Prospecting equipment: gold pans

      We’ve stated before that we use different pans for different things, but any pan is better than no pan!

      Guess that would be our first guideline:  always have a pan available.  I don’t know how many times we’ve been out and about, not really planning on prospecting and found ourselves wishing we had anything we could use for a test pan!  I liken it to photography, in which I also have a little experience.  Always have a camera available because if you don’t…

      In the good old days J, the most readily available pans were steel pans.  Now a popular belief is that old-timers used their pan for everything from cooking to recovering gold.  The fault we find with this belief is that one of the most common gold-robbers is grease… whether it be an oily pan or greasy fingers from food. 

      We digress for a second to the subject of grease and gold.  Your hands, pan, sluice and any other mining equipment you might need should be grease-free.  Don’t have a greasy snack and go right to panning, and don’t wash your hands, utensils or dishes upstream from the sluice!

      Back to panning… These pans are bought looking pretty… shiny and all.  If you are “breaking in” a new pan, metal or plastic, they need to be roughed up with some water and gravel that will take off the factory finish and give you a pan that will actuary hold your gold, not send it on downstream.  New pans are pretty, good pans are the scuffed up ones. 

      Teresa finds a metal pan a real pain for one reason… they are rusty!  The rust rubs off on clothing (just try hiking into an area carrying a rusted pan and not get dirty), your hands and anything it comes into contact with!

      So our first preference is a plastic pan.  They come in a variety of sizes and shapes from different manufacturers.  They imcorporate molded riffles which are quite helpful but tend to vary with pan design. 

      Bob’s pan of choice is an older 14-inch green Garrett pan. The texture of the plastic is heavier and easier to control and grip.  The texture is also “rougher,” which keeps the gold in place in the pan.  The riffles are designed for easy elimination of “rough” material and gets you down to concentrates quickly.

Teresa’s first preference is a 12-inch pan from Keene Engineering (Keeneeng.com).  My hands are smaller and a 14-inch pan requires two hands to pan because of the weight.  I like the design of the riffles and a lighter-weight pan.  There’s times I pan a dozen or so pans in an outing and strength in my 5 ft. 1 in. frame is limited, to say the least!  I really like the riffle design in Bob’s Garrett pan, but again I’m two-handing it and tire quickly.

      For a test pan Teresa will use any pan available.  Highly portable because of their size are a quantity of cheap 10-1/2 inch black pans our daughter acquired a few years ago.  These are the pans you often see at pay-to-pan sites and you can actually get a fair quantity of material in them.  A test pan is just that… a test!  I always pan carefully, but once the material is saturated and the heavier materials have settled I can pan it out quickly to look for evidence of gold-bearing material.  This is indicated by black sands, nodules and bits of quartz.

      A friend of ours has what we call the “monster pan,” which holds a lot of material but is tiring to pan.  By the time you get to concentrates, you’re too tired to pan carefully.

      Andy, a follower of our website and blog, emailed to say,

"I use a 15" Garrett Super Sluice. It's a big boy, but I like it because the riffles are steep and have an inverted angle, its almost impossible to lose any worthwhile, gold in my opinion anyway.. (I've actually panned out gold in it that was light enough to float on the water surface! Might I add, for $10.95 and tax, it was a thrifty buy for the quality job it does!"

      We have no experience with some of the more trendy pans: square and hexagon shapes.  They come in a variety of colors, as do round pans.  We haven’t been motivated by the shape or the color to make an investment, but if someone wants to send us a free sample to try out, we’d be happy to comply!

      Andy's comment also made me think we hadn't mentioned anything about price!  Pans cost from $3.95 up to the $20 range... so if you calculate that you get a decent show in your first pan, YOU'VE PAID FOR IT!  That's what $1400/ounce gold prices return.

      The best way to get a good sample is to use a classifying sieve, or what we call “screens.”  This eliminates the larger rocks allowing more material in the pan.  We usually screen everything we put into the sluice box also, but that’s another blog…

      A snuffer bottle uses suction to remove gold from the pan.  Bob prefers using a snuffer bottle, I just transfer using my fingers.

      So if you’re a greenhorn looking for your first gold, we recommend bringing along rubber boots, a pan, a gold vial to display the gold you find, sieve, No. 10 shovel and maybe a rock pick, a 5-gallon bucket that doubles as a carrying device, drinking water and greasy snacks!  While you’re at it, bring along a sluice box because you’re all set up to sluice! 

     

     We’ll talk about our sluice boxes at a later date… happy panning!

Do you have a plan?

       This past week, as promised, we met with a ranger of the local U.S. Forest Service office.  It was a preliminary meeting to discuss our Plan of Operation for a small placer mining permit.

       

We were pleased that everything seemed to be in order for submittal, as we spent about ½ hour answering a few questions regarding where we plan to mine, what kind of equipment and our ideas on what constitutes an environmentally-friendly operation.  Bob’s experience in all aspects of large-scale mining is applicable to this project.  It doesn’t matter the size of the operation, the same principles apply… minimal disturbance, efficient reclamation, and a vigilant eye to maximizing production while minimizing impact.

        So we feel the meeting went well with some helpful comments from the ranger.  The permit will go to various parties for feedback in their area of expertise, with another meeting on the Plan of Operation in March.

        We’ll discuss in a future blog a comment by the ranger that parties are buying claims on Ebay, getting the impression they are real estate.   It’s something we find a common misconception that needs attention.

        So our permit is progressing and we have a “partner” whose role in this operation is developing the equipment we need for this small mining permit.  He’s been very busy building a trammel to process the gravel.  We’re pretty impressed with the result so far. 

