True Grit Adventure Stories
In the Beginning | Chapter II In the Beginning | Alaska '78 | Beer Can Gold | Summer of '83 | Close calls I remember | Blow Sand Gold | Paystreaks | Winter Methods # 3. Crevicing/Sniping | Russ's revolving ring of revenue |
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In The Beginning. I was born in '45, and have been prospecting since I was about 19. I’ve got a few tales to tell if you don’t mind, and thought I’d start at the beginning. If you aren’t interested in reading stories, please just skip over these pages. I’ll try and get one up each week or so for the next few weeks. Hope you enjoy ….. In the spring of 1964 I had just graduated from high school the year before and I bought an old Jeep Wagoneer. I think it was a 1947 model. I wanted to go to Alaska and get one of the homesteads they were offering. As I recall they were 160 acres, and all you had to do was live on the property for a few years, and it was yours. Sounded like a good deal so I started out. I remember as I was driving somewhere through the State of Washington; I stopped by a river to see a man out in the middle of the water operating some kind of equipment. I stopped and watched for awhile. It took quite awhile for me to figure out just what he was doing. They called it a gold dredge. That image was seared into my memory, and as I drove off, I thought to myself…“that was pretty neat”! One night as I slept in the back of the Jeep somewhere around Whitehorse, Yukon, I was awakened by what I thought was someone was jumping up and down on the bumper of my Jeep. I got out and didn’t see anything so I just went back to sleep. The next day I heard on the radio that there had been an earthquake in Anchorage. I thought, “just my luck; that’s where I was headed”, and then I put it right out of my head. Now in those days the Alaska highway was not paved, and there were hundreds of miles of empty space between any sign of human life. Well, the engine in my Jeep started knocking and the dang thing gave out right out in the middle of all that empty space. I was pretty scared. After several hours, a man in a truck came by. On the Highway in those days you never passed anyone without stopping to see if there was a problem. He offered to tow me to the next gas station which was only 100 miles or so he said. We got to the station and the “mechanic” looked at my Jeep and said, “the motor’s shot, but I’ll give you $50 for the old Jeep. There’s a Bus that’ll take you to Anchorage in a few hours”. I guess I was a pretty stupid kid, but it seemed like the only thing to do, so I gave him the title, unpacked my stuff and my German Shepard dog (her name was Rebel), took the $50 and sat and waited for the bus. When the Greyhound bus got there, the driver looked at my situation and said, “O.K., but the dog has to ride in the toilet at the back of the bus”. People were a lot more understanding in those days. Rebel started howling as soon as the bus took off, but I went back and talked to her through the door and she quieted down and rode good the rest of the time. The driver hadn’t told me that the bus was due to stop for the night at the border of Alaska. When we pulled to a stop, he just said, “we’ll be here til 6:am. There’s a motel over there”, and then he disappeared for some winter pleasures: “I don’t know, but I been told, Eskimo women are mighty bold. Eskimo women are mighty strong, Cause nights in Alaska are nine months long.” I didn’t want to waste my cash on a motel (I still feel that way). So, I got Rebel, my backpack, sleeping bag, and there I stood… in the snow with the whole night ahead of me. There wasn’t any shelter of any kind around anywhere, and I was just a young, dumb kid. I said to myself, “this won’t be so bad. I’ll just make a spot in the snow and my army mummy bag will keep me warm”- ya’ right! In the middle of the night I woke up and put Rebel in the bag with me. It was a tight fit, but she and I were both freezing. Our combined body warmth is the only thing that kept us from freezing to death that night. I don’t know how low the temperature fell, but to this day, that night stands out in my memory as the coldest night I've ever spent. When the bus got to Anchorage the next day, I left my stuff at the bus terminal, and Reb and I started walking around Anchorage. Up until then I had no idea of the size of the earthquake or the amount of devastation or confusion that was there at that time. It was a big quake! Some of those images are still with me today. I remember that I sat in a junky café with a cup of hot chocolate talking to the owner and telling him my story. He listened and then he offered me a room in the back and a job at the café. I thanked him, but I still had dreams of a homestead on my mind. I became a street person for the next few days, and things got pretty hard. My dream of a homestead started to take a backseat to the possibility of calling home for return airfare. My dear ol’ Grandmother sent the cash, and Rebel and I flew back to Scottsdale. After a few months I was able to get back on my feet, found a job at Legend City amusement park, paid my Grandmother back, and saved enough money to buy that thing that had been a burning memory in the back of my mind since I had first laid eyes upon it. A gold dredge. It was a 4” made by American Dredge Co. I took it out to Horseshoe Lake in the upper part where the Verde comes in and there must be 40 feet of sandy overburden. I worked all day dredging loose sand- had the time of my life- and found nothing. But somehow it all seemed worthwhile. I knew this was the start of something big. And that’s how it all began. In my more introspective moments I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had taken that job in the junky café and made my way in our great 49th state. Since then I’ve been back four more times, and some of those stories will be coming up. The funny part is…. I’m still planning my next trip to AK. ……rf _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ IN THE BEGINNING CHAPTER II. It was not my intention to write these stories as some kind of autobiography. So, rather than take the years chronologically, I’ll be skipping through them just a little, hitting the more interesting mining periods. In the years that are skipped, I graduated from A.S.U., served in the Army, got married and divorced (several times), ran several businesses and did all the normal things that most people do. I did quite a bit of prospecting between 1965 and 1975. My main interest was dredging, and sniping, and just hiking the creeks and prospecting. I loved to work Lynx creek during those years. It was like a real mining camp in those days. Families were living along the creek in tents, and everyone got along really well for the most part. It was a wonderful place to dredge. You’d just stake out an area, put your dredge in the creek, and others would know not to work too close (sorta like fishermen). But what I miss the most was the lack of green shirts and sign posts with “rules and regulations”. In those days we were given credit for having a few brains, common curtsies, and the ability to police ourselves. And it worked really well, contrary to what the green shirts want you to believe. I also bought my first metal detector during that time, and started detecting. Detecting in those days was B.F.O. and T.R. and even when the V.L.Fs came out I didn’t have much success because of the high mineralization in this area and the really bad technology in those days. I’m sorry that I can’t remember or describe my “first gold find”. Perhaps it’s because it wasn’t a really nice nugget. During those years I concentrated on prospecting and finding areas that would produce paying amounts of fine gold. Since I started mining in the late 60‘s, I’ve always had at least several ounces of fine gold saved up, and when I need a gold “fix”, I just open the cabinet and stare for awhile. When I'd get a good amount saved up, I’d sell to a refinery or dealer and just pay bills. Since those early days I have found a better way to sell your fine gold. About five years ago I started selling off my pennyweights of fine gold on eBay, and since I was one of the first to do that, it always brought a good price. My best sale was 1 dwt for $35.00.($700 an oz.), and that was when the spot price of gold was $275.00. Then I used that cash to buy 1oz Krugerrands, and Maple Leafs for spot. Sad, but I never saved it all to place on a table top to take photos and impress anyone. Prospecting and gold were never about that to me…continued So this takes us up to about April of 1978, and my second trip to Alaska. I still have some photos of that trip and I have six to share. This photo is me and one of my partners standing in the light of the “Midnight Sun” on second AK trip in ‘78. I know I look more like the guy on the left now, but that’s me on the right. Also note the canoe on the jeep was one that I built when I had the Ford Canoe / Yenbad canoe company in Phoenix during those years. ..... Photo ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Alaska '78 I drove a ‘73 CJ5 on my trip in ‘78, and did not have a dog as Rebel had died years earlier. My first memory of that trip was when I got to Tok Jct, AK. There was a sand and gravel bar there and the sun was going down. I was looking for a place to camp when I saw a bonfire and a few people; I wandered on over and they seemed friendly. Don’t remember any names, but I met my first Alaska natives that night. They are a friendly bunch, and something was cooking on the fire that smelled real good. “Sit down and have some moose”, they said. “It wandered in here and fell on the fire, so we’re going to have a Bar-B-Q” (I’m sure it was poached game). Beer, Moose, pot and interesting companions. That’s the first time I ever ate moose, and it was delicious. Didn’t spend the night there, because I wasn’t 100% comfortable, but did share some good stories and have some laughs. I like the Alaska native people a lot; they are very interesting. ………….. Photo My purpose on this trip was to travel the State and see and work as many of the different gold areas as possible, and I did just that. I drove from the Kenai Peninsula on the south to north of Fairbanks and all points in-between. If there had been roads into western AK, I would have driven them too. One morning I met a couple local prospectors at McDonalds in Anchorage and we sorta hooked up and went to the Chicken area. I actually staked a claim there and drove to Fairbanks to register it. I never went back so someone else probably made millions$$$ off of it. ………………………………............Photo One day as I was driving the Turnagain arm south of Anchorage, I crossed this little bridge and saw an old couple down in the creek with nets and I stopped and watched them for awhile. They said they were after the “Hooligans”... Otherwise known as Alaska Smelt. They were running upstream and all you had to do was scoop them up by the net full. The old guy said that he and his wife put them in the freezer and ate off them all winter. “You just put them in a plastic bag with some water and when you thaw ‘em out, they’re just as fresh as the day ya caught ‘em”, he said. That’s my pock knife in the center of the pile- they’re not big fish, but mmmmmmmgood. I’m sorry this chapter is so long, I’ll try and shorten the next ones up. Don’t feel like you have to comment each time on these…I can see ya’ grinning’. ….Photo A heavy black rain jacket also works well to fight off mosquitoes As I explored the Kenai I found a spot that made the whole trip worthwhile. I later wrote a story about that experience. You may have seen it before- or not. Here it is... _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Beer Can Gold” later titled “Gold around the campfire” I had been looking over an old production site on the Kenai when the claim owner stopped in while I was there and I asked him if I could do a little dredging. He said, “I guess you’re not going to do too