Internet Paydirt

I have seen on some of the gold forums about people buying paydirt and some others try to… dissuade them from buying it. I do buy off ebay every once in a while so I figure I would write something up about why I do it.

You know it cost money to get to gold bearing areas if you don’t live in the middle of a gold belt. Since I am still fairly new to gold prospecting, it is still fresh in my mind of how much money I have spent on different equipment to include camping gear, hiking gear, sluices, pans, snuffer bottles and so forth. I think right now I am at a point where I will only buy one more thing, Waders or high water boots. Then you got to figure in travel cost and Vehicle maintenance. Oh, and you have to eat. If your going to a Pay to Play place.. there’s that fee too. It all adds up. For me, Coker Creek in lower Tennessee is about a 4 hour drive and then I would have to be a GPAA Member before going to hunt. That’s another cost. The Marion, NC trip was about 2 hours but and a small fee to Camp and Pan or sluice or Dredge. There is always some kind of cost associated with trips to go prospecting. Even if your riding along and it’s free, then it cost time.  Enter the internet.

Today I sniped off some cheap paydirt off ebay. The shipping is costing me more than the auction. In total for 2 pounds of paydirt, it is costing me under $8. When it gets here, I can process it at my leisure, when I have time. The weekend trip to Rock Creek Recreation Area, where I found no sign of gold cost me way more than that. It made up for it in Family time though. If I was going to a gold bearing creek though, there would not be much family time as I would be working as much as I can. I do realize the sellers of paydirt are in it for a profit. Not a big deal to me. I usually try for ones that are unsearched or right out of the sluice. I want the unknown and I am trusting that they are honest about not searching the dirt and not salting it. I got dirt from someone and in the end I had 3 flakes. It cost me more money than what the gold was worth but I am ok with it. What I saw in the dirt pretty well convinced me it was right out of a sluice. Even in the field, you don’t hit the motherload every time.

Now I am not saying go buy those $300 for 1 pound concentrate bags. For that cost, me and my gear will go to the field. If you think it is worth it then by all means get it. I just won’t do it. I am just wanting something to entertain me at home and keep up panning skills or test my equipment. If I get the urge to buy, I hit ebay and search “gold paydirt”. I set the order to time ending soon and look for a price I am willing to pay. I think about how much max I will bid then wait till the 2 minute mark to start bidding. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose. It’s a gamble, like gold prospecting. If you’re just in it for the Gold and not the thrill of the hunt, do yourself a favor and buy your gold outright.

I am in for the thrill of seeing that bit of flake being uncovered from the black sand. If I cannot got out to test some creek or on a long dry spell, I will order what I can as cheap as I can just to hunt that damn yellow metal.

And about that 2 pounds of paydirt I won, I am going to try to video running it through the Bucket sluice concentrator. I wont know if there is gold and you will see what I see. Hope there is some and the camera picks it up in the drop riffle.

Rock Creek Camping

Did a little tent camping this weekend with the Family. Rock Creek Recreation Area, Cherokee National Forest, Unicoi County, Tn. Didn't find any gold but still had fun. Captured some things on the Cell Phone so made this little movie.

How to cook on the trail?

I am going to need to eat if I am out on overnights. I do have plenty of  Cliff Bars and Granola Bars but thats is not what I would call real food. I remembered a guy while I was in the Army making a Hobo Stove out of a large can.

I shared the idea on the Coker Creek GPAA Forum. Another member mentioned a "penny stove". I never heard of that before so I went and looked one up. Basically it is the bottoms of 2 soda cans placed inside of one another and one side has holes in it looking like a gas stove. I am running mine off of some "Heet" that comes in a yellow bottle. You find it in Automotive sections because it is a Gas Line Anti-Freeze. The "Penny" come in where you throw a penny in the center to cover your filler holes.

Compact and light weight. I do not have a video of me testing it but I am sure you can find one lit up on Youtube. It does work and puts out a good amount of heat to cook on.

I also kept checking the Canteen Shop to see if they had their grill top stove stand back in stock. I was in luck and they did. I immediately ordered mine. This will fit right under my canteen cup for storage in the pouch. I consider it a little on the expensive side for what it is but since it is stainless steel instead of aluminum and the design over the G.I. issued style, worth it. You can start a small fire under it with twigs and other stuff or use a penny stove.

http://www.canteenshop.com/id82.html  Scroll down and you will see it.

The Stove came in today. That was fast shipping on the Canteen Shops part. Here is a little video of me testing out the Grill Top Stove. Yes, my other grill is dirty but all the better to test on it before cleaning. I just went around the yard collecting twigs to burn. It got the water pretty hot to where I could not put my finger in it without burning.

I just noticed the quality is down when uploading videos to Blogger. I can see the bubbles in the water on my Phone. Oh well, it works to heat up water very nicely.

I will edit later and add a video of it being used with the penny stove burner. That I really want to test.

There are plenty of recipes on the internet for canteen cup cooking so I think I am set on being able to prepare foods on the trail.

Processing Cons at home

I don't know if I will be carrying much concentrate home with me on Backpacking trips. That adds weight to a pack. In case I do, I do have a nice piece of equipment to help process it right on the front porch. It is the Concentrator by the California Sluice Box Company. Here is a link to the Concentrators page. http://www.casluicebox.com/CONCENTRATOR.html

It cost right at $35 with shipping included in that price. You can run it right on a water hose or if you want to save water, you can easily make a recirculating system. It is made from a good ABS plastic and uses a drop riffle system.

