of hardrock mining? Or was there some placering too? Googling is the easiest way to find research information... If you live in say, Colorado, you can google "Colorado Gold Localities" or "Colorado Gold Placers"... Enough stuff will come up to keep you busy. http://www.49ermike.com/ is a great resource as well, and he has quite a list of locations gold is known to be found all accross the country. It will at least get you started, and there is a great forum with lots of prospectors who are glad to help you if they can. Prospecting is not like fishing or hunting... Try getting a fisherman to tell you where he caught his trophy bass and how he caught it... Try getting a hunter to tell you the secret of getting his big trophy... Not gonna happen. But, prospectors are happy to show you how, and generally where you can go, because generally they will at the very least know of a spot that has gold in it, but they themselves don't work in... And even most of the time they will tell you where they are working.
For example, massive amounts of gold have been found and are STILL found around say, Boise Idaho... Now, common sense would say not to waste all of your time looking for gold around Pocatello, which is mostly a phosphates mining region. Go near where gold was found in the past. And the larger the river, the more likely it has gold, but the more likely it is very fine stuff called flood gold that can be panned off the shore and gravel bars, and that the good stuff may never see the light of day, because no one is going to dive 100' under water and somehow dig who knows how far to get the big gold caught in the big river. In my opinion, the same forces that made incredibly rich ancient gravel deposits thousands of years ago are still at work. I mean, there is massive amounts of gold under the major rivers, but the sediment is so deep, and bedrock so deep, it's more or less wrote off on the very large waterways. But, you can look for the tributaries that added the gold, and you can also look for old bench gravels the stream left when it was flowing higher than its present day streambed.
In the interest of time, and overloading you with information, TO BE CONTINUED!!! SOON! STAY TUNED AND FEEL FREE TO SUBSCRIBE TO BE EMAILED WHEN THE NEW POSTS COME OUT!!!
Thursday, April 7, 2011
How Important Mining Is Part I
For millennia, mankind has scoured the hillsides in search of vast mineral wealth. Many individuals sacrificed friends and family in exchange for the solitude one finds in the great outdoors, and they would endure it for many months or even years, risking their health and perhaps their sanity. Yet a large number of people owed their sustenance to the mines of their areas, as they provided many jobs, and the wealth that came out of the ground actually built society, as I will explain later in this article. There is far too much to this topic for me to cover in one post. So I might make a couple more relating to this one.
To define mining, it is the extracting of minerals and their ores from the ground. There are various types, such as underground and open pit mining. It generally involves blasting the ore, and then concentrating it somehow or shipping it straight to a mill for processing. The concentrates are then smelted or electrolytically refined into pure metals depending on what is being processed. And then the final product is ready to go to market. That's pretty much it in a nutshell. But there is also placer mining, of which most interests me. The process that causes gold to concentrate in pockets or on bedrock is known as hydrologic sorting. Gold is 19 and some change times heavier than water.
The heaviest sands are known as black sands, containing titanium and iron usually, average around 11 or 12 times heavier than water. The average rock ranges anywhere from a few times to perhaps 10 times heavier than water, depending on composition. lead is around 12 times heavier than water. So as you can see, Gold has a great density, which also allows for recovery using sluice boxes and gold pans. It regulates how gold deposits in a stream as well. A placer mine is simply one which processes stream gravels, concentrating the gold that is free in the gravel, and discharging the rocks and gravel back into the stream. It is favored because extensive tunnels are not needed, nor are timbers, nor heavy machinery. There is no need even for blasting usually. Overhead is much reduced over hard rock mining.
But I will get into all the sciences later on. This post, I want to cover the importance of mining. To start off with, I wanted to share with you the words on a plaque I found many years ago...
WHAT MINING MEANS TO AMERICANS
by The American Mining Congress
"Most people pass their days with no thought of the role mining plays in their lives. They know where to buy the things they want, but seldom consider the origins. Food comes from a grocery - electricity from a wall socket - tools from a hardware store - and so on. If we do think of how these things are created, many of us probably begin with farms, factories, and power stations.
"In fact, they all begin with mining.
"Without minerals, we could not till our soil, build our machines, supply our energy, transport our goods, or maintain any society beyond the most primitive. Our horn of plenty starts with a hole in the ground.
"We are in trouble if we forget that!"
