Got the larger, deeper, longer sluice box hooked up. Wouldn’t you know it, our current pump system doesn’t put out enough water to run it. Oh well, not all experiments work, not my favorite part of mining.
Back to the old sluice, running some dirt. Get a rock jam every once a while but otherwise works ok.
You know it’s going to be a pretty good run when you see this in the concentrate bucket
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Back here at the claim. Now that we know our homes are relatively safe from the forest fire. Got some much needed rain, it doesn’t make it much fun to work outside, but we don’t have to worry about every little spark from grinding or welding. Campfires are still banned, so we had to huddle up by the little buddy heater in the storage tent last night.
First order of business, noticed some cracked hoses on the backhoe. Off to town to get new ones made.
Then some welding and grinding on the trommel. We are adapting the sluice that was from our old wash plant. It’s wider, deeper and longer. Should work much better. Also have to put lock nuts on the belt tension bolts to make sure they don’t rattle out.
Seems like we spend more time getting ready to run than it takes to actually process the dirt. Part of mining I guess.
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Finally got up and running. Working the bugs out of our trommel. She likes to jam up with rocks sometimes right where the hopper chute goes into the trommel.
We tilted the angle of the trommel and it helped a great deal, though occasionally one works it’s way in there and then things get exciting. You have to try to clear the jam before burning the belts and fast enough that a bunch of material doesn’t build up and overrun the sluice after the drum starts turning again. Wish there were a way to avoid this but we haven’t found any so far.
We have been getting a little gold. A lot of overburden came down over the winter. There is gold in it, so we ran it.
The dig site is looking pretty promising. Just removed this huge rock. Started uncovering it last year. We discovered it had a halo of gold around it. Can’t wait to see what it has under it.
Have spent the last two days welding on our grizzly. Got here and noticed we had a visitor. We saw these in the mud from our settling pond.
I’m guessing a black but I’m not sure.
Our grizzly got really beat up last year. We decided to reinforce it a little more. That means metal sides and cross braces. Our welder extraordinaire was able to the task. I do believe he could weld the crack of dawn.
That’s done now time to get some dirt. You won’t believe what the thaw uncovered. More for next time…
Here we go! First test of the trommel. As usual, there were some hiccups. First off the water pump it came with would start, but would not stay running. Maybe it got some dirt in a fuel line on the journey up here. No big deal, one thing we have a lot of is pumps. Flange up another 2 inch pump, and off she goes. So there are also a few welds that were leaking and a hole in a hose or so, but not enough to stop us from trying a load.
The videos:
We ran a bit of dirt from where the grizzly used to sit last year. Here’s what we learned. Although there is a grizzly on this trommel, we still need the larger grizzly as a first stage, we had a large rock make it through the bars sideways and get jammed in the trommel. We bent the spray bar in the barrel, it still works. Also, we lost a little gold where the sluice meets up to the chute on the trommel, we have to put a stop in there. We also had to play with the angles and the water pressures. But we did get a little gold out of our test. Overall we were very happy with our new rig, we just have to tune it in a little better.
