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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2014 17:12:51 GMT -5
So i watched a little bit of it and a couple thoughts and questions came to my mind...
They seem to only be after the quick gold.. If they aren't getting gold in the first foot they abandon the spot. Why would they not try to go for the deep stuff? The bering sea is pretty stormy, those currents have to be pushing the big gold down.. It's not like they are only running a 4. I would think the deeper you go the better gold you would get. .. AnyOne else have thoughts on this?
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Post by uregold on Jan 6, 2014 17:30:44 GMT -5
I agree unless you hit some heavy clay,bedrock or something to stop the gold. Myself i would dig as far down as i could go im just not sure if ocean dredgeing is for me i think ill stick to my creeks.
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Post by RWH on Jan 6, 2014 20:20:44 GMT -5
I noticed that myself. I guess they just go for the easy stuff to cover more ground quicker. Ocean dredging and river dredging must be completely different animals. It also looked like they were all in the public areas.
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Post by shadow on Jan 6, 2014 20:37:59 GMT -5
My best guess would be that by the time they've gone down one foot and haven't hit anything is that unless there is some form of cobble or false bedrock they abandon it because of the amount of work/effort required to open up a hole and keep going down wouldn't be worth their time or the amount of gas required to keep the hole open with how much tide they have to deal with. All that sand will just keep washing in the hole and if they were to change divers 1/2 of what they dug would be buried again. Personally I agree, I'd keep going down; but if you look at all of the crews on that show they're mostly broke + lazy and after the quick easy gold to try and pay off debt as fast as they get into it, instead of going for the big stuff that they will actually have to work for.
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mark
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Post by mark on Jan 6, 2014 21:00:22 GMT -5
Important to note that they decide to move on without even looking in the box. They are looking for visible gold in the material that is being dredged. I can only imagine finding ground so rich that you can see it.
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Post by cabarrusgold on Jan 6, 2014 21:21:21 GMT -5
I think they work the cobbles and keep moving for easy gold in material they can work with. The Pomrankies have an excavator they use to dig deep and run in a trommel. I have noticed that the material is very thick like muck. But they are washing it before entering sluice too. Also, I have never seen any bigger gold other than what the others are finding. There is a ton of film that does not make it on the show. No telling what good footage editing is deleting. Got to keep all the drama or no good show. Ever wonder why they don't film Tony Beat's operation in the Klondike? He's killing it.
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Post by akaudiver on Feb 23, 2014 20:41:07 GMT -5
I would think the deeper you go the better gold you would get. .. AnyOne else have thoughts on this? Offshore Nome an extensive study has shown that 27% of the gold to bedrock is within the first meter from the surface (meaning the bottom of the water, start of the ground). The rest is fairly evenly spread out through the other 60 to 90 feet of the vertical column. There is usually a hard mud layer normally within the first foot or two, the gold is above this layer in the gravel. There are a few places where the gravel is thicker and goes deeper. These are the areas where the diggers operate, but the 3500 drill holes show these areas to be fairly rare. In Nome, it's mostly about how many square yards a dredger can cover, not how many cubic yards. Of course, even more important is to cover ground that has a grade of gold worth the time. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2014 1:14:21 GMT -5
I would think the deeper you go the better gold you would get. .. AnyOne else have thoughts on this? Offshore Nome an extensive study has shown that 27% of the gold to bedrock is within the first meter from the surface (meaning the bottom of the water, start of the ground). The rest is fairly evenly spread out through the other 60 to 90 feet of the vertical column. There is usually a hard mud layer normally within the first foot or two, the gold is above this layer in the gravel. There are a few places where the gravel is thicker and goes deeper. These are the areas where the diggers operate, but the 3500 drill holes show these areas to be fairly rare. In Nome, it's mostly about how many square yards a dredger can cover, not how many cubic yards. Of course, even more important is to cover ground that has a grade of gold worth the time. Right, I can understand that, it seems that alot only go after what they can visibly identify. According to the bigger operations they are going deeper than the 2 feet.. They are cleaning up pretty good. I can only talk about what I see on the show, which is geared towards the drama. Nice for you to chime in akaudiver |
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Post by akaudiver on Feb 24, 2014 14:04:26 GMT -5
For the most part, if they cannot visibly identify the gold, then it's not worth going after for two reasons 1st: the gold just won't add up to much; 2nd: the recovery equipment (sluice, etc) cannot capture it.
