Gravel pumps should be on every flowchart

This is my wash plant that treated more gravel consistently, than probably any other I owned.

I was gold mining in southwest Montana years back and we were working a low grade property that had lenses of rich pay gravel throughout a 10 ft pay zone. We had to really push the material through. As you can see I love gravel pumps.

Gravel pumps on stationary wash plants will just give you a lot of leeway with your tailings disposal. If you just need to get it to a  previously mined pit, it is cheap and helps keep your overhead down.

If you have a secondary recovery system you can pump the gravel to the additional recovery plant. The gravel pump really is a good scrubber of the fines.  This is a super simple setup and I recommend it for most sluicing type operations. You can size it up or size it down. This is of course contingent on your values and your spreadsheet requirements.

Montana Grasshopper Creek Wire Gold

This was some wire gold I recovered just below the Old Gold Bug mine, on Grasshopper Creek.

Just sharing some really neat pictures of some of the gold we recovered back in my old days mining on grasshopper creek.

I guess the old timers didn't get it all.

The gold we recovered here and the stories of how we did it,will be a major part of my book we have embarked on writing.  I'll tell you it wasn't all glory, thats for sure.

Installing a duplex yuba style jig

I have an old Diester lab model cleanup Mineral table that we just set up outside my shop.

We are just getting the bugs worked out and it is starting to make a good separation from the blacksand and heavier minerals. The gold should be a bit tighter on the separation cut and I suspect Billy will have it fine tuned today.

We had a pretty good buildup of cleanup black sands sitting around from over the years. Usually I find out that what gets away from our cleanup sluice doesn't even pay the setup time.

We are checking to see what percentage of 200 mesh gold is going to the tails and see if it holds true when we cleanup our Jig cons this year.

We are installing a Duplex yuba style jig to see if we can bump up our ounces a bit this year.

I have a very capable jig man to keep on top of it and we will see if we can get a buck or two in additional recovery this year.

Still making gold in Montana

This post is back from September 2013 .but it always fun to look at gold ...

We are wrapping up the year mining here in Montana. We hope we can squeak out 30 more days.

Lot of snow in the high country and the winds are blowing hard. We have had a good season and when we get home I will probably start building some wash plants this winter.

Les and I have been very busy mining and will take a bit of time off this fall for hunting season then back to work consulting, designing and building recovery systems.

Back from vacation ....

Had a great time on my vacation.

That is a picture of me with a Permit fish. Apparently only about 1 in 500 fisherman catch one of these elusive swimmers.

That is a Barracuda that Kristi caught. We were able to make ceviche with it.  The Permit got tossed back in.

Looking back at one of the best times of my life, searching for jungle Gold and Diamonds

I was unloading some local natives in the Grand Sabana of Venezuela.

These men were hunters from a local indigenous tribe that lived near where we were mining for Gold and Diamonds.

I frequently gave these hunters rides into a small town close to a hundred kilometers from our mine site. They often brought us jungle game for our cookhouse, and what a variety!!!

On occasion they would bring a Diamond for me to examine or buy.

I would ask them where they found it. Of course its just over the hill!  Well over the hill sometimes meant an over night death march. We were in the Tepui country and the beauty and natural wonders we encountered were like a dream. Waterfalls plunging over 1000 ft over these ancient Tepuis, untouched natural wildlife and plenty of snakes!

We would treck over to some obscure drainage and sure enough you could see a small camp set up near a small stream where they could suruca for Diamonds. These native people were on the edges of modern civilization and a jungle wilderness, unseen and untouched by the outside world.

I am sure it is just as untouched as it was years ago when we were invited to their homes and met their families. The balance of those people with nature is special, and it was a privilege to have these people take me into their world.

A good fifty ounce, 20 hr run of coarse nugget gold from Montana

This is  50 ounce of gold in a two day cleanup we had on our last project a couple of years ago. That was two 10 hr shifts.

The mining property had almost no fines and was comprised of almost all glacial coarse gold. Every cleanup was fun and very satisfying. The gold price was up and we did pretty good that year.

Some fine gold we are recovering

This is from our gold mining project in Montana. There is almost zero coarse gold.

A good shot of how fine the gold is we are recovering with a sluice box.

It really takes a lot of this to add up I can tell you this! Most fine gold properties are very lensy and difficult to get  a surefire estimate of their value.

We will be working very hard to make a success of our low grade deposit. We hope the fall is a good long one and the gold price holds.