DESERDOG'S
ORIGINAL GOLD SUCKER HAND DREDGE

    I hate when work interferes with gold prospecting!! I thought I was going to be able to do a little gold prospecting yesterday, but NO!! By the time I got a couple of 2 inch super gold suckers packed, mailed off, and went to get material for more hand dredges, there was no time left!

    I had just wanted to do a little sluicing in Cajon Creek. I had planned to feed the sluice with my 3 inch super gold sucker, and then again try my new gold pan, the gold grabber. BUT NO!!!! I was running around the High Desert mailing things and buying materials for more hand dredges

    Well, maybe this weekend I can get in a little gold prospecting!

  Anyone interested in a hand dredge challenge? If you are , let me know.  You bring your hand dredge, be it a  Gold-n-Sand, or one of the copy cats like SMB_PROSPECTING HAND DREDGE or  SM_PROSPECTING HAND DREDGE; or a Keene; or one from Jobe or any other hand dredge; and I will bring mine. The point of the challenge will be to determine which hand dredge can move the most material.

   I won a gold grabber gold pan at our prospectors meeting this last Thursday, 05-20. So I decided to give it a test today, Sunday, 05-23.

   I took it to Cajon Creek and ran 3 pans of gravel. The gold grabber gold pan is a large pan, and it holds a lot of material. It did not come with any instructions, and since it sorta looks like a la trap pan, I used it in a similar manner. And I must say that it performed well.

   I filled the pan up with my 2 inch super gold sucker hand dredge. The gold grabber gold pan is large enough that a standard classifier will fit in it, so I put the 1/2 inch classifier in the pan, and dumped material from my 2 inch super gold sucker hand dredge into the classifier.

  I used the gold grabber gold pan in a similar manner as you would a la trap pan. I shook the pan vigorously side to side, underwater. Then the washed out material by drawing the pan in and out of the water, increasing  the angle as the material was reduced in volume.

   Then I used the back part of the pan to back wash the black sand, and ended up finding a tiny amount of fine gold. A little in each pan.

   I like the way the pan works, it seems much more sturdy than a la trap. And with the finely textured surface, it can be used to back wash very easily. Even tiny pieces of gold stay put on the surface of the pan.

Here is a little gold I recoverd from Cajon Creek. I was sluicing, using my 3 inch super gold sucker to suck up the material, and feed it directly into the sluice. You can see some of the gold has mercury on it.

In marketing language, a gimmick is a quirky feature that distinguishes a product or service without adding any obvious function or value.

If you take a look at hand dredges, gimmicks abound in some! Take the PSP gold sucker hand dredge on Ebay for example. This device reeks of gimmicks. The first that comes to mind is the check valve. If you can chew gum and walk at the same time, a check valve is just a hindrance.

First you have to empty the barrel of the PSP gold sucker hand dredge  by pulling the handle all the way out. This makes the device less functional, not more.

Second, if you use a check valve, off the shelf or made in house, you will get jams and have to clear them. This makes the PSP gold sucker hand dredge less functional, not more.The maker of the PSP gold sucker hand dredge says in his spiel about his top of the line product that check valves are a negative, but suddenly they are a good thing? No!  All the above apply to bucket hand dredges also.

Third, the PSP gold sucker hand dredge uses another check valve and a "filtered inlet port" to direct water on the down stroke through the handle. How long do you think it will take for the "filtered inlet port" to get clogged? You are not moving sand and gravel in an aquarium like the maker of the PSP gold sucker hand dredge shows you, but moving real world material, full of clay, organics and all sorts of stuff that will quickly clog the inlet port. This makes the PSP gold sucker hand dredge less functional, not more.

All of the things talked about above make the PSP gold sucker hand dredge a less functional device than an original gold sucker.

Gimmicks abound in the prospecting gear, just look at all the new pans that have come out recently. But as time goes by, some of the new gimmicky pans seem to fade away.

If an added feature does not make a device easier to use or let you process more material in a given time, then it is just a gimmick, like all of the supposed advanced features of the PSP gold sucker hand dredge.