As you can see in my profile picture, the size distribution from one cleanup of my 8" dredge. The sliver at the bottom is 70 mesh minus (including 100- which alone is only 2% to 5% of the total weight of the cleanup). In the 4-o-clock position is the 50+ to 70- gold. In the 9-o-clock position is the 30+ to 50- gold. In the 1-o-clock is the 12+ to 30- gold. In the jar is the 12+ mesh gold, which accounts for 1% to 2% of the total weight.
This is using ribbed carpet covered with thick miners moss, covered with raised large expanded metal (about 3" wide, I don't recall the industry name), in a home built wood box (we use wood instead of aluminum because it dampens the vibrations of the engines and we don't care about weight).
Other than the results of the Bima study, I really shouldn't speak too much about the specifics, even though we are pretty well protected against competition on the 3000 acres of leases, some things are best left to people to learn first hand.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2014 14:57:59 GMT -5
Not sure if this is your operation, but I found it earlier this year. I believe last summer was their first run..  |
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Post by akaudiver on Feb 24, 2014 19:42:12 GMT -5
Not sure if this is your operation, but I found it earlier this year. I believe last summer was their first run.. No. That has never been to Nome. That is a pipe dream by some big talker who found a photo on the internet. I don't even see how it would work for gold mining. From what I gather, the actual crawler he is trying to build is based off a Bobcat skid-steer, and is supposed to be an 8". I do not know if he has any mining or engineering experience; my guess from seeing his plans is not enough of either. The crawler in that photo looks like at least a $35M operation, for 1/10th that I could build my design, including buying and configuring the mothership. I don't mean to sound so negative, just realistic. In the last 15 years, more money has been spent on gold mining off shore Nome than has been made from the gold found. Besides my operation, the only other subsurface crawler was by "GG" (name hidden to protect him from his investors). They tried for about 6 weeks to get their crawler to work. They started working on it 10 or 12 years ago; then built a $2M dual 10" submarine which failed and is now rusting away on the shore; then went back to this first design. But they used a buy-back crab boat, so when they needed repairs to the boat, they had to go to Dutch Harbor because Nome Harbor is not deep enough. |
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Post by akaudiver on Feb 24, 2014 19:59:53 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2014 20:10:54 GMT -5
Ya the only way I would goto nome, would be for the fishing  I got gold in my backyard here in NC, just not the quantities ya all got there. Besides I like my long warm summers. |
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Post by RWH on Feb 28, 2014 9:04:54 GMT -5
I'd go just for the experience. I had a chance 2 yrs ago to build a rig like the au grabber but my Cruz couldn't get his act together in time. It fizzled after that.
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Post by akaudiver on Feb 28, 2014 12:20:25 GMT -5
Here is what most new people coming to Nome don't realize, besides that whole gold is hard to find and get part, it costs a lot of money to run an operation.
For your amusement I will tell you that to figure gold revenues from an operation, take the clean dry raw gold weight and multiply it by gold price times 60% to account for lease share, melt loss, refinery fee, state tax, and state royalty; then subtract operating expenses such as fuel, insurance, crew, supplies, housing, transportation, food, moorage, etc, etc. What is left for most people is crushed dreams.
Even if they are one of the few operations that still have a positive number on the balance sheet after all that, the magnitude of that number will likely be very small. Then for fun, divide that net revenue number by the number of hours spent working on the operation (or use the opportunity cost method, divide my the number of hours wage earning hours you didn't do because of your operation) and the hourly result is typically very poor.
I do gold mining professionally, on what is consistently one of the top 7 gold dredges in Nome, and still only one year out of eight did I make more than I could have working previous jobs I've had.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2014 15:22:38 GMT -5
But the gold is so beautiful |
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