The Life of a Goldminer
Other People Are Reading
-
Initial Evaluation
-
Today, most gold mining is accomplished by small, one or two person operations. While gold mining itself is a relatively simple process, an understanding of geology, terrain and modern mining techniques is essential to success. Miners will evaluate an area by examining the physical area, reviewing the area's mining history if possible, and testing operation sites. Once the miner has completed his initial evaluation of a work site and finds that it has potential for high-grade deposits, the day-to-day work begins.
Gold Panning
-
The first step is panning. Panning is an effective way to collect gold from stream beds. Gold in the form of dust, flakes, and even nuggets is washed into streams and rivers by rain water. These will collect in areas known as 'placers,' which are bends in the waterway, under rocks and boulders, and within the roots of aquatic plants. The miner will shovel earth from these deposits, placing them in the gold pan. Swirling the pan in water, the miner will wash away and remove any material that is not valuable, leaving behind the gold. While it is possible to collect a fair amount gold in this manner, panning is primarily used for sampling to locate richer deposits where more productive mining processes can be applied.
-
Sluicing
-
Once a potentially rich deposit is located along a stream bed, the miner may begin sluicing that area. In sluicing, gold-bearing earth is shoveled into a trough-like box known as a sluice box. The box works very much like a gold pan, only on a larger scale. Shovels of earth are place in one end of the box where water is then run over it. The water will then wash the material over ridges in the sluice called riffles. As the water and gold-bearing material wash down the sluice box, the riffles will trap any gold, due to its weight. While manual sluice boxes are available, they are very labor intensive. Motorized sluice boxes have made sluicing much more efficient.
Dredging
-
A more powerful approach the miner may use is the suction dredge. A suction dredge is an underwater vacuum that sucks gravel, sand, silt, and gold through a hose. At the surface, the material then runs through a floating recovery system. This system has a generator that powers not only the sluicing portion of the recovery system, but also pumps air to breathing apparatus that the miner uses to work underwater. The miner will guide the vacuum hose along the stream bed, sucking up material from the bottom. The recovery system will then sluice the material, separating the gold and washing gravel and sand back into the stream.
Crevice and Vacuum Mining
-
Recently, miners have been adopting a new method of gathering gold called crevice and vacuum mining. In this technique the miner will move into the surrounding exposed bedrock near where gold has been located. Working into gold-trapping crevices, the miner will collect directly from them. To get to deeper and less accessible areas within the crevices, specialized vacuums are used. The vacuum hose is inserted and worked around in the crevice, drawing up all of the loose material and collecting it in the vacuum's reservoir. This can them be sluiced out later to reveal the gold.
Electronic Mining
-
The advent of metal detectors has made locating gold easier. Miners use metal detectors to prospect specific areas for deposits. While most metal detectors will not sound off on gold, newer ones that specifically detect gold are available and can locate nuggets, flakes, and even deposits of fine gold dust. The miner will work an area where gold is suspected, listening through headphones to the detector for an even low tone that identifies gold, rather than the high tone that iron or steel produces. The area can then be mined and processed for any gold available.
Selling the Gold
-
Eventually, the miner will sell his treasures. To sell gold quickly, any pawn shop will buy it for 50 percent of it's value or less. Not the best return on all that hard work, but if a miner needs money, it's certainly the fastest. Miners also sell to coin shops, precious metal dealers and refineries. These will assay the gold for purity, then pay around 90 percent of it's value. Another place to sell is directly to the consumer. They will buy gold, as is, for mineral collections or to use in jewelry. Nuggets may fetch even more than their spot value, due to their unique appearance. Vials of gold flakes, dust, and nuggets can be sold as souvenirs at swap meets, flea markets and jewelry shows.
Conclusion
-
It takes knowledge, preparation, the right equipment and a lot of hard work to be a gold miner. For those looking for a get-rich-quick solution, gold mining may not be the right choice. But, for those that enjoy hard physical labor, working outdoors, getting wet, and being challenged daily, mining for gold can provide rich rewards.
-