much damage with that little 3inch dredge”, go ahead. I worked there several days with only moderate success when I looked up from my dredging and saw a little car pull in and back up to the very large campfire ring on the upper level. I don’t think he even saw me down in the creek. He lifted his trunk and there was a wash tub in it. He took out a flat nosed shovel and began taking the top few inches of dirt all around the campfire circle for about three feet or so. Slammed the trunk and left. I thought, “that was strange”; curious, so I went up and took the next foot of dirt and took it down to pan. Close to an ounce of gold came out! No telling how many ounces the first fella got. I moved my operation up there and started high banking. I worked that spot until the gold ran out. It paid for my whole summer and the trip to Alaska that year. I knew they had a big operation in there, but didn't figure out where that gold around the campfire came from until I looked at a pile of beer cans that must have been about 10 feet tall. I believe they all sat around the campfire in the evening and drank and panned the days take and spilled half of it. The guy with the flat nosed shovel and wash tub may have been one of the panners- figuring that he’d come back and get it someday? Ever since then I always look for beer cans around a clean up site………continued ……………………… Photo _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Chapter III SUMMER OF ‘83 In the spring of ‘83 I had been living in Payson, and had just gone through another nasty divorce. I was looking for a way to leave all my troubles behind. So I packed up my pickup truck with some camping and prospecting gear and headed to California. At that point I didn’t really care if I ever came back to Arizona or not. My objective was to get on the old 49’er trail (hwy 49) and just see if there was anywhere a modern day prospector could still find a place to do what we do. Not really knowing what I was looking for or what I would get into, I drove the southern part of the State and only stopped in a few places. I know there’s a lot of gold in southern CA, but don’t know why I didn’t find a home. In those situations you’re just following your nose, and fate has control of your life. I remember camping at Lake Isabelle and working a creek in that area, and then as I drove farther north I stopped at moccasin creek and found a little color. My hopes were not very high of finding a place to work in those early days because there seemed to be traffic, people, homes, and signs posted everywhere (no trespassing, private property, no camping, no “breathing”) etc. I had already started to miss all of the open country we have in AZ. Then one day as I drove the back roads I went over a rickety little old bridge on the south fork of the American River (they have now replaced that little bridge with a big ugly new one). I later found out that I was just outside of the town of Colfax at a well known place called the Iowa Hill Bridge . It was a very beautiful spot, and it was late March as I recall and still very cool at night and the amazing thing was that there wasn’t anyone around!! I knew it was a gold river from my reading, and so I had found a place to stay for awhile. There was a little campground not far from the river where I put up my small canvas wall tent with pine tree poles I had cut when driving through the high country. The poles were perfect- tall and skinny and straight as an arrow. I skinned the poles with a draw knife and when the tent was up, it really felt like “home”. In the next few weeks I was all alone, and the nights were cold and the days were crisp and clear. I proceed to explore the area, and having set up my base camp, I drove around to other spots to get acquainted with the surrounding areas. The water in the river was very cold and still running high from the spring runoff. (I had no idea what the summer, low water conditions would bring). There was a spring with fresh water within about a 15 minute walk from camp. I tried fishing in the clear water, but the fish in the river would just sit and look at your hook. So, I got out my spear and jigged one or two for supper every night. I later found out I was breaking the law (of course). I thought I had died and gone to heaven even though I hadn’t found much gold at that point. I started prospecting and sniping and started finding some gold and realized that I would be staying right there for the summer. Within a few weeks or so a few other people started showing up, and within a month or two the campground was full. I came to realize that this was a popular dredging site although the water was still too swift for dredging in the center of the river. One day the Forest Service showed up and put up a sign, “Camping $3.00 a night”. My world was changing! Every evening a Ranger would show up and collect $3.00 from everyone. It didn’t take us long to figure out that if you weren’t in camp when he showed up, you didn’t have to pay. Every evening there would be a mass exodus until the Ranger was gone, but a few unlucky campers would always get caught and have to pay. Three dollars doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re only getting about $10 worth of gold, it was 33% of your income. I had a 3” dredge with me and had started dredging every day. As the summer wore on the water warmed up and the water level dropped. Everyone in camp seemed to get about the same amount of gold every day- about a pennyweight. After you subtracted the cost of your gas, that left you about enough to buy beans, coffee, and gas for the next day of hard physical work. But no one seemed to mind; none was there to get rich. It was a “mining camp”, and those of us who stayed, were there for that experience. In the evenings we’d all sit around the campfire and compare gold and tell stories of the day. It was a family meeting of sorts every night, and some lasting friendships were made there. I met Jerry Hohn there. He is now the owner of Gold