Gold Rush: Alaska

Follows six men who, in the face of an economic meltdown, risk everything – their families, their dignity, and in some cases, their lives – to strike it rich mining for gold in the wilds of Alaska.

Inspired by his father Jack, Todd Hoffman of Sandy, Oregon, leads a group of greenhorn miners to forge a new frontier and save their families from dire straits.

While leasing a gold claim in Alaska, Todd and his company of newbies face the grandeur of Alaska as well as its hardships, including an impending winter that will halt operations and the opportunity to strike gold. In an effort to keep the operation running, the team takes fate into their own hands with a make or break venture that will change their lives forever.

After watching the steady decline of his aviation business in Oregon due to the stalled economy, Todd searched for new opportunities. With the price of gold on the rise, he came up with a plan to mine for the mineral in southeast Alaska, where there’s an estimated $250 billion worth of gold. The mystique of Alaska draws Todd to Porcupine Creek, the setting for GOLD RUSH: ALASKA, where his father Jack mined for three seasons in the 1980s before he nearly went bankrupt.

Todd and Jack look to their community in Oregon for a team of men to work the mines alongside them, knowing dire economic straits have hit those around them hardest. They have no financial means to pay them until – or unless – they find gold. It’s a risk, but with high unemployment in Oregon, there’s no shortage of interest. The assembled team includes: rookie Jimmy Dorsey, mechanical genius James Harness, foreman Greg Remsburg, and safety officer Jim Thurber.

The mine at Porcupine Creek is located in the heart of one of the last great wildernesses, where weather conditions can change in an instant. The claim is surrounded by the largest bald eagle population on earth, and a nearby river is the site of a year-round salmon run. Grizzly bears and moose sightings happen daily, and the team must be prepared for some seriously close encounters.

Armed with the hope and ferocity to rekindle the original American Dream, GOLD RUSH: ALASKA shines a spotlight on this group of enthusiasts. In essence, these are the new “’49ers,” going back to the roots this country was founded on: hard labor, blood, sweat and tears. The men risk everything in the biggest gamble of their lives, and the hunt is on to strike it rich – or in some cases, go bust.

After watching the steady decline of his aviation business in Oregon due to the stalled economy, Todd searched for new opportunities. With the price of gold on the rise, he came up with a plan to mine for the mineral in southeast Alaska, where there’s an estimated $250 billion worth of gold.1 The mystique of Alaska draws Todd to Porcupine Creek, the setting for GOLD RUSH: ALASKA, where his father Jack mined for three seasons in the 1980s before he nearly went bankrupt.

Todd and Jack look to their community in Oregon for a team of men to work the mines alongside them, knowing dire economic straits have hit those around them hardest. They have no financial means to pay them until – or unless – they find gold. It’s a risk, but with high unemployment in Oregon, there’s no shortage of interest. The assembled team includes: rookie Jimmy Dorsey, mechanical genius James Harness, foreman Greg Remsburg, and safety officer Jim Thurber.

The mine at Porcupine Creek is located in the heart of one of the last great wildernesses, where weather conditions can change in an instant. The claim is surrounded by the largest bald eagle population on earth, and a nearby river is the site of a year-round salmon run. Grizzly bears and moose sightings happen daily, and the team must be prepared for some seriously close encounters. Armed with the hope and ferocity to rekindle the original American Dream, GOLD RUSH: ALASKA shines a spotlight on this group of enthusiasts.

In essence, these are the new “’49ers,” going back to the roots this country was founded on: hard labor, blood, sweat and tears. The men risk everything in the biggest gamble of their lives, and the hunt is on to strike it rich – or in some cases, go bust.

Gold Panning Equipment

Panning for gold is simple, fun, and often VERY rewarding.  It’s also the least expensive method for extracting gold from the Earth.

All you really need to get started is a gold pan, which you can get for around twelve bucks!

Traditionally gold pans were shallow sheet-iron vessel with sloping sides and flat bottom. But modern gold pans are lighter, feature cheater riffles to help catch the gold, and are colored to help make it easier to spot pay dirt.

While you could get by with just the pan, there are also a bunch of gold panning accessories that will help make your life easier while maximize the amount of gold you take home.

If you’re new to prospecting I would recommend buying a Gold Panning Kit like the one offered by Black Cat Mining. It’s got everything you need to get started and an instruction book on how to use all the strange little devices that are included.

If you’re serious about becoming a prospector you should look at the most modern gold panning equipment, because even a FEW extra grains of gold every day will quickly make up the cost of the best equipment.

Other Stuff  You Might Need

Gold panning equipment is made from basic materials and the tools are almost unchanged, but you still need to think about the basics before you rush into gold country.

First, if you’re going out anytime except the middle of summer you’re probably going to want some hip waders, or at the very least  a pair of rubber boots like the ones  pictured to the right.

