Digging for Gold
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Remove large rocks and boulders to get at the hard pack material underneath. Water will collect and pack that earth with gold deposits. Uncover large stones until the ground is compact and solid. Shovel the area in 6-inch increments, sampling for gold. Determine where the gold is at it highest concentration and go to the next spot and search there too.
The old-timers started mining down in the creek or river, and moved uphill, allowing gravity to carry the water and tailings back down towards the creek or river. Pay-streaks outside of the river often were formed from gold out of tailings from old hydraulic mining operations. As the sluicing operations cut further up into the banks, the sluice boxes were moved forward, which left tailings deposited on the banks. Rip in the Field. Sometimes you can learn valuable information before you start sampling. If other miners in the immediate area are finding gold deposits along a specific flood layer, you should be sampling for gold along the same flood layer while digging around in the nearby vicinity.
Increase concentrations to increase profits. Classify the ore using screens to get at the highest concentrations of gold per cubic foot of ore. Know the type of gold you are going after and eliminate all the rocks and larger debris as soon as possible using the sluice box or pan. Mining laws are enforced in all 50 states.
How to Dig for Gold | Sciencing
Dig for gold only where the law allows. Water hazards include drowning and mining hazards include injury from falling debris, head injuries and assorted broken bones in the arms and legs. Francis Walsh has been working as a freelance writer since Walsh has worked as a performance part-packer and classic car show promoter, now serving as crew chief for Nitrousfitz Racing.
That weird kid John there is digging for gold raming his whole finger up there while drinking his Bush: Hey dick what are you doin? digging for gold? haha. The United States has natural gold in every state but it takes a good concentration of AU (atomic number 79) for gold digging to be profitable.
How to Start a Gold Mine. How to Separate Gold From Dirt. How to Pan for Gold in Your Backyard.
Mining Equipment
Tip Classify the ore using screens to get at the highest concentrations of gold per cubic foot of ore. Warning Mining laws are enforced in all 50 states. Digging gold for fun My Gold Panning: As the old-timers worked further up into the banks, often the gravel became deeper and more difficult to remove by conventional hand methods.
In time, the old-timers developed hydraulic mining. This is where they directed large volumes of water from nearby or sometimes distant creeks under great pressure through monitors huge pressure nozzles. The high-pressure water was used to wash large volumes of gravel through large sluice boxes placed on the banks of the creeks and rivers. As the sluicing operations cut further up into the banks, the sluice boxes were moved forward, which left tailings deposited on the banks.
It is estimated that as much as percent of the gold washed right through the sluice boxes in hydraulic operations because of the large volume and velocity of water which such operations used. Hydraulic operations did not lose gold in the same amounts all of the time. Much of the gravel that these operations processed contained little or no gold. The concentrations of gold were found along bedrock or at the bottom of lower strata flood layers.
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So, valueless top-gravels were processed at volume speed, and they would try to slow down when getting into pay-dirt materials. Sometimes, however, they would cut into pay-dirt materials at volume speed—before having a chance to slow down. This is where large volumes of gold would wash directly into the tailing piles.
Since the time of large-scale hydraulic mining, there have been several occasions of extreme high water. The flood in the western United States is one example. Floods of such magnitude, all throughout gold country, re-deposited old hydraulic tailings piles into newly-formed streambeds up on the banks and within the active waterways. Places where gold was lost from hydraulic operations formed into new pay-streaks—often only inches or a few feet from the surface. This is true all up and down the banks of the Klamath River —and probably many other rivers as well—which has created a wonderful and exciting opportunity for modern small-scale gold miners.
Contrary to popular belief, many pay-streaks today are not found down along the bedrock. In fact, many of the pay-streaks surface miners are finding along the Klamath River are situated in a flood layer flood within two feet of the surface. This flood layer is often resting directly on top of undisturbed hydraulic tailings. We are also finding similar pay-streak deposits inside the active river with the use of suction dredges. Finding pay-streaks with a surface digging project is usually done by setting up the sluice in several different locations, and giving each sample a large enough test hole to obtain an idea of how much gold the gravel is carrying.