When we started looking for equipment it was hard to find anything to process a small-scale operation.  A multitude of options were recreational scale, then jumped to 250-yard per hour equipment.

He has developed a grizzly to separate out large rock which will be reclaimed, the “ore” feeding into a multiple-stage trommel for various degrees of separation.  Black sands, which are plentiful, are mineral rich in this area and will be reserved as concentrates. 

It’s great to have a partner who has mastered so many of the trades necessary to fabricate equipment.  We’re anxious to see a demonstration once everything is in place!  Our partner plans to develop and sell these trommels, so drop us an email if you are interested…

        Our contact information can be found at http:/blackhillsgoldmines.com as well as mine photos, historical information, claim information… we’ve got it!

Permit me... permit you!

A February thaw is an unusual thing in the Black Hills.  We’ve experienced 50+ degrees over the weekend and the mild temperatures are expected to last until Thursday. 

Forecasts show us back to the 30 degree range for high temps after that, but us old-timers J know that by mid-February the brunt of the winter cold is behind us!

Now if you’ve ever spent a winter in the Black Hills, you are probably hooting and hollering, “Winter’s not over until April or May!”  You’re right about that… I was talking strictly about the days when the thermometer doesn’t reach “0” and Rusty, our prospecting truck, groans to a start even tho nobody wants to get up and go!

We’ve re-scheduled our appointment with the Forest Service because we were all homebound with the flu last week.  We’ll blog about our meeting next week and sorry for the inconvenience to both the Forest Service and our readers!

In the meantime, we are seeing a lot of interest in our permitting process… something we expected but maybe not to this extent??? We expected interest in general… after all I work in the public and having been in that position for most of my life, a lot of people know us and are interested in our personal life.  Most of this interest is in the vein of wanting to visit and see a small placer mining operation at work. We’re hoping to be able to provide that opportunity yet this season.

The next level of interest would be those who either want in on our operation or want to start one of their own!  The permit isn’t even public information (except for you all, of course!) and already we have multiple investors interested.  We hadn’t looked on the project as anything but a personal income source, so we’re a little baffled by who, what, when, where and why we would want to open the project to investors?

Small-scale, by our standards, would mean exactly what we are proposing.  That would be enough gold mined each year to provide an income and potentially fund the next year’s project.  We are middle-income people, living a middle-income life in a middle-income home in a middle-income neighborhood… our expectations are not grand or large-scale! Our ultimate goal is to retire comfortably in a middle-income style.

Can we help others get a permit?  No doubt about it!  Is their project a good candidate for a small-scale placer mine?  If you expect to get a mining permit to support disturbance in a creek… that probably would not happen for the approaching season.  Heavily timbered areas; run-off; water right; discharge permit; or designation as special, exceptional, critical or unique land can be a time-extensive permitting process.

These are issues addressed in a small-scale mining permit.  Interested? Contact us through http:/blackhillsgoldmines.com for more info!  We’re here to help with your permitting process based on our experience with this permit and the extensive help of a mining engineer and mining attorney.

Gold for the pickin'....

We talk a lot about placer mining because that is our recreation.  We spend an equal amount of time, however, searching for lode gold.

It’s a different type of prospecting, but employs the same basic principles… discovery, file a claim and mine the gold!

There is a tremendous amount of gold just lying on the forest floor waiting to be discovered.  Historically, the dirt and rock on the streets of Rochford panned out $300 worth of gold.  The source of the gold in that area is quartz and schist of the Rochford formation, mined at the Standby, Montezuma, Standard, Yellow Bird and King of the West mines, all following this geologic formation. 

Veins traverse the forest floor, erosion has worn the outcrops and you can find what is called “float” rock that has been liberated from this formation.  Not all quartz is gold bearing, but experimentation will tell you which is a gold bearing quartz.    

Processing is a more complex issue in lode mining.  The gold bearing ore must be crushed and then pulverized to a powder consistency to liberate the gold.  We have a friend interested in investing in a portable mill that would reduce the ore to concentrates.  It would be a very efficient way to sample and explore deposits to recover a little gold.  We’re recommending that he provide a service to claim holders to evaluate free-milling quartz ores.  It’s a service we would appreciate at our six lode claims.  In fact, when the weather breaks, we will collect a pickup load of ore from each and have him process it to determine gold quantities.

I guess our goal here is to dispute traditional thinking!  Homestake Mining Company and general publications on the minerals of the Black Hills have a history of discouraging lode mining, claiming that all the gold has been mined out!  About 9 out of 10 people we talk to make the same comment, “Homestake got all the gold!”

If that were the case, why are the placer creeks still being replenished annually?  If that were the case, why do we see what is obviously gold-bearing quartz at multiple locations? One answer to that question would be the current price of gold making mining much more feasible… when Homestake closed their Lead mine the price of gold was around $250 and cost of production about the same.  That does not constitute a profitable operation.  The cost of production has probably increased, but the price of gold has skyrocketed and doesn’t show sign of leveling off in the immediate future.

We highly recommend you prospect or employ us to prospect for lode gold before gold prices bring big mining companies back to the Black Hills.  The gold is there and we can prove it!

Permit me!

Winter in South Dakota equals “down time” for prospectors, at least physical prospecting!  Now we want to be clear, we still get out there and sample, have been known to haul ore home to sluice on a nice day, have even panned (brrrrrrrr) in some icy creeks!

There’s a lot to be said for research and it’s a great (warm) way to spend those winter months.  That is how we usually while away the months of January and February; researching and pinpointing prospects for the spring season.  We lined up a block of great claims in the Central Hills before the real winter hit, so if you're interested you might want to contact us now.  Our website, http://www.blackhillsgoldmines.com/ has all of our contact information for some very good, historically proven nugget claims. 