Buddy. Also, Grizzly Gold Inc. and his 6” dredge operation showed up. I still have a visual picture of his massive torso standing in the river and taking his evening bath with shampoo. As the summer wore on there were many experiences such as: | My introduction to Poison Oak, and my week of recovery | The willing camp women | The watermelon seed nuggets | My 5dwt day | | Operating the 6” dredge | The nudists | The drywashers vs. the dredgers | I‘ll try and describe some of these in followup posts, but this could turn into a book if I‘m not careful. I wish I had more photos from the summer of ‘83. As this was one of my favorite memories as I look back on my life. These first photos are looking off the bridge. The water is low, so not sure when they were taken. The last photo is “Red”. Does anyone recognize him? He’d be 20 years older now. He used to drive an old green I.H. pickup and live in his camper. He used to drywash behind Morristown in the winters. I have previously written a post about an experience that happened to me that summer entitled “Close calls I remember”. You may have missed it, and it goes with this post, so I’ll include it here again for everyone. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Close calls I remember Summer of “83 I was on the south fork of the American River out of Colfax, CA with all the regular miners and a few nudists mixed in here and there. Surprisingly, it was a very congenial, motley crew. Nearly all the miners working there would bring in about a pennyweight every evening after a day’s dredging. We would sit around the campfire and try and figure out why no one was able to do much better. “The problem”, I thought to myself, “is that I need to get to bedrock”. So, the next day I set up my 3” dredge a couple of blocks below the Iowa Hill bridge and was determined to reach bedrock in the center of the river. Now, although I had been a dredger for a number of years at that time, I had never really delt with fast moving water- being from Ariz. Everything was going fine until I got down to bedrock about 6ft down. There was a good sized boulder right at my feet where I wanted to clean the bedrock. As we all know, the weight of a boulder is considerably less in water. Using all my strength, I was able to maneuver the monster to the water’s surface at the edge of my dredge hole. The easiest place to set it was the upstream edge of the hold. Out of the water it weighed a ton, but it was out of the way and I was sure it wasn’t going anywhere. Satisfied and happy to be working on bedrock I went back to work. The sides of the hole were steep and laying on my stomach I started cleaning the bedrock until I had actually dug along the bedrock a few feet into the upstream edge of the overburden. To this day I thank God that I didn’t see any gold on the bedrock - or I’d be dead today. For some “unknown reason” (thank you God) I decided to get off my belly and stand up and take a look around. Just as I got to my feet and turned to look downstream I heard a dull “thud” and felt the bedrock shake. That boulder that I had placed at the top of the hole had worked lose by the action of the river and had dropped right where my shoulder blades where not 15 seconds ago. I was working alone, I would have been trapped and drowned, there’s not a doubt in my mind. I later learned that several people drown in California each year under the very same circumstances. Sometimes in bed at night, I think about that experience and shudder. NEVER PLACE A BOULDER UPSTREAM FROM A DREDGE HOLE !!!!!!! Pleasant dreams..... rf Thanks for all the comments from everyone. Sorry Rick, this is a family forum so if you want to hear about the camp women, you'll have to get me drunk around the campfire sometime.... or wait for the book! I did forget to mention "the crazy mosser". Mossing is something they do in that country. I never heard of it till I got there. You go around with a 5 gallon bucket and a puddy knife and scrap the moss off the rocks into your bucket. Then take your hands and tear it apart and wash it out real good with water. There is a lot of fine gold that gets trapped in the moss during high water. Well there was this hermit that came through camp all summer- he never spoke a word to anyone. All he did was moss....and take anything you'd offer him. Scraps of food would be left out and be gone the next morning. He never stole anything or harmed anyone, but now that I look back on it, maybe I shouldn't have slept as soundly as I did. ..... ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Blow Sand Gold Here in the Bradshaws in central AZ, Turkey creek is one of the best know gold streams. It travels downstream and the name changes to Black Canyon Creek. There’s a spot on Black Canyon where I have dredged many times, but this story starts one day when I was just testing around some highbank areas with my pan. Previously I have mentioned that gold will occur in some very unlikely spots. So, I thought I would relate this tale about a strange place where I found gold one time. This is a canyon area maybe 100 yds across, with high cliffs on both sides. The river takes a bend, and there’s about 80 yds of that 100yds on the inside curve. I’d been dredging down by the creek with not much to show for my efforts. I straightened up to take the kink out of my back and noticed that for about fifty yards of that 80 yards on the inside curve there was a gradual incline and it looked as though the high water “flood” line was way up there. So, I decided to take a brake and do some testing. Now there were a lot of cobbles down in the river bottom, but as I walked up the incline they disappeared and it was mostly boulders and “blow sand”. Blow sand is light colored sand, light in weight, and is generally the first thing to wash out of your pan when panning. We call it blow sand because when the river is at flood stage, tons of this light sand blows down the creek and redeposits in new locations making sand bars and changing the course of