Actually, it kind of reminds me of a joke... A young child and mother who spent their lives in a city, visited the country. The little kid spots a pile of milk cartons beside the road. He thinks a moment or two and shouts "Look mom! A cow's nest!"
The large majority of people do not know and do not care where the things come from that make their cell phones work. They don't know that if it weren't for mining, there would be no aluminum to make the cans that hold your favorite beverage. Ah yes, you will say but we have recycling. Recycling is fine, but the problem is that no society on earth reuses 100% of the metals used. Eventually supplies would diminish, and prices would go up when demand could not be met, making you pay more in the store. Healthcare services would go up, food prices would skyrocket. You would be reduced to mere slaves because you would work all day to just barely feed yourselves in the end.
Mining is where it all came from to begin with, and it is what ensures that our standard of living does not decline. It helps keep prices in check. But also, I want to say that it generates real wealth. Few industries in our world actually create wealth. Mining is one of them.
When a worker gets paid, he has to pay his bills. These companies also have workers, that are paid from other people paying their bills. And so a huge cycle starts where the only thing that happens is, money is redistributed, with the government taking a percentage every time it changes hands. Without new wealth creation, this kind of system will eventually impoverish the people. Mining on the other hand, creates wealth. A prospector pulls an ounce of gold out of a stream. He then sells it for say, $1500. The $1500 is spent on food, and other supplies, fueling the economy. But not only is the money in the economy, but the ounce of gold is too. Whereas, if you work a 9 to 5, you are paid with money that came from other people, and you spend it again at other companies who pay their people. Nothing is created. It is only transferred. This is the manner in which mining has built civilization as we know it.
It is my goal, over time, to educate as many people as possible on the truths of mining, so that it might be supported and not hated by the general public that may or may not listen to the liberals who seek to destroy our standard of living. Mining leaves such a minimal impact on our environment, and the benefits derived from it are far plenty enough to fix any damages that are done, which brings me to another point, that current regulations require reclamation bonds before any work can begin, and once mining finishes, the mines are reclaimed, and you never even know anything was being done there.
Mining is the prosperity of every nation. Without it, no wealth is created. Cost of living skyrockets. Innovation is discouraged because existing metals become rare and expensive over time, meaning it is too costly to experiment and invent new technologies. Ultimately, it must be concluded that all modern technology owes it's existence to a healthy mining industry.
Yes, I have a goal, or an agenda here. It is simply that there is a war against mining going on. On any scale. Kalifornia banned gold dredging when that RINO Arnold Schwarzeneggar signed the ban into law... Oregon has since banned gold dredging. Other states may eventually follow. They have been trying to reform the 1872 mining laws for years, but by the grace of God it hasn't happened yet. Without mining, on even the smallest scale, we are in trouble. Believe it or not, a lot of people make their livings and put food on their table by running their small mining operations. I am guessing tens of thousands of small miners are starving because they can't suction dredge their claims in California. There is no clear census as to how many dredgers there are nor how many prospectors there are... But even with ten thousand prospectors not being able to dredge, the impact to the economy is perhaps billions of dollars lost... That in a state that is hurting worst for money. Doesn't that figure? And the fact of the matter is, suction dredging actually improves fish habitat, and it removes pollutants from the waterways. It does not cause any harm to the environment.
Actually, I think I will leave off here... My next post will be on gold dredging... It is an important issue that is under constant attack, that is often misguided, and by the majority of people it is misunderstood. I want to set the record straight, and we need all the supporters we can get to ensure the laws do not get any more crazy than they have been lately.
To define mining, it is the extracting of minerals and their ores from the ground. There are various types, such as underground and open pit mining. It generally involves blasting the ore, and then concentrating it somehow or shipping it straight to a mill for processing. The concentrates are then smelted or electrolytically refined into pure metals depending on what is being processed. And then the final product is ready to go to market. That's pretty much it in a nutshell. But there is also placer mining, of which most interests me. The process that causes gold to concentrate in pockets or on bedrock is known as hydrologic sorting. Gold is 19 and some change times heavier than water.