This year, however, we are immersed in what is a large-scale project for us, called a small scale placer mining permit.  We think we’re doing pretty well, but time is the real test!

A friend of ours was discussing placer mining with an individual who works for the U.S. Forest Service.  The word we got back is the focus of our discussion today.

Anyone who knows anything about gold prospecting in the Black Hills is aware that South Dakota law does not allow mechanized mining without a permit.  There are a lot of prospectors who “fudge” a little on the issue; that is not the focus of this discussion.

The feedback from the U.S. Forest Service is disturbing;  loaders, backhoes, tractors stockpiling ore for sluicing.  The Forest Service staff has encountered a lot of this, from what we are hearing, and is forced to remind them they need a mining permit for mechanized mining.  These parties then show up at the ranger station expecting to fill out a form and be handed a permit!

Now if that was all it took to have a mining permit, ourselves, our family and friends would all have pockets literally lined with gold and no worry about retirement!

So let’s talk a little about the permitting process.  There are two elements to a small mining permit on an unpatented claim:  the state (in our case South Dakota) and the U.S. Forest Service.  Both entities have to be involved in the permitting process, each on their own timetable.

We started with a phone call to South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).  They recommended a draft of the “Request for Determination of Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique Lands”.  Let me state here that the staff member we talked to was cordial, informative and very helpful.  The reason for the draft was it does not start the 60-day review process and allowed us feedback on the draft application before submitting by certified mail to various agencies. 

We prepared that application, a six-page document, and submitted it to DENR.  We were very pleased that it took only one week for the reply.  Two items on our application needed modification.  We are extremely pleased about that… both our efforts and a heartfelt thank you for the efforts of a family member who is a PE mining engineer consulting with a mining attorney on some of the more critical elements of the mining plan.

The letter from DENR also reminded us that “the process to obtain an approved Plan of Operations from the Forest Service could take up to two years” and encouraged us to get that process started.

So we’re on our way, getting ready to submit a Request for Determination of Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique Lands to all entities required while coordinating submittal of a Plan of Operations to the U.S. Forest Service.

Whewww… so much for filling out a form and being handed a permit!  We have up to 60 days to wait before we can even file for a permit! That’s okay, because we need that 60 days for permit preparation.

We expect to learn a lot throughout this process.  It’s been a study just to get the applications all going in the right direction at the right time and to the right agencies! A legitimate estimate of time involved would be about 100 hours to this point; another 100 hours devoted in the upcoming weeks.  We still have, after those hours, several more application forms, advertising, hearings and inspections!

You can read along with us through the process, and/or we would be happy to consult on our specific experience in the permitting process with interested parties.  We could save you several hundred hours with what we’ve accomplished so far, so we would suggest that only serious applicants request consulting, a fee-based service.

Our whole emphasis here is to make it clear what we have stated before; do it the right way!  Sure, we could sit around and bemoan the fact that it’s a relatively complex process, but that process will help filter out a lot of (dare we say it!) amateurs who have no respect for the forest, environment and Mother Nature in general!  We applaud that effort.

Robey, now 9 years old, is our oldest
grandson and a more experienced  prospector
than most adults we meet! Quartz and calcite
crystals are his specialty. 

Now let's take a look at amateur prospectors as referred to in "Anatomy of a Mine" General Technical Report INT-GTR-35 by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service.  

"Amateur Prospectors -- In recent years, as full-time professional prospectors have almost disappeared from the scene, amateur prospectors have become far more numerous. To many outside of the mining business it is difficult to distinguish between the two.”

The Black Hills gold rush brought thousands of amateur prospectors looking to find nuggets for the pickin’.  Early newspaper articles repeated time and again that rather than follow to the newest “rush,” prospectors might be well advised to stick it out on a paying claim. 

We see this same principle in modern-day prospecting… the historically popular placer creeks are rushed, swarming with would-be prospectors.  Now we don’t blame anyone for prospecting where there is proven placer, but just the sheer number of prospectors should point to the fact that “easy” gold might be found at less known drainages. The popular placer creeks are, however, a good place to study how and where gold might be found.  The flip side of this would be that we’ve seen the same prospect hole dug and re-dug and there still is no show of gold!

What indicates to us the difference between what we call a “greenhorn” and a professional would be, first, observation.  How do we know when we go to our claim and see diggings whether it is a casual panner, a greenhorn with a new metal detector, or a serious prospector looking for good pay dirt?

Every gold panning guide gives virtually the same advice… inside bend of creek, ripple areas, black sands behind large boulders… you know the drill.

A good example would be our Boulder Creek claim.  Every time we go to that claim we see evidence of claim jumping.  It is usually indicative of the amateur prospector following a panning guide book… scratching behind large boulders, inside bend of creek, ripple areas.  That’s our first clue that someone is a greenhorn, both in exploration and ignorance of mineral trespass!

The indication that someone is a little more knowledgeable shows up when they have created a hole (disturbance) within the creek boundary.  At least they’ve figured out you have to scratch more than the surface to find pay dirt! 

The unfortunate fact is, however, it takes time and hard work to establish a good hole.  If you are guilty of mineral trespass, the more time and effort you exert the more obvious it becomes!  You might be lucky enough to go unobserved for a limited time, but every tick of the clock, every shovel of dirt brings you closer to being found out! 

To some there is a sense of adventure in mineral trespass… but we not only respect a claimholders’ rights, we don’t like watching over our shoulder all the time!

