Gold Prospecting - Dry Washing

After several trips out to the gold fields with our metal detector we still hadn't found any gold. Unfortunately that's not really all that unusual. Finding gold is part skill and part luck. So far, no luck.

One day we were metal detecting on a RRPC claim near Morristown and came across 3 other club members who were dry washing. We had learned a little about dry washing from Steve at A&B Prospecting while he gave us a lesson in gold prospecting, but we had never seen one in action. One of the guys was nice enough to take some time and show us how it worked. The main attraction of dry washing is that while the gold you find is usually very small, you have a much better chance of finding some gold. The more we thought about it the more it seemed like a good idea. After a day in the field it would be nice to have something to show for it!

Before jumping in and buying a dry washer we tried a manual version: we bought several sifting screens and a shovel. It's a cheap way to do it but it's very inefficient. The amount of material you can process manually in 30 minutes would take about 3 minutes with a dry washer. But doing it manually paid off - we finally found some gold! It was only a couple of tiny, tiny flecks but it was gold. Buying a dry washer now seemed to be the way to go. All it took was a trip to A&B Prospecting, a credit card and we were the proud owners of a dry washer!

How it works: The dry washer's basic function is to capture gold and discharge other material. It does this using the principle that gold is going to be heavier than the other material. The dry washer has a fan in the lower box that blows air through a finely perforated screen. A leaf blower (sold separately!) provides the air to run the fan. The lighter material is blown upwards while the gold settles. The fan has an offset counter weight that causes the lower box to shake. This causes the material to move downward. The gold is caught in the "riffles" while the dirt, small stones, etc. (called "tailings") drops off the end. It's noisy, dirty and back breaking work but you can process a lot of dirt this way! There's a lot more involved with actually getting the gold (clean up, classification, panning, etc.) but that's the basic idea.

We've been out with our dry washer several times now and have come back with gold each time. Keep in mind that we're talking about VERY SMALL amounts. All the gold we've found so far would fit on the top of a pencil eraser. We know we aren't going to get rich, but coming back with something to show for our efforts makes it a whole lot more fun!

Below are a couple of pictures showing Karen working the dry washer. Please note that Ross usually does most of the shoveling - Karen is doing it here because she is much more photogenic than he is.

	The dirt is shoveled into the top box. A "grizzly" (metal screen) keeps the bigger rocks from going into the lower box. Notice the material moving down the lower box and the tailings pile at the bottom.
	In this shot you can see the leaf blower behind the white bucket and the hose that provides the air to run the dry washer. Covered in dust and shoveling dirt into a noisy machine - doesn't Karen look like she's having fun?

Comet Holmes

In late October the Astronomical Community was surprised and delighted by the unexpected brightening of Comet Holmes. It very quickly increased several million times in brightness and became a naked eye object in the constellation of Perseus near the star Mirfak. Even under the bright city lights here in Mesa it was clearly visible. I spent some time observing it through my telescope and then took some pictures of it. One was posted to the Sky & Telescope website. That one is presented below. I also got a decent shot of Albireo, one of the most beautiful "binary" stars. It too is shown below.

	Comet Holmes
	Albireo

Gold Prospecting - Metal Detecting

One of the most popular methods of prospecting for gold is using a metal detector. As the name implies a metal detector will alert you when you pass the coil (flat piece at the end) over something metallic on or in the ground. It normally make a high pitched whine sort of like a mosquito but when it detects metal it shrieks. We usually use headphones with it to pick up some of the softer "returns" that could indicate a more deeply buried object.

Armed with our metal detector, RRPC membership and maps we headed out to our first prospecting adventure. We chose the "Lucky Strike" claim (all claims have names, some descriptive, some cute) north of Phoenix. Nobody else was out there when we arrived. We learned very quickly that almost all of the targets you find are going to be worthless. If you're lucky they will be at or near the surface so you won't waste too much time on them. Several times we ended up digging quite deep only to find a bullet or shell. Our effort that first day didn't produce anything of value but we did have fun!

Since then we've been out "nugget shooting" (as metal detecting for gold is called) quite a few times. So far, no luck. But if bullets, shells and beer can pull tabs ever become valuable we'll be rich! We'll keep trying and we've also branched out into another method of gold prospecting - dry washing. More on that later.

Karen metal detecting for gold at the "Lucky Strike" claim. We didn't find any gold but we had fun and the scenery sure is nice!

Gold Prospecting - Getting Started

OK, so you've decided you want to become a gold prospector. Where do you begin? You turn to the internet, of course! We found a pretty good site about gold prospecting in Arizona: www.arizonagoldprospectors.com. Even though it gave us some good information it didn't really answer our questions of what kind of equipment we would need, where to go and basically how to get started. A little more searching yielded a gold prospecting store right here in Mesa, A&B Prospecting. We went there and were given a great introduction to gold prospecting in general and one method of looking for gold, metal detecting, in particular. Steve Robertson at A&B was wonderful in sharing his time and knowledge with us. Steve has been gold prospecting for over 50 years and really knows his stuff! We ended up buying a Tesoro Lobo Super TRAQ metal detector and other basic prospecting equipment like a good digging tool, jeweler's loop and collection vials. The other basic requirement we learned was that we needed to join a prospecting club.

A very brief description of how gold mining claims work: someone finds a likely place that gold may exist and then spends some time looking for gold there (more on other gold mining techniques later.) Once they think they've got a winner it's time to register their claim. The BLM (Bureau of Land Management) controls access to mineral claims on public lands. You file your claim with them, pay a small fee of $25 initially and $125 per year maintenance fee and you've got your claim! Claims are generally 20 acres in size. You now have the exclusive right to prospect for gold on that land. Anyone else who tries to prospect there is a "claim jumper" and while it's not like the old days where people were shot for such illegal activities, violence has and does occur. Don't do it! As you might imagine most of the productive areas have long since been claimed and many of them are owned by prospecting clubs. There are many clubs, but Steve recommended one of the largest to us, the Roadrunner Prospector's Club. Once you join the RRPC (or any of the clubs) you get the right to work any of their claims. So we drove down to the RRPC's office in Phoenix the next day after buying our metal detector and joined the club. It's possible to prospect for gold without joining a club but you'll have to be willing to do a lot of searching in very inaccessible areas. Some people do and are successful but it's far easier to buy into a club and get access to claims that are proven to contain gold.

A Quick Update

Yes, we know we've been bad keeping this blog up to date lately! But we do have (a pretty lame) excuse. We've been doing some new things so we can report on them to you, dear reader. So what new activity could we be involved with now? Want a hint? We're doing something that was VERY popular back in 1848 and 1897. No, we're not living without electricity nor are we using horses to get around. We are (drum roll) gold prospecting! In case you're wondering, 1848 was the start of the California gold rush and 1897 was the start of the Yukon gold rush.

It all began with a TV show we saw while in Maine this past summer. The Travel Channel was showing a program about different kinds of treasure hunting. One of the segments dealt with gold mining and talked about panning in California and metal detecting in Arizona. It was quite intriguing! They showed a guy walking around, waving a metal detector over the ground and then coming up with a nugget of gold! It looked so easy! We can do that, we said (you probably know where this is going, don't you?) So we decided to pursue it once we got to Arizona. More to come...