The heaviest sands are known as black sands, containing titanium and iron usually, average around 11 or 12 times heavier than water. The average rock ranges anywhere from a few times to perhaps 10 times heavier than water, depending on composition. lead is around 12 times heavier than water. So as you can see, Gold has a great density, which also allows for recovery using sluice boxes and gold pans. It regulates how gold deposits in a stream as well. A placer mine is simply one which processes stream gravels, concentrating the gold that is free in the gravel, and discharging the rocks and gravel back into the stream. It is favored because extensive tunnels are not needed, nor are timbers, nor heavy machinery. There is no need even for blasting usually. Overhead is much reduced over hard rock mining.
But I will get into all the sciences later on. This post, I want to cover the importance of mining. To start off with, I wanted to share with you the words on a plaque I found many years ago...
WHAT MINING MEANS TO AMERICANS
by The American Mining Congress
"Most people pass their days with no thought of the role mining plays in their lives. They know where to buy the things they want, but seldom consider the origins. Food comes from a grocery - electricity from a wall socket - tools from a hardware store - and so on. If we do think of how these things are created, many of us probably begin with farms, factories, and power stations.
"In fact, they all begin with mining.
"Without minerals, we could not till our soil, build our machines, supply our energy, transport our goods, or maintain any society beyond the most primitive. Our horn of plenty starts with a hole in the ground.
"We are in trouble if we forget that!"
Actually, it kind of reminds me of a joke... A young child and mother who spent their lives in a city, visited the country. The little kid spots a pile of milk cartons beside the road. He thinks a moment or two and shouts "Look mom! A cow's nest!"
The large majority of people do not know and do not care where the things come from that make their cell phones work. They don't know that if it weren't for mining, there would be no aluminum to make the cans that hold your favorite beverage. Ah yes, you will say but we have recycling. Recycling is fine, but the problem is that no society on earth reuses 100% of the metals used. Eventually supplies would diminish, and prices would go up when demand could not be met, making you pay more in the store. Healthcare services would go up, food prices would skyrocket. You would be reduced to mere slaves because you would work all day to just barely feed yourselves in the end.
Mining is where it all came from to begin with, and it is what ensures that our standard of living does not decline. It helps keep prices in check. But also, I want to say that it generates real wealth. Few industries in our world actually create wealth. Mining is one of them.
When a worker gets paid, he has to pay his bills. These companies also have workers, that are paid from other people paying their bills. And so a huge cycle starts where the only thing that happens is, money is redistributed, with the government taking a percentage every time it changes hands. Without new wealth creation, this kind of system will eventually impoverish the people. Mining on the other hand, creates wealth. A prospector pulls an ounce of gold out of a stream. He then sells it for say, $1500. The $1500 is spent on food, and other supplies, fueling the economy. But not only is the money in the economy, but the ounce of gold is too. Whereas, if you work a 9 to 5, you are paid with money that came from other people, and you spend it again at other companies who pay their people. Nothing is created. It is only transferred. This is the manner in which mining has built civilization as we know it.
It is my goal, over time, to educate as many people as possible on the truths of mining, so that it might be supported and not hated by the general public that may or may not listen to the liberals who seek to destroy our standard of living. Mining leaves such a minimal impact on our environment, and the benefits derived from it are far plenty enough to fix any damages that are done, which brings me to another point, that current regulations require reclamation bonds before any work can begin, and once mining finishes, the mines are reclaimed, and you never even know anything was being done there.
Mining is the prosperity of every nation. Without it, no wealth is created. Cost of living skyrockets. Innovation is discouraged because existing metals become rare and expensive over time, meaning it is too costly to experiment and invent new technologies. Ultimately, it must be concluded that all modern technology owes it's existence to a healthy mining industry.
Yes, I have a goal, or an agenda here. It is simply that there is a war against mining going on. On any scale. Kalifornia banned gold dredging when that RINO Arnold Schwarzeneggar signed the ban into law... Oregon has since banned gold dredging. Other states may eventually follow. They have been trying to reform the 1872 mining laws for years, but by the grace of God it hasn't happened yet. Without mining, on even the smallest scale, we are in trouble. Believe it or not, a lot of people make their livings and put food on their table by running their small mining operations. I am guessing tens of thousands of small miners are starving because they can't suction dredge their claims in California. There is no clear census as to how many dredgers there are nor how many prospectors there are... But even with ten thousand prospectors not being able to dredge, the impact to the economy is perhaps billions of dollars lost... That in a state that is hurting worst for money. Doesn't that figure? And the fact of the matter is, suction dredging actually improves fish habitat, and it removes pollutants from the waterways. It does not cause any harm to the environment.