Our claim on Boulder is a true test of amateur vs. professional miner; each spring brings a flood of some magnitude.  The creek swells with the spring thaw.  The spring flood usually washes out the crossing to some extent.  The crossing has sometimes washed to a point where there are 6-foot cut banks.  We actually watched a pickup try to navigate during flooding; it floated downstream!

That may be one of several floods each season.  The point we’re trying to make is that this seasonal flooding re-distributes huge boulders as well as in-creek gravel bars, trees, etc. It may expose bedrock that was previously buried under feet of overburden, or it may bury bedrock that was previously exposed! A really good flood can re-route the water channel!  A greenhorn would find this to be like putting together a puzzle missing key pieces!

Bob loves this natural phenomena… observing currents and small eddies to determine how the creek deposits gold.

This is called, in general, reading the creek.  It’s most awe inspiring during flooding, but can be done with physical observation of any drainage. 

To us, this would be one way to distinguish an amateur from a professional… can they “read’ the creek?

"The publicity, sometimes highly distorted, given to rushes..., the convenience of modern off-road vehicles, and the increasing amount of leisure time available to so many, have combined to produce tens of thousands of amateur prospectors.  Some of these individuals make great efforts to equip and train themselves, and they are capable of finding prospects worthy of exploration and development.”

The above statement strikes a chord, but there is so much it doesn’t say! The phrase “equip and train” is often left trailing at the word “equip.”  A fancy 4-wheeler gets you there; a bunch of expensive equipment looks good; but if you can’t pan and set up a sluice box, what good is any of it?

Our first judgment of a gold panner would be the pan itself!  It doesn’t matter what brand or what material it is made of… a shiny new pan screams greenhorn! 

We have maybe 10 gold pans.  Teresa usually uses the little cheap black pans for test panning… I think we have about 4 of those.  You can screen the material (if it is dry enough) to get a larger sample or rough pan which is what we call panning everything.  Why the cheapo pan?  A test pan is just that… the cheap ones are small and extremely portable and you’re not panning to recover a quantity of gold, just see what’s there.  The material in the pan when it is washed is as much an indicator as the gold you do or do not find!  Is there black sand, is there evidence of quartz… gold is a bonus in a test pan! The other pans we use for various reasons… the one quality they share is a well-worn appearance! If you can’t pan, don’t make any further investment. Everything you do, short of a commercial operation, ends with panning.  We probably have a couple hundred dollars invested in equipment over a period of 25 years, none of it is shiny or new and we recover gold just about every time we prospect!

So our second judgment would be based on whether the test pan can be interpreted to be a good prospect?  Teresa is a knowledgeable panner, but usually shows test pan results to Bob for interpretation.  He is a better judge of what the test pan might mean.

“However, the majority of the amateurs are poorly motivated and so lacking in the most rudimentary knowledge that they create difficulties for those seriously engaged in prospecting and exploration.”

That’s a pretty fair summary of a lot of grievances… but most of our statements so far dwell on what we consider a professional placer prospector.  There’s so much more, but we need to address lode prospecting as well.

First of all, a good grasp of geology is necessary.  That’s to Bob’s benefit; he was mentored by about 15 degreed geologists in his mining experience… they appreciated his grasp of the subject and compensated with shared knowledge.  It became office amusement to test new geologists against Bob! He has also read extensively on the subject.

The Black Hills have a unique geology, such as does every geologic occurrence.  Several of those degreed mentors specialized in gold occurrences of the Black Hills and made an effort to share that knowledge. 

Knowledge of gold occurrences in the Black Hills is a specialty that few appreciate.  There’s a reason you see geology teams from various colleges in the Black Hills… it’s a geology education in itself!

"The amateur's common lack of consideration for the rights of land owners, his abuse of laws and regulations, and his ill-conceived bulldozing of the surface have become so offensive that there is mounting pressure for drastic restrictions on all prospecting and exploration activities.”

Offensive to us, as evidenced by past blogs on mineral trespass, claim etiquette and mine safety. On the other hand, it is also offensive some of the  dramatic measures taken to prevent prospecting!  This brings us to the final excerpt of the statement…

  “A great deal of wisdom and fine judgment will be required in finding ways to regulate the recreationist-prospector while not unduly restricting serious prospectors and geologists upon whom the Nation depends for future mineral discoveries."

We don’t know if there’s another “Homestake” out there, but current politics does not encourage large gold companies to explore the Black Hills.  We think the Hills are a wonderful prospect for professional prospectors of small operations… that is why we are in the permitting process for a placer operation and have staked several lode claims with the intent to permit them also!

What is mineral trespass?

Every year, without fail, we encounter multiple cases of mineral trespass.  They range from casual panners to groups digging extensive holes on our claims.

The majority of those guilty do not understand the full extent of their actions.  How many of us would willfully commit a federal crime?  That is exactly what you do if you remove minerals from a registered mining claim.

Another form of mineral trespass is the subject of this week’s discussion.  Do you recall in a previous blog an issue where placer claims had been overstaked by both individuals and a company?

I chanced upon this discussion on the “Nugget Shooter” Forum.  It addresses the issue of staking a claim over an existing placer or lode claim.

The forum states, “No you cannot locate a claim of any kind on land that is already claimed without notorized written permission of the senior claims owner. Any portion of a junior claim extending into a senior claim is null and void regardless of type.”

People make mistakes, and we are tolerant of that because we have made mistakes ourselves.  We are becoming less tolerant all the time… the Lawrence County Sheriff’s office has already escorted one group of diggers off our claim.  That's relatively minor action; we could have pursued each on trespass charges and demanded resitution for damage and any gold they had mined.  