But remember if you are hiking any distance, more than maybe a half a mile, you will want to wear hiking boots and put your rubber boots or waders on at the river.

You also need a shovel and a plastic bucket. You can use a shovel you already own or buy one at any place that sells shovels, but, remember, a regular shovel can be a hassle to carry if you’re hiking any distance to where you are panning.

The packable shovel like the one on the left is a good choice, because it has a steel handle and it folds up small enough to fit into a pack.

Whatever else advice you take from this page, it is wise to use a shovel with either a fiberglass or steel handle, because it is extremely frustrating to break the handle of your shovel – like mind numbing primal rage sort of frustrating when you planned a panning trip for months, hiked five miles into the spot you wanted, and broke your shovel handle in five minutes.

Also if you are going to hike in your gear you need a good backpack, but you really want to look for a pack with a large main pocket, so you can fit in your pan, shovel, and other gear.

This Canadian Army model (pictured right)  is a prime example of a great military surplus model that you can pick up pretty cheap at a good Army Surplus store.

Uncle Sam’s Army-Navy Outfitters is a great source for cheap, well built camping equipment perfect for gold mining.  Remember, you need good well built gear.

You’re also gonna want to find some good places to pan near you.  There’s nothing worse than spending a whole day panning a spot then have some old timer tell you there’s no gold there.

Black Cat Mining carries a good selection of books about the basics and some pretty good guidebooks that explain where the best spots for prospecting are in your area. You can get them HERE.

Gold Panning Primer

All you’re doing when you are panning is washing the dirt off the gold. That’s it. The process is very simple:

Gold Panning Instructions

• Shovel some river sand into your pan until the pan is a little less than ¾ full. If you fill it anymore than that you risk accidentally washing away pay dirt.
• Remove the larger rocks and debris making sure that you do not accidentally throw away a GOLD nugget.
• Place the pan underwater and let the contents get totally saturated. Much of the lightest material will float away right then and that is exactly what you want. If there are still any larger lumps of clay you should break them up with your hands.
• Keep the pan underwater during this process. Greenhorns get worried about the material floating away, but remember the gold will not float away.
• With the pan still underwater, vigorously begin sloshing the pan left to right. This forces the heavier material, gold if you are in the right spot, to the bottom of the pan and the lighter material up. Stop periodically and sweep the heavier material away with your fingers and repeat until this procedure until you reach the bottom of the pan.
• It may take five or six times until you are left with a mass of black sand that hopefully is speckled with gold flakes. You can pick the flakes out right then or simply pour everything into a separate container for processing later, because picking out the gold flakes is a time consuming task that is often easier to do on a kitchen table in perfect light with a beer than squatting on a river bank.

see that

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Gold Prospecting

What is gold prospecting? The official answer from Gold Prospectors Association of America is that prospecting consists of panning, hand-fed sluices, high-bankers and dredges with up to a 4-inch intake. But regardless of how you define it... chunky nuggets, gleaming flakes in a sparkling stream... modern-day gold prospectors find the shiny stuff in many forms! And no matter the size or type, having the right equipment makes gold recovery easier, more profitable, and lots more fun!

Tried and true prospectors are constantly inventing innovative ways to better recover gold, and luckily, the new equipment they introduce makes finding gold much easier than during the old Gold Rush days! Gold prices have TRIPLED in the last 10 years and long-term gold price trends still point up, so there's never been a better time to find your own gold! And the best part is that you can find and recover gold in numerous ways— with a variety of affordable gold prospecting equipment found on this website that will meet your needs and your budget.

Remember that federal, state or local guidelines and regulations may differ from location to location, so be aware of the rules before you prospect anywhere. There's still plenty of gold to be found, so get out there and get your share! FREE shipping on any order of $350 or more and NO SALES TAX!

Gold dredge

A gold dredge is a placer mining machine that extracts gold from sand, gravel, and dirt using water and mechanical methods.

The original gold dredges were large, multi-story machines built in the first half of the 1900s.

Small suction machines are currently marketed as "gold dredges" to individuals who want to try their luck: just offshore from the beach of Nome, Alaska, for instance.

A large gold dredge uses a mechanical method to dig up material (sand, gravel, dirt, etc.) using steel "buckets" on a circular, continuous, steel "bucketline" at the front end of the dredge. The material is then sorted/sifted, using water. On large gold dredges, the buckets dump the material into a steel rotating cylinder (a specific type of trommel called "the screen") that is sloped downward toward a rubber belt (the stacker) that carries away oversize material (rocks) and dumps the rocks behind the dredge. The cylinder has many holes drilled into it to allow undersized material (including gold) to fall into a sluice box. The material that is washed or sorted away is called tailings. The rocks deposited behind the dredge (by the stacker) are called "tailing piles." The holes drilled in the screen were intended to screen out rocks (e.g., 3/4 inch holes in the screen sent anything larger than 3/4 inch to the stacker).

