Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Conversation about Dredging


Random guy says:
hi, my wife and i are getting a huge settlement andhave decided to build a dredge, we see how rickidy some on the show are built and desided to go with bigger barge design on pontoons, equipped for 3 divers, is their a law reguarding only being able to have 1 suction hose, or are allowed 2??? our operation would be designed to withstand alot worse weather than everyone was getting scared of to potentially double our time on the water and with 2 suction divers potentially doubling the gold recovery. and 1 more thing if someone has one of those claims on the water that they started for the first time, can you negotiate with the owner of the claim to mine their??? or is it specifically for that owner only…
heres a laugh, with how flimsy those dredges look, wheres all the life jackets and life rafts???
JasonD says:
June 13, 2012 at 10:28 am
The limitation for the “open area”, is for pump-size/strength and hose diameter. (You can have as many hoses as you wish, running below the diameter, at the maximum engine-size. The losses will be greater with each hose added, as the power will be lost to pull-up material. However, silt-gold is the majority, and the rig should be designed for that.)
Pulling-up large rocks is only to de-mud them, and to move them from the hole. The mud on the rocks contains a majority of the “free-gold”, which is sea-placer gold.
Keep in mind, that sluice-boxes are the WORST design for gold capture. Well, the best of the worst. High-loss at any volume of flow. More loss when the gold is smaller than an eraser, and the fill is larger than a shooter-marble.
Every foot of sluice, pays for itself. The best you can hope for is about 35% capture. (Proven by the constant re-mining and higher yields from the same mined areas, year after year.) The good news is… Nome is one of the highest concentrations of free-gold, “placer-gold”, in the sea. So any properly worked area has a decent yield. Key-word: properly. (Most don’t mine proper, they just vacuumed the floor like maids at a hotel, leaving with pocket-change, not wallets of cash normally nested in the cracks of the couches or dressers.)
Good luck. Hope I can make it there this year, or next-year.
P.S. Don’t go crazy on top-dollar purchases. A $2.00 sluice produces the same as any $400.00 sluice. If you know how to operate it. If you don’t, the $400.00 sluice will yield nothing, as will the $2.00 sluice, but your losses will be greater

1 comment:

  1. I don't think you can build a 'pontoon dredge' capable of staying 'at sea' working any longer than the other dredges - rough seas are just that - rough which translates to extreme motions which upsets gold recovery... not to mention personal safety... good luck!

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