We have photographic evidence of one overstaking effort… hmmmm, what to do, what to do?

The next excerpt of the forum creates even less tolerance on a big scale.  It states, “If a group of junior claims extend into senior claims the entire group of junior claims are void.”

We do not find any further validation of this statement, but it raises some interesting questions.  The company that staked a lode claim over our placer has voided their entire block of claims?  If the mining companies' claim block is void, our neigboring claim owner still has a right to his claim but no right to overstake our boundary?  How would the courts rule on this one? 

The forum concludes, “Any prospecting, mining or metal detecting by the junior claim owner on senior claims is criminal trespass and subject to prosecution and civil suit for damages.”

We’re a little tired of the whole business:  We see evidence of digging on our claims; we have evidence of parties staking claims over a registered claim; we get phone calls from people that they or their ancestors had our claim “once upon a time” and therefore they have a right to be there!

A new season approaches.  Ttechnology which allows us to monitor activity on our claims is relatively inexpensive compared to gold losses at today's price.  Faces, license plates, activity will be videotaped in the new season.  Maybe we’ll post some of those photos here!  Is mineral trespass worth it?

gold prospecting the Black Hills of South Dakota: Placer pit design

gold prospecting the Black Hills of South Dakota: Placer pit design: "You’ve found a good prospect! The test pan shows a piece of gold, or two, or as one test pan we chanced to run showed 18 small piece..."

Placer pit design

You’ve found a good prospect!  The test pan shows a piece of gold, or two, or as one test pan we chanced to run showed 18 small pieces of gold!  Experience has taught us to expose several feet of a lateral face to determine the depth of the pay zone, then work horizontally.

Why?  Anyone who has some digging experience, whether post holes or trenches, even digging a garden, has found out how much easier it is to break ground and expand from that broken ground.  A vertical exposure allows you to work forward, which is a lot easier digging than down! A vertical exposure allows you to roll out a good-sized rock that you wouldn't have the strength to lift!

Invariably, as was the case here, weather or the end of the day calls a halt to developing what might be a good prospect.  We’re not young and invincible :) and have way too many obligations to just block out the world and mine! This time it was dusk on a Sunday evening followed by a day of rain…

The delay was a mixed blessing.  It gave us time to discuss and develop a plan of action.  That is the point we’re trying to get across here; make a plan.  Bob worked in different gold mines, and office chatter quite often turned to the gold deposit buried with waste, or under the mill and lab…  We want you to plan better than that, not only for yourself but for the environment!

Let’s go back to the 18-piece test pan prospect.  We had exposed enough to know there was a nice band of gravel and it was probably the source of gold.  Ore exposed was 6-8 inches deep.  Our plan was, obviously, to remove some overburden and run that gravel! 

The nature of the deposit was such that we would remove overburden as we mined into the hill and deposit waste behind us, filling our old workings as we progressed into the deposit.  The rationalization of this would be to never have to re-dig the same material and create as little disturbance as possible. 

I will explain what we see a lot -- throw your rocks and topsoil wherever seems easiest which is often on the bank in front of you!  Think about it… do you want to move that material time and time again?  Do you want to dig the same old rocks back up and move them because you deposited/rolled them where it was easiest?  As you widen your hole, do you want to re-work the waste you’ve already dug once? 

I had called the dusk encroaching and a rainy day a mixed blessing.  As always, there is more to this saga!  We returned two days later to our prospect.  Remember that we had exposed the lateral face to get a jump start on mining.

I can’t even begin to express what we felt when we saw the large hole that had been excavated!  The lateral face was now exposed about 5 feet deep and 12 feet wide!  The dirt and rock they had excavated was, gratefully, piled behind the hole.  They had dug below the pay zone but left a huge amount of overburden to be removed before we could work safely.  We also had to knock down and smooth over their waste pile so we weren’t waist deep in a hole with 5 feet of excavation in front of us and 6 feet of waste piled behind us.  The waste pile  also blocked aceess to the creek, so we would be climbing out of the hole over waste to sluice at the creek about 25 feet away.

We learned several lessons in this experience.  Don’t expose any more than you might work that day… and try to disguise your workings with some fill; we like to arrange some good-sized rocks in the hole to discourage others but also give us an immediate notice if someone does dig in our workings.  Some downed tree branches would serve the same purpose.

This constitutes a good pit design:  Look at your prospect; decide where to deposit waste in relation to future mining and creek access; expose a day’s work and camouflage it when you leave.  You might be able to realize a good day's pay without “giving it away” to everyone else!

A trick we have found helpful.  A digital photo of the lateral exposure can, when downloaded and viewed, give you a better defined view of the workings!  Another helpful tool is to view the workings when they have had a chance to air dry.  This is most helpful in identifying a clay band, it solidifying and oxidizing to expose a defined zone.

Sluice box efficiency...

We have in our hands, “Use of Nuclear Tracers to Evaluate Gold Recovery Efficiency,” a bulletin dated April 1994. This bulletin addresses feed rates and water flows for recovery of different types, size and weight of placer gold.

The study was based on gold tracers (irradiated particles) tracked through a large sluicing operation to determine the most efficient means of gold recovery.  A large amount of the information does not apply to the small placer miner, but some interesting facts apply to both large and small scale operations.

In a comparison of expanded metal versus angle iron, the report states, “Flat bar riffles are not recommended for fine gold recovery.” An example of this would be homemade angle iron riffles. “The vortex is launched up to the top of a turbulent slurry column instead of onto the next riffle,” meaning the force of the water (vortex) carries the gold into turbulence rather than onto the next riffle, floating it right out of the sluice box due to bubbling and irregularity of gold particles.