Another hand dredge full of gimmicks is the FM2 gold suckerhand dredge. The theory behind this device is that an internal classifier screen in the collection chamber will classify the material you suck up and then you can process more material. But this is just not true. To put it into the real world, imagine you are classifying material with a normal size classifier, and another prospector next to you is classifing his material with a classifier that will fit into a coffee cup. Which prospector is going to process more material? Given the same material, the gold prospector using the normal size classifier is going to classify and process much more material. Now take the coffee cup classifier and put it inside of a hand dredge.

I went out sluicing a little today on Cajon Creek in Cajon Pass. I used my 3 inch super gold sucker and my fine gold sluice. There were a few other gold prospectors out today. .

I was just there about an hour and a half, and did not move alot of material. But I did get a nice little show of gold.

I showed a prosepctor I will call Jeff how the Le Trap pan can be used to quickly make your concnetrate into a super concentrate. And , suprisingly, no one had ever showed him how to pull out the gold quickly form your concentrates whwen you are in the final stages. Swirl and tap, I thought every one kew this! I was watching Jeff as he was looking at the cons after panning down, and he said he didn't see much gold. So I asked If I could see it, and swirled it and then tapped it and there was a nice little show of gold in the pan. He said no one had ever shown him!

A gold prospector sent me an email of his prospecting efforts of 03-07-2010. He just bought another original gold sucker to have a back up. He gave me permission to share his email and the pictures he sent me. Here is the first email he sent me.

"Hi Ray, I love these things so much that I had to get another one for a back up. By the way, I went to my claim today and after chopping out a hole in the ice, I retrieved 5.1 grams of gold (1 nugget being penny weight) with the help of your suction dredge. I am 5ft 9inch in height, if that helps for making one. Cheers"

Here is the second email and some pictures; "Ray, Glad to see you got my email. I took some photos of yesterday's prospecting and thought I'd share them with you. The two larger nuggets were taken with a shovel then panned but the pickers and fines were done with your sucker tube. I look forward to having a "back-up." Much of my prospecting day begins and ends sniping the crevices with this handy device. Many thanks for a wonderful product! Cheers - Randy"

Nice warm day of gold prospecting!

5.1 grams of the good stuff!!

Nice!!

That's some nice gold! You do not need a fancy bucket hand dredge with check valves like the gold-n-sand, or the SM_Prospecting Hand Dredge, or SMB_Prospecting Hand Dredge, or the PSP_prospecting hand dredge with check valves and filtered inlet ports to find good gold, just a simple tool to remove the material from the crevices, like the original gold sucker.

   When I go out gold prospecting, be it panning or sluicing, my basic stategy is to move as much material as possible while I am at the creek.

   The first thing I will do when I arrive at the crrek is to sample to find a spot that holds enough gold to justify moving larger amounts. When I find the spot, then I set up my sluices, or just start panning.

  If I am panning, I use a la trap pan as it is much faster and easier to use than any round pan that I have ever used.

   If I am sluicing, I will either use a la trap sluice, or a conventional sluice.

   If the material to be processed is above the water line, I just use a shovel. If the material is below the water line, I use either my 2 inch super gold sucker or my 3 inch super gold sucker. Either of these work much better than trying to use a shovel underwater. If you are using a shovel underwater, you lose a lot of your heavies when you lift the shovel out of the water.

   When I am using my la trap pan, I will work it down to black sand and then just dump it in a bucket until I am ready to do a clean-up before I take off. If I am sluicing, I try to run at least a 100 shovels or 100 suction strokes from my 2 inch super gold sucker or 3 inch super gold sucker. Most gold prospectors clean-up way too often.

   When I am cleaning up, I will first use my la trap pan to et rid of most of the blond sand. Then I will use a magnet in a pipe to get rid of the magnetic black sand. I stir the magnet in the water above the black sand, making the black sand jump up to the magnet. And I save the black san collected by the magent as a small amount of gold always gets trapped.