Actually, I think I will leave off here... My next post will be on gold dredging... It is an important issue that is under constant attack, that is often misguided, and by the majority of people it is misunderstood. I want to set the record straight, and we need all the supporters we can get to ensure the laws do not get any more crazy than they have been lately.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Welcome to my gold mining and prospecting blog!
Hello to all my future readers… I am wanting to welcome you to this site. This is my first blog and figured I would give it a try, and I chose a topic that is very important to me. Anyone who has panned for gold understands that prospecting is something you either have a passion for, or will not bother with at all. And I certainly have the passion for it, which we all know otherwise as “the gold fever”.
I want to cover a lot of issues regarding “recreational” prospecting, though I use the term loosely since for all real intents and purposes, all the people out there mining for the fun of it whether it be for garnets on the weekends, or gold on a camping trip, you are all small scale miners, and there is a very good reason for making this distinction as I will write about later on. Essentially, as long as we classify ourselves as "recreational", it makes us sound less important, and less serious. To be honest, I take my rights to be out in the mountains and ENJOY what I do very seriously. It is the one thing that makes me feel alive inside, and to take that away, as the liberals have tried to do for so many years, would kill me.
In our day and age, everyone has forgotten the importance of minerals and mining. Mining is what built our great nation. San Francisco, Seattle, Helena, Butte, Boise, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Denver, just to name a few would not be the same cities today if it were not for the rich mining in their past. Mining is an important part of our heritage, so I aim to keep as much of it alive as I can in this blog, and from time to time will cover historical aspects of mining. It's not just cities in the West either. In the East, many cities were built by gold mining... A prime example would be Dahlonega Georgia.
Then, there will be the guides, the how to’s, everything I can possible share with you to get you started on the right track and share with you the blessing that looking for gold has given me. Not only in the wonderful time spent outside in the fresh air, but it really is more fun than it is work… And it is a lot of work. Everyone seems to be under the impression there is no more gold left to be found, the old timers got it all. It is simply not true, any one of you can find gold in your state. Every state in the union has Gold that can be panned. It’s just it might not be a large quantity, but it’s there. Some states are pretty lean on gold digging, but others are vastly rich.
I plan to write once or twice a week, and since this is my first blog, its going to take a while to get the site working properly and set up the way I want it. Regular posts should begin in a day or two. Thank you for reading! And stay tuned for some awesome stuff!
I want to cover a lot of issues regarding “recreational” prospecting, though I use the term loosely since for all real intents and purposes, all the people out there mining for the fun of it whether it be for garnets on the weekends, or gold on a camping trip, you are all small scale miners, and there is a very good reason for making this distinction as I will write about later on. Essentially, as long as we classify ourselves as "recreational", it makes us sound less important, and less serious. To be honest, I take my rights to be out in the mountains and ENJOY what I do very seriously. It is the one thing that makes me feel alive inside, and to take that away, as the liberals have tried to do for so many years, would kill me.
In our day and age, everyone has forgotten the importance of minerals and mining. Mining is what built our great nation. San Francisco, Seattle, Helena, Butte, Boise, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Denver, just to name a few would not be the same cities today if it were not for the rich mining in their past. Mining is an important part of our heritage, so I aim to keep as much of it alive as I can in this blog, and from time to time will cover historical aspects of mining. It's not just cities in the West either. In the East, many cities were built by gold mining... A prime example would be Dahlonega Georgia.
Then, there will be the guides, the how to’s, everything I can possible share with you to get you started on the right track and share with you the blessing that looking for gold has given me. Not only in the wonderful time spent outside in the fresh air, but it really is more fun than it is work… And it is a lot of work. Everyone seems to be under the impression there is no more gold left to be found, the old timers got it all. It is simply not true, any one of you can find gold in your state. Every state in the union has Gold that can be panned. It’s just it might not be a large quantity, but it’s there. Some states are pretty lean on gold digging, but others are vastly rich.
I plan to write once or twice a week, and since this is my first blog, its going to take a while to get the site working properly and set up the way I want it. Regular posts should begin in a day or two. Thank you for reading! And stay tuned for some awesome stuff!
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