“Regular or modified angle iron riffles should have a 40-60mm. gap and be tilted at 15 degrees upstream of the sluice box‘s vertical in a sluice run, with a slope of 12-15 degrees. Packing and extreme gold loss were often observed when any of the following conditions occurred: Shallow slopes, narrow gaps between riffles, excessive feed rates, insufficient water flow, and riffles larger than 25mm.

“Expanded metal riffles are shallow riffles which are sensitive to scouring and the resulting (which results in) coarse gold losses when they are subjected to surging or excessive water flows and/or steep sluice box gradients.”

We’ve run into this situation many times with our guests… more is better! A high water flow will float finer gold right out of the sluice box. They are amazed that we even watch the ebb and flow of the stream during the day, adjusting for increased water flow.  We try to remove our sluice box if an afternoon rain occurs... the increased flow of the stream might clean it out for us!

Feed rates, as mentioned above, are also critical. Many times a tired prospector starts feeding too much material to the sluice. This will not only dislodge accumulated gold but also float gold across overloaded riffles right back into the stream! We’ve joked about re-running the tailings of someone we know is overloading the sluice box or has too much water flow… but content ourselves with testing our own tailings periodically by pan to adjust for possible loss of gold.

Use of expanded metal or angle iron is stated to, “severely reduces the opportunity for gravels and anything but very coarse gold and nuggets to enter the riffles.”

For those of you wanting to build your own sluice box, a 15 degree upstream angle is needed on riffles, and a slope of 12-15 degrees of your sluice box in the creek.

The article concludes with, “The fine screened sluice boxes had the lowest loss of all… one of the triple run boxes and a single run box lost more gold than they recovered. The fine screen systems with recommended sluice box designs recovered 99% of their placer gold.”

Claimholders beware!!

We see a lot of claimholders being over staked by overzealous gold prospectors. We’ve been guilty of it once ourselves, but that was an error in BLM records (something every claimholder needs to check). We‘ve made errors and caught multiple BLM errors! One of these days we’ll discuss in depth how to use LR2000 on the BLM website, or maybe I’ll write one of those “LR2000 for greenhorns” manuals!

The history of one of our claims is a composite example of what anyone who owns a claim might expect from those who don’t know, have been misinformed or just plain don’t care!

We became the proud grandparents of our first grandson in 2001. We hadn’t been all that active prospecting… things like getting four teenagers through high school, holding down full-time jobs to support that effort, and developing a rural property into a home had all contributed to little free time and opportunity.

Bob did, by his continued research, find a claim that was “just too good to pass up.” We knew the area was in high demand, so Bob and a friend walked the creek looking for a location certificate or claim posts, then found discovery. The following day we prepared a location certificate in the name of our grandson and returned to hang paper that day.

We were so excited to be claimholders again! Sunday morning dawned and we grabbed some shovels and a sluice box, our trusty pans and some boots. Our excitement made an hour drive seem like minutes, planning and speculating on what we might find!

Well, what we found wasn’t quite what we had anticipated. As we rounded the last curve to our new claim, we spotted a vehicle parked exactly where we had hung one day before.

Now Bob is a pretty mellow guy, but not too tolerant of people who flagrantly abuse a clear-cut legal issue. He did maintain his composure and approached the party (I followed with a camera). As I snapped photos of them hanging a location certificate over the top of ours, Bob queried them as to what they were doing?

Here’s lesson no. 1 on what not to do while staking a claim… The party proceeded to tell Bob they had prepared a claim certificate and driven to the Billings BLM (Bureau of Land Management) office to file the claim. They had been turned away at BLM, being informed they had to find discovery, post a location certificate on the property and file at the county level before filing at BLM. The sequence of events is critical: find discovery, post location certificate, file at county, file at BLM.

They knew the process now, but didn’t seem to notice that there was already a location certificate on the property!  Lesson no. 2: Always look for location certificates, affidavit of assessment or any indication that a claim is staked!

The day wasn’t entirely ruined, but it was a little disappointing to find claim jumpers rather than gold!

The story doesn’t end here… there’s not a happily ever after to this story, just a year-by-year challenge!

We ran into this same party several weeks later when they approached us to say they had “bought into” an adjacent claim and they were putting in boundary posts. Bob asked to see their claim map because they seemed to be confused about the boundaries. He noticed that the claim had been re-located and asked why? He was informed that BLM had said they needed the location certificate amended and misconstrued that as needing re-location. The party was upset, frustrated when given a fly-over of our claim boundaries to show exactly how it laid, and stated he would assign his own MMC (mining mineral claim) number and didn’t want to deal with BLM! He proceeded to put in posts (PVC at that, you might know how we feel about (PVC!) at least 100 feet within our claim boundaries.

Now lesson #3 on what constitutes amendment of a claim and what constitutes re-location… I took this information directly from the BLM website so I didn’t misrepresent the issue:
AMENDMENTS/RELOCATIONS:
“An amendment to a location for an active mining claim or site can be made at any time and must be filed with the appropriate State Recorder’s Office before filing in the proper BLM State Office within 90 days of recording. It can be made on the same type of form as was used for the original location with “Amended” added to the title of the location notice. An amended location relates back to the original date that the mining claim or site was located. (Info on filing fees left out.)
“Amendments are used to:
1. Correct or clarify omissions or defects in the original location certification;
2. Correct legal descriptions, due to an error made on the original certificate (the location on the ground cannot be changed); and
3. Change the claim name.
“A relocation, on the other hand, is treated as a new original location which essentially covers the same land as a prior mining claim/site. As such, a relocation will be issued a new serial number and date stamp. A processing fee… is required. A relocation does not relate back to the date of any prior location and is adverse to any prior location.
“A relocation may not be established by the use of an ‘amended location notice,’ but requires a new, original notice or certificate as prescribed by state law.“This ‘relocation’ usually occurs when a miner fails to timely file the required annual filings and the claim was on federal land that is open for mineral entry so the miner wants to “re-stake” the same claim.“The major difference between an amendment and a relocation is an amendment cannot take in new acreage, but a relocation can.”