The basic concept of retrieving gold via placer mining has not changed since the beginning of the gold rush. The concept is that the gold in sand or soil will settle to the bottom because gold is heavy/dense, and dirt, sand, rock, etc. will wash away, leaving the gold behind. The original methods to perform placer mining involved gold panning, sluice boxes, and rockers. Each method involves washing sand, gravel, dirt, etc. in water. Gold then settles to the bottom of the pan, or into the bottom of the riffles of the sluice box. The gold dredge is the same concept but on a much larger scale.

[edit]History

Gold Dredge operating in Nome, Alaska in 1993

By the mid to late 1850s the easily accessible gold in California was gone, but there was still a lot of gold to be mined. The challenge of retrieving the gold took a more professional mining industry approach to make it pay: giant machines and giant companies. Massive floating dredges scooped up millions of tons of river gravels, as steam power and electrical power became available in the early 1900s. Many of these large monsters still exist today in state sponsored heritage areas (Sumpter Valley Gold Dredge) or tourist attractions.

[edit]Today

In the late 1990s and through today, dredging has resurfaced as a popular form of gold mining. Advances in technology allow a small dredge to be carried by a single person to a remote location and profitably process gravel banks on streams that previously were inaccessible by the multi-story hundreds-of-feet-long dredges of the 1930s.^[1] Today dredges are versatile and popular consisting of both floating surface dredges that use a vacuum to suck up gravel from the botton and submersible dredges.^[2]

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How To Identify Real Gold

here is some tips to identifier the really gold from fake one
Gold is an element and a precious mineral. Pyrite, or fools gold, is a compound of both iron and sulfur. Gold has the chemical symbol of Au on the periodic table of elements. It is heavier and softer than many other metals. Gold does not corrode or easily react with other elements. Other materials which are similar in color to gold are brass and pyrite. Pyrite is a sulfide of iron and has the chemical formula of FeS2, it is a brittle solid while gold is soft. Fools gold will break under pressure where gold will actually bend. Gold nuggets will also flatten. Real gold is so soft that it can actually be indented by applying pressure to it with a thumbnail. For field testing prospectors has some simple methods on determining if gold was real. Remember that gold is extremely malleable unlike pyrite or fools gold. If they could [...]

gols paning machine

hi every one am here to explaine you what is that:

redges today are more technologically advanced then ever. Since the early 1900s crudely built, steam powered dredges were used in California along rivers. Divers had to use heavy equipment and suits to use this large equipment.

Back in the time of the gold rush gold dredge technology was not utilized and people were forced to pan for gold. As time went on it was discovered that much more gold was in the deeper gravel of riverbeds than the surface gravel of the banks. Today, we have advanced in our technology to where we can now use smaller tools which are easily transported and can get us into places where were not able to be prospected before. This is exciting, since there is still a lot of gold out there to find.

An exciting prospect of today’s dredging equipment is that they are far more efficient than the machines of old. Now people are known to make profitable trips in old mining areas.

There are a few different types of dredges. The most popular of these being the surface dredge.

The Surface Dredge

This type of dredge floats on the surface of the river or stream which you are looking for gold. The silt and other material from the floor is pumped to the surface through a suction hose into a sluice box. The sluice box recovers extremely fine particles of gold. A great advantage of this method is that no diving equipment is needed.

The sluice box is usually rested on a bank or floated on the surface of the water itself.

Today’s sluice boxes now come with multi-stage systems, the most advanced of which are the 3 stage sluices. These are needed because they recover finer grade gold from the material pumped with the dredge.

Most surface dredges today come with a single sluice for the added benefit of being lightweight and compact.

Underwater Dredge

This type of dredge is not as efficient recovering find fold as the surface dredge is, and is therefore less popular. It is cumbersome and hard to handle underwater. It also can not reach the hard to get areas on a riverbank as the surface dredge is. It also has to be completely submerged to work, which is less practical since it can not be used in shallow water. This type of dredge is usually used to find a spot for gold, a surface dredge is then used to efficiently recover the gold.

Gold Trommels and Trommel Mining

A trommel is basically a rotating cylinder or drum used to screen and wash material. Aggregate, stream gravels, etc are fed in at one end. The drum is angled, so the feed end is upslope, and as the drum rotates the material moves down the cylinder. A spray bar runs start to finish to wash the material and the walls of the drum are made of mesh. Larger trommels will often run several screen sizes. In mining each screen usually feeds to a sluice box or other recovery equipment to retain the gold and other valuables. The water from the washing action also runs the sluice for primary recovery.

