Gold Seperator

I no longer mine in the "Blues".... I have 400 acres about 80 miles above the Arctic Circle in Alaska.... about 1/2 way between Fairbanks and Barrow.... This creek never has had any heavy equipment on it...all the creeks around it have very good history...with one creek that shares the same head waters had over 1,000,000 documented ounces removed between 1910 and 1942 when the mines were shut down due to the war......Those 1,000,000 ounces were recover by all and work.... the current owner still gets about 300 ounces a year there.... but he used excavators and dozers....

On my creek, a very elderly man owned it before I bought it...and he used to take his grandson up there for a few weeks of fun... nothing ever very serious... 2 1/2 dredge at best...totally recreational...and over about 6 trips covering 20 + years, he did take 80 + ounces.... so I am excited to get up there with my excavators and dozers and get it on !!!.... It should be a good producer.... the other creek has given up several 13 + ounce nuggets...  I am just wanting it to warm up so I can get to mining... hopefully picking up one or two of those big nuggets this summer.... out target this year, is a 300 ounce total in a 3 1/2 month long mining season...

My corporation name is "Patriot Gold Enterprises, Inc"... we mine a very interesting channel once upon a time... it was 3 different channels, one on top of the other..each having a water flow in different direction... One was a very blue channel...possible part of the old original "Blue Lead, the old timers spoke of... one was a red channel..and one was  white channel... the white channel didn't have any water round rocks... looked like a piro-clastic flow...lots of sharp broken rock and white ash like material...but had lots and lots of very fine gold in it.... since we had 3 channels.. one red, one white and one blue.. our corp name was easy.. Patriot Gold Enterprises....I've attached a picture...very strange looking...

Good luck in your prospecting....

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It's not really that deep to bedrock, about 14 feet.... but it is frozen... the old timers used fires to melt shaft down to bedrock...then used more fires to drive their tunnels and drifts....  hauling the semi-thawed gravel to the surface..stockpiling until the spring and then ran their gravels through their boxes in the late summer...

But today...with thousands of pounds of break out power, it seems the modern excavator does okay against the frozen gravels...

It should be fun.....  I mined for 2 summers in Alaska way back in 1982 and 83.... near Nome.... I haven't spoke with George's boys for several years, in fact for a couple of decades...... but I knew George Massey of the GPAA...way, way back when..... when we all built our own dredges.... using old ford flat head six water cooled engines....and Berkley water pumps.... allowing for the warm water from the radiator for a suit heater... and met Tom and Perry when they were just barely out of diapers.... I think Tom was about 12 or 13 when my and George's paths crossed again and we met in Nome...and yet with all my experience and mining locations, this year will be a new type of mining for me, that is, with this much frozen gravel.....

No matter how long you've been mining, you are never too old to learn new things and experience new types of mining techniques......  The more you learn... the more you realize the more you need to learn....and you'll never know it all...

Good luck in your prospecting....

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		Quote:			Posted by Idaho Jones
	That will be a good thing to remember next time I am whining about that cold spring runoff that the oldtimers endured far worse Thats one big shovel you got there. When I was about 10 I got a goldpan for my birthday, and a year or so later built my first sluice box. Every camping trip I haul out the gear. I guess I've always had the bug hehe just nowadays its becoming more pronounced.

Ha You sound like me!

I have been known to pull Hub Caps off the truck to check out good looking spots!

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Hi folks,
And here are photos to help you separate targets from the ground, a simple home made pick using a plow disc.
The shape is cut out using steel cutting disc.

 









Peter



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looks like a good tool. Boyd........

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