The fact was, since they had re-located the claim, our claim location pre-dated them. We had used the original boundaries of the adjacent claim as our adjoining claim line. Their re-location adjusted boundaries into our existing claim. We pretty much let that go, pointing out the discrepancy. Since that day, an annual replacement of adjacent posts has been necessary because they are moved or removed!

Again through research, we see that this same adjacent claim is not showing up on LR2000 in the township, range and section where it was located. We prepare a location certificate and proceed to the claim to determine if the location has been abandoned. A claim certificate is posted, but the MMC number is not uniform with those found in the Black Hills. We returned home (pre-cell phone days) and called BLM. They did not show a claim by that name or by that claimholders’ name, or MMC # in South Dakota. We assumed that the party had done just as they said, assigned their own MMC #.
We returned to the claim (now this is an hour’s drive to and fro each time) and proceeded to nail up our location certificate. A vehicle screeches to a halt on this dusty gravel road, and a man identifiable to us as the former claimholder proceeds to rant and rave that we have over staked him and we are claim jumping! We removed our location certificate and left, but not before showing him that his claim does not show on the BLM printout that we have.

We returned home, called BLM again! The adjacent claimholder had already called and we got a lecture from BLM about claim jumping, stating they had made an entry error, the MMC # was in Montana, but the claim was valid. We restate: always check your claim with BLM!
So that was a lesson learned… check, double check, then re-check!

This same plaeer claim, located in 2001, was in 2005 blanketed by a mining company with lode claims. Lesson no. 4 -- you cannot locate a lode or placer claim over an existing claim. Mining companies do this… they blanket a section with claims regardless of existing claims. Individuals do this… at least once a year someone tries to overstake our placer claim(s) regardless of what paperwork is hanging, how many signs we post, how much time we spend on the claim(s). If you’re not there 24/7 and you’ve got a good claim, they will come!

This leaves an interesting situation, however. Our 2001 claim is valid. It pre-dates the lode claims. Our adjacent claimholder, however, re-located once again in 2008, which forfeited all his rights to the placer claim because of a lode claim dated 2005.  We don't think he is aware of that, but seriously doubt he would appreciate any input from us!

This is a lot of information. It is also some of the worst-case scenario(s) all encompassed on one individual claim. The lesson(s) learned would be to keep track of your claim, ask the right questions of the right people, and always preserve the integrity of your original claim if possible.

Overlooked cache of gold...

Driving through the Iron Creek region of the Northern Black Hills this week, we see claims on every creek, one of which we own.

Family, friends and acquaintances constantly approach us about “where to find gold“. Our Iron Creek claim is an excellent example of both stream and bench gravel containing gold. The stream is intermittent, usually running water only until the drier months of July or August. The lack of water these months would discourage the average prospector.

Throughout the Black Hills, there are huge reserves of un-worked gravel benches. The old-timers often spoke of stranded dry placers in small valleys and ravines. Oftentimes a ditch was dug to divert water to the workings. That practice now requires a lot of paperwork, and the dry placers have all but been forgotten due to lack of water.

How we find them… Dry placer workings are hard to see unless you know what to look for. Indications of old workings would be irregular mounding, not necessarily next to the creek. Some of the high bench deposits are stranded at elevations of 5000-6000 feet, but also exist in low lying valleys. If you know your geology and follow the strike of vein deposits close to lode mines, you almost always find stranded placers in the drainages. Bob has found these stranded bench deposits on the side of Richmond Hill above Squaw Creek while running an exploration dozer. They lay in like snowdrifts of red iron-stained gravels, which he was told are very rich. This is private property within a federal mine site, but just one graphic example of the possibilities.

What do you do with such a claim if you stake it! Basic equipment would demand at least a shovel and 5-gallon bucket to transport material to water, either a creek or home. We have spent many hours recovering gold with a household hose and sluice box! Modern-day technology includes recirc systems (buy or build) that contain water which is re-circulated through the sluice box. This would consist of a sluice box, marine pump, a 20-30 gallon rubber tub and a power source. Water would have to be hauled to the location or again, you can use a household garden hose and haul the material home!

Just a reminder, any mechanized mining in South Dakota requires a permit!

Spiral pans might be another option. They are partially submerged in a tub of water, run by a battery and separate the heavy minerals out of concentrates.

Dry washers are commonly used in desert regions and work best on sandy material, almost nonexistent in the Black Hills. Almost all our placers are clay laden and would not dry wash efficiently.

So if you are thinking of obtaining a claim, don’t overlooked these under-worked gold resources!

Check out our website at http:/www.blackhillsgoldmines.com if you want a claim of your own!  A good weekend on any claim we find for you would pay enough to cover our asking price!

Gravel and clay... what to look for!

Snowbound is what we are… not enough to cause travel problems but enough to keep us from trekking through the woods.  It’s a good time to discuss where and how to look for gold…

The Black Hills gold rush was mostly composed of would-be prospectors (we call them Greenhorns) looking for gold nuggets to be plucked out of the creek!  A small minority of those rushers knew their stuff… and generally were the ones who ended up striking it rich!

