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Gold Diggers Home 2009 Entries: Getting Excited Trommel Time Little Smoky Creek Gold
Getting Excited For 2009 Digging Season!
Well, it's been some time since I made an entry here in the Gold Diggers section. Gold digging tends to be somewhat difficult when the mountains are buried under six feet of snow and the ground is frozen solid.
However, there are some exciting things going on in my little Gold Digging world!
Gold Under My Nose
I live only a little over 8 miles from the Snake River as the duck flies (sorry, I don't like crows). The Snake is the big river that runs through southern Idaho. I cross the river all the time when traveling to nearby towns.
And yet, all this time I didn't realize something about it.
It has GOLD in it!
Now, I knew it had gold in it from reading about Idaho's mining history, but I didn't KNOW it had gold in it by going out and finding it.
Well, after two years of running to the mountains north of here to find gold, traveling a minimum of two hours to get there, I finally decided to check out the river I live right next to and travel past all the time.
Guess what?
I found gold in my first shovel full of dirt, two minutes after I got there.
I immediately thought of all the times I walked around on that river bank hunting ducks and fishing.
I thought back to playing around and camping near the Snake as a boy scout back when I was a kid.
I thought about all the times I crossed the bridges that span the river and all the times I went somewhere else to go play around because there just wasn't anything exciting about the river here at home.
And then I looked down at the tiny gold flecks I'd just panned out and realized what a clueless bunch of idiots us humans are at times.
Now, there's not tons of gold in the Snake River. Well, there is tons altogether, I'm sure, but it's all very fine flour gold, nothing of any size, and widely scattered. But it IS gold and all this time it's been right there under my feet and under my nose.
So, I've got a devious little plan. I'm going to start running dirt from the Snake when I can't get up to the mountains. I don't know how productive it will be, the gold in it is awfully fine, but hey it will still be fun. Besides, I want to learn more about --- and get better at --- recovering fine gold.
The reason being that even though the Boise River and Little Smoky Creek have larger flakes and even some small nuggets, it is the fines that still make up a lot of the gold. So, if I want to be a good prospector, I've got to worry about the fine stuff as well. The Boise in particular is loaded with fines.
Trommel Building
The other exciting thing going on is that I'm building a trommel for use in my gold digging. Now, you may not know what a trommel is, I sure didn't before I got into this gold digging thing, so I'll describe it to you.
The purpose of a trommel is to sort out the larger rocks from the smaller material. This is called classifying.
A trommel uses a rotating screen. As it spins, water that is sprayed inside washes the smaller material down through the screen into a sluice box where the gold is then separated out. The larger rocks that don't fit through the screen keep on moving and are dumped out of the end of the trommel.
The sluice box sorts out the gold more efficiently when the bigger rocks don't go through it. Larger rocks can end up knocking gold bearing material out of the sluice either physically or by creating too much turbulence in the water.
The good thing about a trommel is that it makes classifying a lot faster so I can move through more material and hopefully end up with more gold.
So anyway, after thinking about it for some time, I have created my own trommel design and have set about building it. Most trommels are turned by an engine, but I didn't want that. For one, why spend gas doing something I can do by hand? Besides, the last thing I want to listen to while I'm up in the mountains is an engine running.
So, I came up with a hand cranked design. However, I will have to use electric power to pump water through the system, but battery power is quiet and easily renewable so that's no big deal. Unless I spend a week up in the mountains and all my batteries run dead, huh? Then, that would be bad. I'll have to come up with a solution for that.
Anyway, here's what I've got done so far on the trommel.
That's the basic frame, with adjustable legs and sides to guide the dirt that falls out of the screen into a sluice waiting below. The barrel with the screen that will do the actual classifying with sit on top of this frame. I still need to get the bearings I need for the crank system and the expanded metal to make the screen for the barrel.
However, so far it's coming along fine. I mean, I'm pretty much making it up as I go along, but hey, sometimes that's the best way. If I screw it all up in the end, well, I never said I was an engineer, now did I?
I'll post more pictures later once it really starts to look like something.
In the mean time, get excited! Spring is here, the snow is melting, the ground is softening, and there is gold just waiting to be found!
If you've ever had interest in finding gold for yourself, please visit the Gold Prospectors Association of America site. Or contact me for more information.
More later,
Joe Humor --- Gold Digger Extraordinaire!
(more like gold digger wanna be, but hey, I have high hopes)
Gold Diggers Home 2009 Entries: Getting Excited Trommel Time Little Smoky Creek Gold