News Item
[8]
09/02/05 Australia
The Alluvial Gold Prospector |
| The Alluvial prospector How ya all doing, well I hope, just a little background on my-self before I bore you all to death. I started prospecting with my father, grandfather and uncles at the age of 5, I am now 51 years of age and still love looking at the color of gold. It is not my aim to try and tell people how to prospect but to tell them in my humble fashion how I prospect after all what works for me may not work for you, but you never know there may be a tip or two in my yarn. After all even though we are in different countries we are bound by the brother-hood of prospecting and from one prospector to another here is my yarn. The Banjo came into existence on a creek called Copperhanna, this creek had very good gold and it was the only place that I paned one ounce of gold in a day and I have never been able to do it since. I needed something that could move a lot of dirt quick, the problem I had was the amount of water in the creek, there was none only puddles here and there. Pumping was out of the question not enough water even with recycling the water. The dirt was to wet for a dry blower, and to dry for anything else so I put this problem to the only prospector left alive in the family my uncle, what you need my boy is a Wet Jigger a what was my reply. He gave me instructions on how to build one, to which I did and it worked fine. A wet jigger was used in the 1800_s when little water was available, the construction in it_s simple form is one box on top of another a bit like your high banker except the angles are very much different. How I worked the modified wet jigger renamed the Banjo was to place it next to where a water puddle was located barrow the wash dirt to the location shovel into the top hopper when it was full I would lift the water with a ladle and throw it into the top hopper which washed the dirt through into the sluice below, slow yes but faster than panning. The ladle was made from a lone handle stick with a fair size jam tin attached. After awhile I got rather good at using the device and could move a large amount of pay dirt quickly, and so I worked until the gold run out 6 years I spent on that creek but all good thing_s must come to an end, time to move on. My attention turned to the Shoalhaven River, this is like any river, sand bars, rock bars and so on when I found a spot gee_s how am I going to work this, no gold in the water heaps up on the flood tables about 100 yards from any water. I tried the old wheel barrow across the soft sand but soon learnt that it was not a good idea, it made more scene to take the water to the wash dirt than the dirt to the water. I got myself a small motor and pump a keen p95 I think that was the size of the pump cant remember exactly now but it worked rather well indeed. New area new problems I now had the water up to the banjo but what type of dispenser could I use_ I need an even coverage of water over the whole top hopper the gold I was working was very fine indeed and needed to be washed even overall. The answer came from my garden sprinkler small jets were made in a U shaped inch and a half pipe placed around the top of the hopper. But it soon became apparent that the Banjo needed to be refined even more to be able to work this supper fine river flood gold. In my last post I explained how the Banjo came into existence via the Wet Jigger. About this time the High Bankers were been used in the area I was prospecting, so I stop in and had a yarn with the fellow using the device hmm I though as I talked and watched him and his mate work. The idea was good but to get any type of speed out unit two men had to work hard one cleaning the hopper while the other shoveled, and the water system was wrong for flood gold it came in at one end and the wash dirt was not getting enough water to move the fine gold which meant the person working the hopper had a lot to do. Not for this black duck I can tell you, my operation must be a one man job. With the water jetting worked out I fitted an extra screen 1 inch x 1 inch on the top of the hopper the idea been to double classify the wash sand. And did it work you bet it did, the big rock was parted from the smaller rock which came out of the bottom screen while the fine wash passed through _ inch holes onto a skid plate and into the bottom sluice all this was done in a blink of an eye two men shoveling could not keep up with the processing action from the banjo. Now the top hopper angle from the sluice box, needed for this to happen was critical and had to be right and that is the tricky part, it is incredible what you can do to get out of a bit of hard work when you put your mind to it. The sluice box gave me some trouble at clean up, I found that most of the gold stayed right under the skid plate from the top hopper, which meant I had to get really low to get it out due to the fact the unit was square. So a little bit of thought went into this problem the result was a skid plate mounted at the sluice end so when the wash came down the skid plat from the top hopper it fell onto the skid plate and moved down the unit a bit, which made it easy to clean up. The skid plate performed a few other acts as well it slowed up the water which gave the fine gold time to settle. And gave a boiling action to the water where the material came in from the top hopper. The wash would then pass down the sluice over a square rubber mat and ripples, I can work all day without a clean up in this fashion. There are a few points I must mention here the size of the water jets are 1.5 mm on a 20 mm _1 inch_ PVC pipe. There are two rows of jets around the U shape and each jet is spaced at 1 inch apart and angled to the center of the top hopper. The angle on the bottom hopper must be slow so the wash has time to be worked about 1 inch to every 3 foot would be ok. I have run a pan under the end of the unit I_m not a trusting sole but found only 4 fine specks I can live with that. Considering I was getting 60 to a test pan. _which means a lot of gold for me_ http://groups.msn.com/AlluvialGoldProspectors/_whatsnew.msnw |
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