We project that 25% of the population wants to be gold prospectors… of that 25%, maybe 1% know what to look for!  Most of the claim jumping on our claims is harmless; they don’t know where or what to look for so they just dig in the creek and probably find enough gold to figure out it is hard work for a few flecks of gold!

Gravel bars are a good prospect.  This is rounded rock that has migrated down the creek through multiple flood events.  The gravel is deposited in layers with each successive season.  Gold is heavy, so it quickly settles through the layers to either bedrock or false bedrock. Gold found while digging a bit in the creek was probably deposited recently and it is doubtful you will find paying quantities.

Here’s where it gets tricky!  You’ve found a gravel deposit… where is the gold?

Clay can be false bedrock and will be either your friend or foe.  Clay bands are easily recognizable in an exposed bank.  They can be false bedrock that keeps the gold from settling to bedrock, but they are also what we like to call “a sluice robber.”  Clay in your sluice box will collect gold and carry it back into the stream. 

We’ve encountered a variety of clays, everything from gritty red clay to slimy yellow smectite. 

There are instances in the Black Hills of yellow clay being high-grade clay containing gold.   Historically documented near the modern day Gilt Edge Mine, is a gold rush era article stating, “recent strike at depth of 32 feet proven to be an immense flat body of rich ore resembling yellow mud.”

All clay should be tested before sluicing to determine gold content.  Why??  We have trouble convincing “greenhorns” that the ore can’t be put in the sluice box and end up having visible gold in the box “disappear” with clay-bound ore. 

So before you sluice suspicious ore, break clay balls and rinse ore extensively while panning.  This helps determine the gold content and whether or not the clay becomes water soluble.  There is a product called Clay Gone that will help break down the clay, or a few drops of environmentally-friendly dish detergent might accomplish the same purpose.  We also “clean” the sluice box before attempting to sluice gold-rich clay-bound material.  That way you haven’t lost acquired gold, but might recover gold from the clay.

The Bear Gulch area is said to have a clay band within inches or feet of bedrock.  Between the clay and bedrock the gravel is said to be extremely rich in placer gold.  It would be assumed that the gold was laid down in gravel, some sedimentary event covered it, and eventually decomposed into a clay.  Through the eons other gravel was deposited upon the clay, creating false bedrock.

We’ve also found, at another location nearby, a gold-rich iron-stained band above a grayish-silver clay, the clay band from 6 inches to 3 feet deep.  The clay looks like a decomposed bedrock.  We’ve never found what is below the clay band because penetration of the clay brings in water.

In another region quite geographically distant, gold tends to be concentrated closer to the surface.  Some bands are completely barren of gold and others are low-grade.  We’ve found gray clay, more than likely decomposed porphrey, which seems to carry a lot of nice flour and small nuggets.  If  bedrock can be reached, very nice pockets of nuggets exist in a red clay zone which is blackish-red sand carrying small, rounded hematite nodules in abundance.

Clay, therefore, is your friend because it may help collect gold to a specific layer.  It is your foe because it absorbs and carries the gold you are trying to recover!

We can’t emphasize strongly enough… look for clay bands to test, but don’t run clays through your sluice box if it already carries gold!

Rochford to Castleton... a prospector's view

A Saturday outing… we don’t get many of those but I’m recovering from tooth extraction and need to take it easy today. Bob is feeling pretty good after his surgery three weeks ago, so a drive in the Hills is just what the doctor ordered!  (Thanks to the higher powers for great weather... today we have a winter storm!)

Our first stop is for King’s pasties at Central City between Deadwood and Lead. These are traditional miner’s fare and the handiest take-along lunch we’ve found, not to mention good!


Rapid Creek is icing over

 We then travel toward Rochford, noticing that the recent snow tapers off a bit as we travel. That’s what we had hoped for -- depths drop from shin high to scattered snow cover as we proceed toward the central Hills. Rochford is quiet and very little traffic on the road this Thanksgiving weekend.

The advantage of winter prospecting is that leaves have fallen and sometimes the snow helps outline things you don’t notice otherwise. Today we see a gulch above our Rapid Creek claim has considerable placer workings, so we trek up the gulch a little and discuss next summer’s plans for the area. A nice piece of “float” appears to be conglomerate with fragments of quartz, schist and creek debris. That certainly justifies further prospecting next spring!

We proceed toward Mystic and just down the road see a man shoveling a pickup load of dirt into a sluice box. Some of these miners are hardy, but the price of gold gives new meaning to “pay dirt.” A day’s work right now can produce a lot more than pocket change!

The ghost town of Castleton looms, and we venture up the Castle Creek road. A large portion of this area is either private property or part of a protected withdrawn area. We observe how many old diggings, both lode and placer, that are not available for claim because of an abandoned campground! Such is the nature of government….

A few people are cutting Christmas trees… probably not a legitimate venture in this area!

We arrive at the old Lookout Mill on private property because I recalled some timbers still there, even though it appears to have burned several years ago. The mill site and several lots behind it are for sale and we speculate on buying land that remote from all our other claims. Hmmmm….

We venture back to the Rochford area. A quick stop for sampling at the Montezuma shows us that our paperwork and some posts have been removed, so that goes on our list of “things to do.” It’s a little icy in the area, so we don’t spend much time trying to walk on the snow-crusted rocks.

There’s one more area to check. Bob remembers some workings to the north he wants to investigate. We find them with no wrong turns, a pretty good feat on these forest trails! He samples those dumps, finding a piece of ore with a minute piece of crystalline gold! We try another trail we haven’t checked out yet. To our surprise, there are considerable workings about ¼ mile up that trail still on Forest Service property. A couple of hunters have the area staked out, so we’ll return another day to explore!