the river sometimes. It’s seldom considered a good place to look for gold, except perhaps very fine flood gold. But, I was determined to do some testing so I found a likely spot between a couple of boulders, dug down a ways and carried my pan back down to the creek. I would estimate that I was forty yards from the water and roughly 30-40 feet above the creek level (not a very likely spot). When I panned it out there was something strange. I was expecting to find maybe a little flour, but not a trace of flour was in the pan. What I did find was 5 good size pinheads. A “pinhead” is what we call a good size flake that is about the size of the head of a straight pin. Now that surprised me, so I took several buckets, filled them up and ran them through the dredge box. (I have a 1 1/2” flange that I can attach directly to the header of my dredge box, and attach the pressure hose directly from the pump. It makes it into a quick highbanker). I didn’t have to classify the material because it was all blow sand. I found more gold in about four buckets of that sand than I had gotten all day with my dredge - figure that one out? One thing I’ve learned about this prospecting business is that you’ve got to go with the flow and when you find a hot spot, you’d better not leave it til it’s clean. I moved my dredge box up to the location, hooked several 1 1/2” pressure hoses together and instantly threw away my dredgers’ cap and called myself a “highbanker”. I stayed right there for three days shoveling sand through my box. Had to siphon gas out of my Jeep to keep my pump running, and I ate all my survival rations up, but I was able to completely work the spot out after three days. The gold ran about $30 to a cubic yard. It’s funny how easy it is to shovel when you can see the gold stacking up in the first riffle. The only thing that slowed me down was the amount of water I was able to pump up the hill. The gold was all pinheads, no flour or match heads, just all one size, and very little black sand to speak of. Don’t know how Mother nature did that, but sure was glad she led me there. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Winter methods # / Paystreaks The thermometer on my front porch says 15 degrees this morning. I know you think “Arizona - it warm down there”. Prescott is 5200’ in elevation and most of the gold areas around here are over 6,000’. So it gets cold at night. True it does warm up pretty good in the middle of the day, and that makes it great for getting out for at least a few hours in the afternoon if you don’t have to travel too far. Luckily I live not too far from Lynx Creek, which is probably one of the most famous gold creeks in the State. Here’s a idea for all of you who think you are stuck at home for the winter. Working in the water this time of year is pretty miserable - so one thing I do is to find a good gravel bench (high and dry). Take your pan and test all over it. The best one is one that will be “consistent”. If you can get some color out of every pan your ready to work. Another thing to look for when you’re selecting the right bench to work is to find one that hopefully is not to far over bedrock. Your best gold will generally be in the bottom foot or so above bedrock- but not always. Look for “paystreaks” in the gravel. These are areas where floods have washed in and deposited heavier concentrations of flour gold. They could be right on the surface after a flood. I took about a half ounce of fine gold right off the surface of a gravel bar at Lynx Creek last winter in about a week. Here’s how I do it. First make either a classifying bucket system or a standing screen. A bucket system works like this: Take 2 five gallon buckets, drill 1/2” (or what ever size) holes all over the bottom and up the sided about an inch or two in one of them. Now simply place the one with holes inside the one without holes and you are ready to classify your material. Using this method I have 1/2”, 1/4”, and 1/8” buckets nested together. You can work the system wet or dry. My 1/4 and 1/8 buckets have metal screen in them that I melted into the plastic with a propane torch to hold in place. Works great. I’ve been using the same ones for the last 3 yrs. You’ll find that if the material is damp you won’t be able to classify with the smaller screens, but I can usually get down to 1/2” with no problems. A standing screen is simply four (5 or 6’) 2X4’s. They are held together at the top by drilling a 1/2” hole through them and sticking a dowel or pipe through the holes. The back two can be moved back or forward to adjust the angle, and the front two have a 1/2” screen screwed to the back side of them. The only other thing you need is a piece of plastic (naugahide works well) that is stapled to the under side of the screen to funnel all material into your bucket (where you have your 1/4” bucket in a bucket mentioned above). Now you’re ready to work. I use a four pronged “claw” garden fork to rake all of the larger rocks off the top of the area I’m working. Then just start classifying. shovel into your bucket system or screen until you get the material down as small as you can. Remember your after fine gold here not nuggets. 