The finest screen is usually at the top of the trommel drum, with sizes increasing towards the tailings end. Anything too large to fit through the largest screen is dumped in the tailings pile, or on larger trommels, carried away by a conveyor belt to a remote pile. The inside of the drums often have projections which serve to agitate the materials as it turns and washes.

Think of trommels as powered classification and recovery all rolled into one.

Sizes range from portable, easily carried, one-man trommels, to trailer mounted units easily towed by a quad, or still larger pickup towable units, to semi-trailer trommels to units assembled and fixed in place, with massive grizzly decks, conveyor feeders and sluices for every size of screened material, from nugget traps to fine gold separators.

Here are some new and used trommels for sale. Trommel plans also come up from time to time: 

DIY Gold Prospecting & Mining Equipment Plans

First off, many thanks to carpetjohn over at the GPAA forums for compiling much of this list! I've added a few of my own bookmarks and added some descriptions where needed, but he posted a great list over there before I even started putting mine together over here.

Also check out these great books of DIY prospecting equipment plans:

Equipment Plans - Volume I
Equipment Plans - Volume II

Also be sure to check out the projects section for project pics, etc.

Shaker Tables

Shaker tables do a great job of cleaning classified concentrates.

• The British Geolocical Survey designed this hand-powered shaker table. This is definitely on my must build list.

Rocker Boxes

Rocker boxes are cheap and easy to build, cheap and easy to operate and good at getting gold. They're also a lot quieter than dredges, highbankers and other power equipment.

• Rocker Box - PDF file of rocker box plans hosted at the GPAA site.
• River Rocker - Another PDF, but of a totally different style of rocker.

Gravity Dredge

The gravity dredge is basically a suction dredge with no motor, no pump, no moving parts, etc. They rely on gravity to build a head of suction. They aren't all that portable, but they're quiet, relatively inexpensive and they work really well.

• Gravity Dredge - plans, schematics and tons of information for more advanced/semi-permanent operations.
• Gravity Dredging for Placer Gold has an explanation on keep-it-simple (and quite a bit more portable) gravity dredging. This is the way it was first explained to me.
• Simple Simon is another take on building a gravity dredge, this one with bucket header box and sluice.

Sluice Boxes

• This Wet Willie sluice combo unit is one of the slicker pieces I've seen in a while. Not sure why, but I really like the simplicity of it.
• Several sluice box designs from lightweight to folding to wooden.
• Two more sluice projects described and with pictures.
• A poop tube (Henry Henry) and a wooden sluice can be found here.

Hand Dredges/Suckers

• Several sucker plans can be found at miningold.com, as well as a pretty nice tip diagram.
• Simple looking sucker
• Floating sucker classifier attachment thingy with multiple screen sizes, etc. Yep, it's a mouthful...

Highbankers

• If anyone builds one of these mini highbankers, please drop me an email with comments and pics. I'm curious it works. With the minimal flow discussed, I wonder if it'd work with one of those drill powered pumps I mention on the small pumps page.
• Here are some plans for a larger "highbanker/sluice" for those looking to move a little more material.

Vac Pacs

Classifiers

More DIY Equipment Sites

Misc Prospecting Equipment

hello word

Gold Pans

A lot of the larger metal detector dealers in the UK stock the Garrett gold pans and panning kits which are excellent value for money (the kit in particular, as it includes a book, a suction bottle and several pans etc. and should be available for a little less than £30) most of the larger dealers also sell via mail order, so you can buy over the phone, or in some cases, via the net.

Dredges and Sluices

Dredges and Sluices are a necessity if you want to maximise your gold finds, you will be able to process so much more material that you will find a lot more gold. Sadly, in most places in the UK their use is prohibited due to the potential environmental impact washing large amounts of dirt and material into a stream or river system can have.

Gold Prospecting Abroad

In other countries, where there is a greater potential for running a small mining operation profitably, the attitudes toward using heavier duty prospecting equipment will be very different.
Serious prospectors tend to only use gold pans to find locations worthy of bringing in the heavier equipment, panning is a method of sampling rather than a commercially viable means of gold recovery. That is not to say that you can't find significant amounts of gold through panning alone, prospectors in America and Canada certainly do, but to increase the amount of gold you can recover you need to increase the amount of material, 'Pay Dirt,'  you can process, and that is where dredges, sluices and even rock crushers come into play.
If you are new to gold prospecting and perhaps aren't very familiar with dredges and sluices, pay a visit to the Keene Engineering web site[1]. Keene (based in California, USA) have been producing gold prospecting equipment for 50 years or more and on their web site you will be able to view images of a wide variety of prospecting equipment, ranging from gold pans costing less than $10 to dredge systems costing more than $10,000.
[1] N.B. Sadly, I don't receive kick backs or bribes from Keene Engineering for recommending their web site, but it is probably the best place on the web for viewing a complete range of prospecting equipment.