   Then I will further pan the remaining black sand, usually in a round pan. And I will suck up the larger gold with a snuffer bottle.  I don't try to get all the fine gold, I pour the remaining black sand in a bucket and work it at home.

TESTING NOZZLES TO SEE THE AMOUNT OF MATERIAL EACH SIZE CAN SUCTION UP.

Today, 02-08-2010,  I went out to Cajon Creek to test the amount of material different sized nozzles could suction up. I loosened up the material first with my 5 foot iron digging bar. I took for the test my 2 inch super gold sucker and adaptor and 3 nozzles, and my 3  inch super gold sucker. I suctioned up the loosened material, and then emptied it into my 14 inch blue proline gold pan, and then took a picture of the material collected. I also had a 3.5 gallon bucket and my 5 foot iron digging bar.

1/2 INCH NOZZLE

I first tried the 1/2 inch nozzle. Each stroke I could only suck up a small amount of material. Also I noticed htat it is much easier to get a plug up, and it is much harder to draw the handle when you use the 1/2 inch nozzle. Here is the amount of material suctioned up in one stroke with the 1/2 inch nozzle.

3/4 INCH NOZZLE

When using the 3/4 inch nozzle, you still can't suction up a lot of material and you get plugs pretty easy still. It is a little easier to draw the handle when using the 3/4 inch nozzle as compared to the 1/2 inch nozzle. Here is the amount of material suctioned up in one stroke with the 3/4 inch nozzle.

1 INCH NOZZLE

With the 1 inch nozzle, you can suction up more material than either the 1/2 inch or the 3/4 inch nozzle. And it is easier to draw the handle. Here is the amount of material suctioned up in one stroke with the 1 inch nozzle.

2 INCH NOZZLE

You can suction up a lot of material with the 2 inch nozzle! And the draw is much easier than than when using any of the smaller nozzles. Here is the amount of material suctioned up in one stroke with the 2 inch nozzle.

3 INCH NOZZLE

You can suction up lots and lots of material with the 3 inch nozzle! And the draw on the handle is very easy! Here is the amount of material suctioned up in one stroke with the 3 inch nozzle.

RESULT OF 10 SUCTION STROKES USING THE 3 INCH SUPER SUCKER

This is the result of 10 suction strokes using the 3 inch super gold sucker. I placed my 1/2 inch classifier on top of the bucket. Loosening up the material, pulling out the bigger rocks and sucking up the material took about 7 minutes.

The rocks and gravel you see in front of the bucket and 3 inch super gold sucker came out of the hole I was working on.

CONCLUSSIONS

The results of the test show that larger nozzles suction up much more material.  And it also shows that reducing the size of your nozzle just makes you work harder to suck up smaller amounts of material. Much larger amounts of material can be moved with less effort with a larger nozzle.

If you use a set up test, using just small gravel and sand in an aquarium, larger amounts of material can be moved with a smaller nozzle. But in the field, you just cannot move much material with a small nozzle. Regular motorized dredges are rated by their manufacturers by the amount of small gravel they can move, but they never come close to that in the field. If you were to use a 3 inch super sucker in an aquarium test, you would soon see what a difference there would be in a set up test and an actual field test will . I invite any gold prospector to come on out to who wants to to come on out to Cajon Creek, and do the test themselves. Or if someone would like to shoot a video of the test to come on out.

Enough rain fell that Cajon Creek got rearranged a bit. Every time this happens, you have to sample around again before you start processing material.

I use my sluice with the ribbed rubber matting on the slickplate for sampling. I put a bucket of material through the sluice, and then check the matting in the slickplate for color. If there is no color, or just a small amount, I get another bucket sample from another area and run it through the sluice.

If the area is underwater, I use my 3 inch super gold sucker to suck up the material. If the area is above the waterline, I just use my old shovel.

When you sample before running a  lot of material, you will get a lot more gold. If you run a bunch of material with no gold, you won't recover any gold. And if you find a sample with some nice gold, do a little more sampling to try and outline the area that contains the gold.  Then run the material from that area.