Sample holes should be taken to bedrock if possible. Richer deposits are more scarce; and therefore more difficult to find. Sometimes you can learn valuable information before you start sampling.
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If other miners in the immediate area are finding gold deposits along a specific flood layer, you should be sampling for gold along the same flood layer while digging around in the nearby vicinity. Gathering information such as this is one of the many benefits of belonging to an active mining club or association. Active mining organizations will include others who are actively pursuing the same type of mining activity that you are engaged in. While sampling with a pick and shovel, it is very seldom that you will actually see gold in the gravel as it is being uncovered.
If you finish a sample hole and end up with a good showing of gold, the next step is to find out exactly where the gold came from. In other words, did it come off the bedrock, or did it come from a particular layer in the streambed?
How to dig for gold
You must know where the gold is coming from to evaluate the value of the pay-streak. For example, digging two feet into a paying flood layer requires much less time and effort than digging four feet and having to clean rough bedrock. If you do not know for certain where the gold is coming from, and you assume it is coming from the bedrock underneath four feet of hard-packed streambed, you might decide it is not rich enough to work and walk away from a very rich deposit located at the two-foot flood layer.
At the same time, if you are able to reach bedrock, you always want to get a good sample there by thoroughly cleaning the surface and any irregularities there. Sometimes that is where the richest deposits are found. Pinpointing the source of gold is reasonably easy once the sample hole has been opened up. It is likely that the gold will be concentrated either along the bedrock, along the bottom of a flood layer, or at both locations. Sometimes, there is more than one flood layer that carries gold. You can run small production samples of each stratum separately to see which is paying.
Or, sometimes you can simply take pan-samples in the different contact zones between the layers. Some of the new gold metal detectors will sound out on pieces of gold as small as the head of a pin! But in gravel deposits, metal detectors can also be used quite well to locate the concentrations of magnetic black sand.
Black sand tends to concentrate in pay-streaks, just like gold. One question commonly asked about sluicing procedure is the proper slope-setting for a sluice box. A sluice box generally requires about an inch drop per each linear foot of sluice. This is just a guideline. Basically, you need enough water velocity to keep the material active in the sluice behind the riffles, but not so much that you are washing most of the material out from behind the riffles.
I like to get enough water flow to keep the larger material moving through and out of the box.
If I see lots of rocks building up in the sluice, I know I do not have enough water velocity. An occasional rock needing to be helped along is alright in a sluice although maybe not a dredge sluice! In surface sluicing non-dredging , I would rather toss out an occasional rock and have the peace of mind that I am also achieving maximum possible fine gold recovery. A common practice in sluicing is to also to set up a second sluice behind the primary sluice.
The idea is to have a safety check on your primary recovery system to make sure it is working properly. And if all else fails, you can always do some pan-testing in your tailings to see if your sluice might be losing any gold. One mistake that beginners often make is in thinking that the recovery system is at fault because they are not recovering very much gold. Most often, however, it is not the recovery system.
It is the lack of a good-paying pay-streak! The answer to this is to hustle around with more sampling.
Ask around to see what and where it is working well for others in the area. Use their operations as a model. There are several reasons for this.
One is that a flood layer pay-streak is closer to the surface. This means less gravel to shovel to reach the gold.
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Another reason is that it takes more effort to clean the gold off of a bedrock surface when you are not using a dredge. You can only do so much with a shovel. This is why portable dry land dredges are also becoming so popular. They give you the ability to clean bedrock surfaces and cracks with minimum effort. If the gold is coming off bedrock, you must invest the extra effort to clean it off well. Otherwise, you stand the chance of leaving an important portion of the gold behind as you mine forward on the pay-streak.
To use it, the pressure hose from the water pump is attached to a suction nozzle that directs the water and material through a suction hose into the sluice. So after an initial hole is dug up out of the water, the hole can be filled with water and material can be sucked into the sluice box.
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The recovery system can be positioned so that the water discharge can run back into the hole— keeping the hole from running out of water.