Gold Fever do you have it yet?

My new endeavor this year is gold prospecting. I have always dabbled in it a bit but with the price of gold up high I thought its time to go dig some dirt.  First off I have always been a metal detector enthusiast so I started with a decent affordable metal detector. As they say I swing a Minelab Xterra 705. Now this detector has a coin and relic mode and a prospecting mode. It is pretty well known for being one of the best VLF type detectors for Gold Nugget hunting. There is a pretty good learning curve when you get into the prospecting end of things but like anything you just have to get out and do it.  There are other better detectors that are of a different technology, the main one being the Minelab GPX4500.  But not being a mega buck kinda guy I did not want to spend four thousand dollars on one.  Garrett makes a nice P.I. type detector also which is a little more affordable.  Anyhow after swinging and swinging I wanted to be able to get more of whats out there so I decided to get a small (not pictured) recirculating high-banker/sluice.  You can haul 10 gals of water with you and use this machine which is very easy to run on a little battery box you can purchase for jumping cars. Depending on the size of the battery power unit you buy you can run almost all day long.  For me I like to bring back the pay dirt to the house and run it though the machine but I will be doing a little mix of both field and home.

Next on the list of items to make your life much easier is building or purchasing a gold vacuum. Yes thats right you are going to vacuum the desert! Sounds funny but it really is the big thing right now and you can get deep in bed rock with it and clean all that gold out no one has ever touched.  I am in the process of building one and I will post the process here as soon as I finish up.  You need a good quality leaf blower and 5 gallon bucket plus a few more little items from your local hardware store. I just bought a used Echo leaf blower off of ebay for 20 bucks so I am awaiting deliver on that.  If you decide to buy one they go for about $350.00 and thats with an echo motor.

OK so now you have some decent equipment to pull up your dirt and run it through. But if you are like me and want to get 99.99% of your finds you need one more little item. Thats a clean up machine.  I like the sluice type deal so I purchased a concentrates clean up recirculating sluice.  What this does is it  after you get your bigger gold out of the larger machine you then run the left over through the clean up sluice to get all the very fine gold. You will be surprised how much you actually get!   Now that being said can you do this cheaper for sure yes just grab a gold pan and go to work. At then end of the day its always a gold pan but using some of this machinery really takes some of the work out of it and you get more payback and are not throwing the gold out.  So I figure number one its a great learning tool and secondly my as well do things right.

Another addition to the stable you might want is a drywasher. Since you already have a gold vac it can be run into a vibrostatic drywasher. A drywasher is nice because you do not have to haul your water into the desert locations because this machine does not use water. Think of it as a powered high banker with no water but the blower pushes air into it and vibrates the box to process the gold. It makes for a very dusty day but the darn things just work great.

One last thing if you have a good prospecting club in your area JOIN IT.  They usually have some good claims you can work and get some gold also learn the basics because if you know nothing about prospecting/mining its going to take you along time to find some gold. Then what happens is the stuff goes up for sale and thus ends the hobby that can make you some money.  There is one club near my location but they seem to be more interested in saving the earth than mining. Also most of there claims are in California and I am interested in working for my gold in my state of Nevada. So if you are reading this and live in my area contact me because I am interested in starting another club for folks who want no politics and just want to play in some pay dirt.