99% of all the gold in the world will go through a window screen. Now if you are in an area where you can’t run a motor, or you don’t want to work in the water today, just put the material into 5gallon buckets and take it home for later processing. Another thing I do sometimes is take it home and spread it out on a piece of black plastic in the sun to dry. Then I can run it through my 151 Keene drywasher faster than messing with it at the creek. If I can bring home 20 bucket in a day, I’ll almost always get 1-3 pennyweight this way. Give it a try....Russ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Winter Methods # 3. Crevicing/Sniping This topic is dear to my heart. This is the main method that I use to locate placer deposits here in AZ. Most people don’t want to hike for miles, get down on their knees and get dirty, and work for it. Consequently, it’s still there, and if you’re willing to really get close to Mother Earth, she will reward you. If your in an area where there isn’t much exposed bedrock or heavy vegetation prevents crevicing, this may not work for you. But what the heck - it’s winter - come on down to southern CA or AZ. Recently I watched a “Gold Fever” show where Tom and Perry where “cracking”. Don’t like that term. I think Tom made it up, because I never heard it before. They put out some basics, but they came off looking like amateurs to me, and I don’t think they got across the really great rewards that can be derived from this meager activity. How can you tell a real “Crevicer”? He’s the one whos' Estwing rock hammer looks more like a ballpeen hammer. I’ve gone through several. HOW TO: Let’s talk about the basic tools first. I’m not mentioning the standard stuff (water, first aid kit, lunch, etc.) Large Estwing rock hammer. Not the pick, the large sized hammer. (go for the best) 3 prong garden fork (hand size) 4 prong garden rake (with handle cut down) Garden trowel (hand size) Plastic scoop cut from a 1 gal bleach bottle and sm plastic scoop (soda pop bottle) Variety of crevice wires and spoons At least two sizes of brushes Classifiers and buckets (strap on the outside/back of your pack with bungees. I carry two 5 gal, one w/ 3/4” holes in bottom, 1/4” and 1/8” screen. Pry bar - (size depending on weight- larger the better) Canvas sample bags (for carrying screened material to water for panning, and labeling area of find). Backpack (note: total weight of pack with basic tools should be about 25 lbs) Pan, snuffer bottle, magnet, magnifying glass, and plastic straw (more about that later). Advanced tools: Large pick or shovel Metal detector/Gold spear Dry Vac Standing screen underwater suction tool backpack dredge drywasher I don’t usually carry any of these advanced tools except my Gold Bug on the first exploratory trip, until I’ve done my testing. I prefer to go light. The large size Estwing rock hammer is my pick, and a plastic scoop is my shovel. The whole idea of crevicing is not to process quantity, but rather to take the very best of the best. Take a one gallon plastic bleach bottle and cut a portion out of it, keeping the handle, so that it forms a big scoop. The reasons for this are: 1. it’s extremely light and surprisingly strong. 2. It’s flexible and will fit into those crevices much more easily than a garden trowel or shovel. Your crevice wires should be out of 3/16” hard steel about 16-18” long and bent on both ends at 90 degrees. The end portions are 1-2” long and flattened and sharpened at 90degree to each other. So you have one end for narrow cracks and the other end for slightly wider cracks. Another one I use sometimes has been hammered out and formed into a spoon at the end w/ a 90 degree bend. It’s real handy. I carry two or three brushes. One is an auto parts cleaning type brush that I cut the bristle down to about one and a half inches to give it more stiffness. (It has to be new. Don’t want to mix oil or grease with your gold). The other brush is a general purpose brush with very stiff Bristles. Narrow handle widens out to about a 3” circle. You’ll have to shop around. I don’t recommend a wire brush. Mainly because I’m also a metal detector, and those little wires that fall out of those brushes will drive you crazy. But they also clog up too fast. I use several pry bars depending on where I’m going, but I usually start light and work my way up to the heavier ones as I get to know the area. Remember you rock hammer will pry out many of those spots. My favorite was made for changing truck tires, I believe. Weighs about 7 lbs and is 1” X30”. They’ve got to have a good angle on the bottom edge to give leverage on the boulders. I recommend carrying 4 or 5 canvas sample bags about 1/2 gal size. Your flexible bleach bottle scoop will act as a funnel and fill them nicely. Often you’ll want to take a sample, but you have to walk some distance to water. Each bag will weigh about 10 lbs when full of cons, so be careful not to overload yourself, but I have worked in a dry area and carried all my cons in buckets and bags to water - it’s no fun. But the idea is that next time you can take in the drywasher or dredge if it’s a good spot.
Let’s go on to some of the advanced tools now: Remember: these are not for your first trip into an area. I have the 3” crevicing coil on my Gold Bug, and I’ve cut the handle down to make it easier to backpack. As of this writing (March 04) I still recommend a small VLF gold detector such as the Bug for your sniping rather than larger or more modern detectors. The reason is that for sniping one or two inches from bedrock these detectors will be more sensitive on small gold bits, and mineralisation is usually not a problem working right on bedrock. If you don’t have detecting experience, I suggest that you forget it and think about a dry vac instead. I have the “Vac Pac” brand and have used it for years. If I’m in an area where I can carry my 60lb generator, I prefer to use a 110volt shop vac because it has almost twice the suction. But the vac pac works very well in conjunction with the Gold Bug. HERE’S HOW: when you’ve screened or shoveled off the overburden and you get down close to bottom of your crevice, a quick check with the bug will tell you if there are any nuggets in the hole. The vac pac will then pull out the remaining “good stuff” to be panned. Recently my partner and I cleaned out a hole that someone else had left. We didn’t see anything in the bottom. He looked up and said “ do you think we should vacuum it?” “Can’t hurt”. As soon as we started scraping and vacuuming the bottom - 3 golden flashes hit us. Vacuuming is like dredging in that you will usually see the gold before it enters your hose. What a thrill. The standing screen, drywasher, or dredge will be brought in only in you find an area that requires moving quantities of material. The suction tool may be useful in areas where the crevices go down into the water, although if you find good color above the water line, it’s time to bring in some kind of a dredge.Conclusion: The question I get most often is “how do you read a stream?” or/ “how do you know where to look?” etc. HERE’S HOW: step 1. Do your homework. Look for gold where it has already been found. They never get it all. 2. After you get on a gold stream there’s only one rule: “there are no rules, gold is where you find it”. 