Thread: gold panning
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Old 08-28-2011, 04:13 AM
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Kim473 Kim473 is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Edmonton
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Originally Posted by DonDon View Post
I haven't gold panned or sluiced for about 10 years but I used to do well in the North Sask River by Devon, by Deer creek bridge, by Pine Island (not the island itself since it is a protected historic site, old fur trader fort) and a couple other spots on the river. I've found it in certain washes around Norgeg. The battle river has some in spots but I've not spent enough time with research there to make much hay. I have a pretty effective little dredge and a micron seperator from GoldFinder out of St. Albert I use. Or just a couple plastic pans to check.

There is only flour gold that I know of in Alberta. Usually in the top 2 inches of the bars if it is at Devon because of all the dredging that went on. There is a neat old dredge rotting on the banks of the Sask river by Frenchmans Butte from the big ol' dredging operation from long ago that's worth studying. Rough your pan up a little with fine sandpaper before you use it. Flour gold floats due to waters surface tension. Using liquid dish detergent in your dredge will increase your take four fold. Look at it under a scope and you'll see the float gold is very tiny platelets which gives it a lot of surface for its weight compared to if it was a ball.

I can get about an ounce a day if you average it over 5 days in spots on the river. 1 hour to map the dig out with a gold probe. 7 full hours no breaks included (9 hrs with breaks) of shovelling each day. Empty the dredge and flush the moss every 1 hour. Every time you stop the water or cause a burp in the flow you loose a large portion of the gold in your dredge. Be smooth. Don't waste you time shovelling everywhere. The pay deposit in most areas is usually about 2-3 feet wide and 10 to 50 feet long. 1 foot away there is basically nothing. Mapping it is the most important thing.

This is a great hobby not a way to reliably make money. You'll make a lot more with the same effort working construction. Plus if you're ****ed at your boss (in this case yourself) you can immediatly throw him in the river and go fishing for an hour. Top that.
You say you can get about an ounce a day. At about $1800 per ounce, you cant get that working construction. You must have been using a large sluice to get an once a day. One would think that at max you would get an once a month working a pan.
There has got to be a good spot some where on the NSR that all that flour gold originates from, but where? Could take a life time to find it or longer tho. I guess many of people have tried over the last 150 years.
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