I have been watching Gold Rush on TV, the story of a group of men who go to
Alaska to look for gold.

I have experience with gold mining, having had a mining setup for three
years. The most we found in one day was two ounces. The least was about as
much as could buy half a pack of cigarettes.

From the start, I could see things they were doing wrong, but figured they
would solve their problems. Now they have a person experienced in mining,
and he is telling them things that I would have told them the first week.
The gold table was a bust, as the only ones I saw that worked well only
worked on a perfectly flat showroom floor under perfect conditions.

I am interested in how this will turn out. I'm sure they will make just
enough to have a season two, even if it amounts to the producers ponying up
and salting the mine, or just some behind the scenes infusions of cash or
equipment or supplies. They have a winner of a show, and they're not going
to let it die before they get a few seasons out of it. Or a spin off or
six.

I got a 14' derelict travel trailer from the Nevada Test Site and stripped
it down to the frame. Beefed it up, put an expanded metal deck on it, put a
100 gallon tank, 2" 5hp recirculating water pump, and a 10' long x 16" wide
sluice. Fancy surrey canvas awning top over the whole thing, as Mojave
county Arizona heat can be brutal. Made a 3' long x 16" diameter grizzly.
It all worked pretty sweet. We ran the talings a few times that were left
in the water trough through a "poop chute", a piece of 4" corrugated leach
field pipe sawn in half on the horizontal with a mild water flow. That
will catch fine gold. Then pan the black sand and fines. We never found
enough to make it worth the six to eight hours to do it, so we were pretty
confident in our machine.

The next step would have been a motorized lift for raw materials, but we
just used five gallon buckets.

Has anyone here had any serious experience with gold mining of any kind? We
did placer deposits and found angular placer gold and gold in white quartz
of jewelry quality. Anyone have any comments on the show?

Steve

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