Hello everyone. I am prospector Chris. Welcome to my PaystreakTV blog. I intend to post my PaystreakTV videos and blog about my experiences as I prospect for gold in Ohio.
Here are some pictures of the gold I prospected the last few times out with the dredge. I have to say that the Jobe 1.5 I bought is definitely getting me more gold. On the flip side of that. Mining is still a lot of work. Even with a suction nozzle. I am keeping the sand to gravel consistency a little better. As the result I have less hose clogs. I also fashioned a pebble extractor out of some clothes hanger for when the pebbles get stuck in my orifice. I used it quite a bit when we were out on the river and it works well. All I need now is the energy and the gumption to start getting out there early on the weekends and dredging the heck out of my spots. Ok so I am done rambling for now. Enjoy these two latest episodes of PaystreakTV and understand that you can not hold me responsible for the mediocre content within them.Thanks for looking, reading and watching.
Sunday morning I got a Youtube message from a prospector friend of mine wondering if I was going to hit the river. It was a nice day so I answered back that I was indeed going to hit it. Tim made the short drive north and we panned and dredged the shady bridge spot for a bit. We both managed to coax a few small flakes out of the unforgiving Ohio pay dirt and that's not an easy task so we will call it a success. Here is the video from that day. Hope you enjoy!
As you can see from my previous video blogging I broke down and bought a dredge kit. It is the Jobe 1.5 inch dredge with a 2.5 hp pump. I had to get the pump and dredge separate because the pumps were back ordered. Thank goodness for Ebay and thank goodness there were a few pumps floating around out there. The dredge came with all the hoses and fittings and even the suction nozzle.The whole outfit ran about 675 dollars shipping included on the pump but not the sluice. In the videos I am going to post today you get to see me trying to figure out how to run the dredge correctly.
I am pretty comfortable with getting the sluice part of it set right. I just watch to see what my material is doing and adjust the angle or pump flow accordingly. The tricky part is maintaining the right proportions of gravel sand and water when using the suction nozzle. If the slurry you are pumping up your hose gets to thick the rocks will clog you up. If it is to thin your not efficiently moving material so its kind of a double whammy. I decided to just deal with the clogs head on. I found that a short 1/2 inch piece of pvc pipe works well for nozzle clogs. Rocks work well for hose clogs. The hose is clear so you are actually able to see where the show stopper is. Take a rock and beat the clog to death. Header box clogs are dealt with by using the same pvc pipe and ramming it through the factory installed plug hole in the front. Unfortunately clogs are the problems you acquire when you give up digging and classifying so you just have to deal with it and try to watch the material you are running.
So what do you do when you loose suction and can't find a clog? When it happened to me I looked down inside my suction nozzle with the pump off and saw that a nickle sized rock was lodged in the vent hole where the high pressure water shoots out. I have been meaning to bring a coat hanger with me to get those but for now I have been using a stick with a hook end. That nickle sized rock issue also caused me problems one day when I was trying to prime the pump. In other words the pump wont prime with a pebble in the suction nozzles orifice
In a nutshell. If you can deal with the clogs dredging for gold is great fun. Here in Ohio it will take me about 200 years to pay for the dredge with gold so I admit that it may be a bit of overkill but around here it's more about the hunt than the haul and I like shiny toys. Enjoy the videos!
