Abandoned mine and prospecting club's claim PICS ADDED pg 2

5 minutes for that matter.
Ladies have chores.
We have insurmountable tasks to achieve.

most of them old lincolns (shield arcs) 200 amp ran a continental f162 or f163 4 banger  and some of the 300s  ive owned 3 of the 200 "pipeliners". my sa 300 had a f244  6 cyl conti. if you had one of the ones with the Hercules (willys jeep) it was an oldie. probably 40s or early 50s.

my father in law got me into welding he had 7 old shield arcs. I worked for him for a couple years as a helper. went to night school to learn to weld myself and get my first cert. he must have known I was serious about welding which his 2 boys never had any interest in because, I completed the class close to xmass on xmass morning he said see the 4 welders on trailers pick 1. got myself a bigger truck did a lot of heavy equip type work had some structural certs. aws and dot. them shield arcs would lay a smooth bead 8 10 12 hours a day, day in day out for years only problem was the 200s were 1500 lbs. where as the air cooled rangers bobcats champions weigh in at 500 lbs. don't weld as nice don't last nearly as long but are a fraction of the cost. so you see a lot of them on service trucks but the full time welders will almost always have shield arcs vantage or miller big40s.

bad timing for me just as I was getting in a lot of the big manufacturing plants were closing and every welder in the area was throwing a welder on a truck and lowballing to get into the bizz. father in law puts around for a while making less money each year then decided it was time to retire. wish ide have known he was gonna drop out I probably would have ended up with enough of his clients to stay in the game. but he talked about retiring for years, my list of clients kept dwindling got tired of dropping rate to compete. most clients didn't have cert or liability requirements so went with whoever was cheapest. just 1 day I got tired of not doing anything for fear if you missed that late nght or weekend phone call they would move on and you would lose that client. parked the truck took a pay cut for a nine to five and never looked back.

ps how many grinders did you burn up before you realized the exciter coils produced 110v dc voltage. if you didn't have ac/dc grinders they burnt right up.

Nice.

Great trip report- as always. Nice to find some of the golden stuff. Makes up for taking your life into your hands with the dubious characters lurking about and a fault line nearby. Would have loved to see that cave with the vaulted cieling- sounds scary fun.

This is a clever set up. I suppose it multi-stage separates by weight ? Garnets, gold, hematite, etc. ?

And the thought of that big structure was a ball mill makes sense for processing/crushing ore makes sense.
Shame the old timers that operated it were not available to talk about it.

I use similar methods in separating grit in the rotaries Jean.
SiC is density 3.4. Quartz gems and silica sand is ~2.7. The grit sure nuff settles to the bottom in a hurry in the wash pan. Pour off the top. Scavenge the settled grit.
If the slurry is really thick I spray water into the wash pan to thin the slurry to assist settling the heavy particles from the heavy slurry. Pour off the top liquid. Collect settled grit for inspection/re-use.
However, garnets also fall to the bottom, also at density 3.4. A 50 pound bag of garnet weighs more than a 50 pound bag of quartz ha. Sure seems like it.

Long hours. They say gold miners lived short lives. Good thing Bob brings home some supplemental bacon. Clever devices you guys use.
I wish I had a source for sluice-able gem or gold rich soil by the dump truck load.
I would love to build a serious sluice with my water supply. And plenty of low places on the farm to dump the waste soil.

With that 3 stage arrangement you guys must be able to separate the slightest density variations.

I owned a piece of land that had an open field in the crotch of the Chattahoochee River and a large creek.
It flooded constantly with 5 to 10 feet of water. Sediment falling out of the muddy organic particle rich water settled on that field for 1000's of years.
The soil was rock free and 15 feet deep, 30 acres. My buddy said I should have attempted to get a permit to mine the top soil.
Ha, the river regulators denied that permit so fast heads spun. Let's just say that the value of that top soil was way more than any amount of money I will ever have.
And was in high demand. Wetland classification, regulators not interested in allowing any such soil disturbances.
I hired a tractor to deep plow it and the ONLY rocks were arrowheads and chips that Native man left behind. In a high hump in the middle of the field.

Wow, they tanker trucked in the water for the mine. May have been their biggest expense.