3. Get your mind “right”. Stop looking for the short cuts. Get back to basic prospecting methods. 4. Don’t be afraid to get down and dirty. Work, work, work. The ‘98ers had a saying as they hiked the Chilcoot pass on their way to Dawson, “if you ain’t Bold, you gets no Gold!” Let’s talk about these steps. Make sure you’re on a gold creek. The worst thing a beginner can do is just go off in the woods and think he is going to find a “new strike” before he knows what he’s looking for or how to find it. Now, when you arrive on the creek with your backpack and basic tools mentioned before just start walking, looking and thinking. I prefer to walk upstream to start out. That means you’re walking downhill coming home when you’re tired. Work one side of the creek on your way up and the other side of the creek on your way home. You are going to see areas where others have worked. I don’t usually stop. There’s a reason they’re not still working there (or if I do stop, it’s usually to just check it with the Gold Bug. Many people go off and leave a nugget just out of sight. TIP: There are three things that Mainly effect the location of the gold. 1. The weight of gold. 2. The amount of erosion, rain and floods in the area. 3. and topography. Think of these things as you walk. Here in AZ we don’t get many rains or floods, but when we do they can be flash floods. Consequently the old rules don’t always apply (like - the inside bend, under bolders etc.). Keep focused on your job of finding crevices that will hold the best of the best. TIP: look for areas of exposed bedrock that: 1. have weathering cracks in them. The best ones are usually 1/2” or wider. 2. Some bedrock is crumbly, and gold works its way down and out of sight. These are excellent areas to metal detect. 3. Some excellent bedrock areas are only covered by a foot or two of rocks and boulders and are virgin because no one likes to do the work. 4. Generally I don’t move boulders to work under them. Usually I use my prybar to split open crevices and clean out the material (best of the best). Under the boulder you may be dealing with 20 gallons of dirt or more. In the crevice there will be a very rich gallon or less, and you can be pretty sure it’s never been worked before. One thing I want to mention here is that there is no substitute for a quick test. As you walk, don’t be afraid or too lazy to test any likely spot. It’s not how far you walk on the creek that counts, it’s how much gold you have in the snuffer at days end. Practice your panning until you can do a test in less than a minute. HERE HOW: Use a 1/4” classifying sleeve over your pan and in the water vigorously classify and get rid of the rocks( 10 seconds). As you agitate the pan with one hand use the other to “kneed” the material and get it all into suspension (if you don’t k-need the gold, you don’t get any)(20 sec). At this point, 90% of your gold should be on or near the bottom of your pan. Using the back edge of one hand scrape off and inch of material off the top (I know- I know. Just do it)(2 sec). Put all material back into suspension by agitating and kneading, and repeat the scraping 2 or 3 times depending on how much is in your pan. Now slurry off the remaining lighter - brown sands until you get down to black sand (15 sec). Now backwash the black sands with a swirling motion and just a little water in your pan and take a QUICK visual check of the gold. Don’t try to recover it from the black sand at this time. Using your flexible plastic scoop, just pour your black sands into a canvas sample bag to process later or take home. If the creek is dry and you can’t even find pools of water to pan your samples, you have no choice except to use your canvas sample bags and carry the screened samples out with you. Be very selective about this because a gallon sample bag can weigh around 10 lbs. And it is easy to overdo it. As you hike the washes look for likely spots that should have caught some gold. Bedrock crevices (especially if there are nails or other iron scraps caught there) is a good place to take a sample. Any place where you can pry up a chunk of bedrock in the center of the wash is excellent. Clean the bedrock as thoroughly as possible. One or two samples in a quarter mile should be sufficient. It's better to take one sample in four different washes than to take four in the same wash unless you know gold is present. Once again here's what to take along. I’m going to close now with this thought: Don’t get discouraged. Be persistent and consistently use good technique. Avoid fads, miracle tools, and “professional advice” from people who don’t have a jar of nuggets to show you. Good luck. As the “Buzzard” used to say, “may the bottom of your pan turn gold”......rf ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Russ’s Revolving Ring of Revenue. Some places we want to work will be close to a water source…but not very many!! Most of us who prospect here in the desert get to a point where we try to decide whether it’s better to take a 55 gallon drum of water out in the field or bring the dirt to water to work it. I’ve tried it both ways, and settled on screening and bringing the fines home and working them in my back yard. I have built a pretty neat water recirculation system in a small trailer (see pic below) and I can run my screened material pretty fast just with a little 1.5hp Honda WX10 water pump. If the material is real dry and there’s a nice wind blowing I really prefer to run the screened material through my Keene 151 drywasher. It’s