I used it the first time with a known amount of gold flakes. I had ordered Alaskan paydirt off ebay and panned it before receiving the concentrator. I saved all the dirt and then counted out 18 flakes of gold. Since the concentrator runs into a bucket, I was not worried about losing flakes. If it missed and blew out, I would just pan the bucket.

So, all set up and threw the flakes into the dirt then I mixed it up very wet. Set up the concentrator like shown in the videos on the Cal. Sluice Box page and started spooning in the mix. This went fairly quickly too. Did a clean out when all the dirt was gone. Cleaned out into my pan. Normal panning but did not use jetdry on this. I recovered all 18 flakes! Actually, I could see most of the flakes while running the concentrator and none were past the 5th drop riffle. Yea, this thing works.

This is my goto tool if I have to carry buckets home from normal car trips and I will use it to concentrate down anything from a sluice. For $35, I don't see where you can go wrong in buying this.

I like it so much that I also ordered a Jr. Sluice Box from them to put in my pack to save weight over my Aluminum 2 foot sluice. The Jr. Sluice Box cost with shipping a whopping total of $30. Yup, low cost and light weight. I cant wait to get this out into the field to test it for myself. Reviews of it that I have seen show it to be another good product to have in your prospecting arsenal.

Edit: Adding a short video I took while I was double checking some paydirt I panned out. Just a little demo of how the concentrator works.

http://youtu.be/_Bp8DotI7nM

Army Surplus Score

I decided to go down to the local Military Surplus Store to find a Canteen and Canteen Cup. My Wife started pointing out things here and there that I have seen and used before... eh... it's new to her. She did point out something that I was not expecting to find at that price. A used full pack with frame. Just like what I had in the Army. I checked it out and it was in good shape and priced at only $40! She said if I wanted it to get it.. get it...so I did.

Then I got back on track to the Canteens and got one with cover and then a cup. I was asking about a full L.B.E. but just decided to get the belt only.

As you can see, my original pack was small and tight on space. The photo is the configuration I would use on my back. There is a 2 man tent in there too. No bed mat though. That was going to be everything for overnight prospecting. Just a hiking pack from Walmart. I would have made it work but if I needed any more room for like a plastic stream sluice, I would be S.O.L. With the Alice pack, plenty of room for anything additional including a 2' Aluminum Sluice if I want. With the frame, it will make it more comfortable even with added weight. In my Army days we had up around 60 pounds on us. My small pack weighs in just above 17 pounds loaded right now. So the new pack will be plenty.

So here is a photo of the score. I got all this for just above $60 which I think is a good deal.

All I need now is the Canteen Cup Stove to go with it. The Canteen Shop (online) is out of stock on their great model right now. Patience and I will get one.

After I get my full load into this pack, I will show off all my goodies in it. I have to play with packing up and where I want to put things first. Still have some items I ordered online coming in too. I think this is going to get real fun with all that room. Just got to remember not to carry stuff I don't need.

The start of a Journey

Welcome to my little blogging page. Here I am going to try to keep up with some of my Hiking and Camping adventures as well as some of my gold prospecting attempts. I am not much of a blogger as I have tried before but I will give it another shot. I guess this is where I will get into a little background info.

Gold from Alaskan paydirt off ebay

My name is Brian and I live up in the corner of Northeast Tennessee in the Tri-Cities area. I have recently gotten into gold prospecting as a hobby. I joined the Coker Creek GPAA Forum since it is the closest gold group to me. There are some good people in there with much knowledge. I have not joined the GPAA though because it would be a 4 hour drive one way to get to the Coker Creek Claim. As a College Student (at this time) and family man, I just can't justify it yet. I have joined in on their April 2013 Group Outing below Marion, NC to private property they secured. Had a good time on that Friday as the weather was nice. The next day though we packed up because the rain settled in. Only got a speck of gold but was fun and very informational as to what to bring on a tent camping trip. We brought way too much stuff. I might get back to this trip later on in another post. Click here for the Coker Creek Forum

Now, Northeast Tennessee is not known as a gold area. So I may be spinning my wheels locally. I have done much searching on the internet and have found rumors of gold in the local areas. I am in contact with another local hobby prospector who also has heard of rumors of gold. We now have a shared goal of chasing down these rumors and even looking into places that just look promising. Gold is where you find it. We want to prove there is gold here even if it is just small amounts.The thrill of the hunt! Even if there is no gold, it gets me outside and away from being held up in the house.

The Marion trip got me thinking about doing more primitive camping and I started thinking about packing into areas where there is nothing but woods. There is close access to the Appalachian Trail with plenty of creek branches around. This is not something I can do with the Family because of my Daughters age so I talked with my Wife. She gave the ok for me to go out without them. Some places I want to test have Cherokee National Forest campgrounds and those are where my family will join me. 

I am marking spots in Google Earth now. I have a hiking gps program for the phone. If that fails, I will have my compass and resort back to land nav skills that I learned in the Army. I have pans, sluices, backpacks, tents and motivation. My excursions will be mostly around N.E. Tennessee and possibly into North Carolina. There may be lots of time lapse between post due to not a lot of time for trips. Thats how life is though. Let the journey begin!