much faster than messing with the water. Sometimes if the dirt is a little damp, I spread it out on 4’X4’ pieces of heavy black plastic to dry in the sun before I feed the 151. But I digress…..this is supposed to be about my rotating screen. Just wanted you to know what I do with all those buckets of screened material when I get them home. Now some of you are probably asking yourself, “if you’ve got a 151 DW, why don’t you just take it into the field instead of the screen”? Good question… I do take it out sometimes when I’m testing for a new spot. I’ve also got the 140 and a little 12Volt DW and even some smaller puffers for prospecting. But when I find a spot that I really want to move material and do production work, I’ve found that I can move almost twice as much dirt in a days time with the screen. I think that’s because you’re just doing one thing…pick’n an shovel’n. You get into a rhythm and the day just flies by. About twenty buckets will fit into a small truck bed, and some places it will take all day to get them, and some places it will take only a few hours. It depends on how much picking you have to do. The important thing to remember is this… to get those 20 five gallon buckets you have just screened off about 100 five gallon bucket of oversized cobbles. So, you are just taking home the concentrates, so to speak.
. Of course none of that back-breaking work is worth much if you aren’t in a good spot.RULE # 1. Never work all day in a spot unless you are sure there’s gold there…Duh!! That sounds too simple, but I’ve seen so many people work for hours and never stop to test the material they are working… And some even start to work before testing. As far as how I pick a spot to work, it usually goes like this… I’ll be hiking the stream bed with a pan and all of a sudden instead of 2 specks in a pan- I’ll get 6 pinheads. Bingo! Or, I’ll be detecting a hillside and pick up several small nuggets but nothing of any size and I’ll happen to notice that I’m digging in some really loose black dirt that would glide right through my DW….Bingo! Or, riding through some remote hills I start noticing old DW piles….Bingo! There are many, many signs like this when you are in the field, but all of these kinds of situations need to be tested before you run home and get the screen. My favorite place to use the screen is in bank run material with mixed sizes of cobbles and fairly loose picking. If I know the gold is there and disseminated fairly evenly, it’s amazing how easy the digging is. Another good thing about the screen is that you can spread out the oversized material and detect it pretty fast to make sure you aren’t leaving that odd 2 oz nugget in your tailing pile. I usually set a bucket at the far end of the screen and just toss the tailings around evenly to make a final check fairly easy before I leave the area.
Before I get into the construction of the Rotating Screen, I want to mention that a small free standing screen is easy to make and may be a good choice for your first attempt. Below is a pic of one that I built years ago; the screen has about 1 inch openings. I have used it many times when the soil is damp or I fear there may be nuggets of size in a particular area. I also have 3 or 4 other small screens for working different types of situations. All of the materials for my screens have come from swap marts, yard sales, or junk dumps. They are without a doubt the best dollar investment you’ll ever make in mining equipment.
O.K. Let’s get to the construction of the Screen. Four feet long, screen is about a foot in diameter and it stands about 3 feet off the ground. These dimensions are approximate because everything was made from scrap I had on hand, and yours may be different. I only knew I wanted something small enough to carry in the Jeep, and big enough to do a production run. The screen will come apart in three sections for transport. The screen, the motor, and the frame. Each part weighs about 25 lbs. The frame I found at a farm auction. It is just a stand for a 55 gallon drum with a few welding modifications. The wheels that the screen turns on are from the bottom of a standard shopping cart. The screen I found at a mining dump and is about 3/16th in. The bands that hold the screen in a round position I cut from an old hot water heater with a torch. I heated and bent a fence “t-post” around the center band to have something for the back wheel to run on to keep the screen in a fixed position on the frame. There are also two t-posts bolted inside the screen to help brake up the material. The motor is a 3hp I.C. Briggs and will run all day on a tank of gas because it only idles along. The gear ratio seemed to work out pretty well with two reductions. First reduction is from the motors crankshaft (no pulley) to a 10” pulley. And then there a jackshaft that lays in front of the engine and transfers the drive to the opposite side. There another V belt goes from a 2” pulley all the way around the screen. That belt has a spring from a bottom brace on the frame to keep the tension on it. With that reduction the screen turns at about one revolution per second depending upon the engine rpm. The motor base plate has a piece of pipe welded on the front underside and slides over the bar on the frame to the center of screen. I know this description may be hard to follow, but if you’re serious and want more info on this beast, just let me know. In closing let me say there no more healthy exercise than shoveling gold and carrying buckets in the out of doors, but it’s not for everyone. As I get older I’m finding metal detecting is not nearly as hard on my back, but I’m always looking for another spot to take my screen because over the years it has paid for most of my mining equipment. And that’s the story of Russ’s Revolving Ring of Revenue. Hope you enjoyed……rf _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Russ Ford Copyright © 2007 Arizona Gold Miners Supply/Beck Drywashers/russfordProspecting.com. All Rights Reserved. |
