Gold Dredge Mining. Gold Prices Today Make Placer Gold Mining Worthwhile

The gold dredge has been a very lucrative piece of machinery for almost two centuries. The idea originated when man first took up the hand shovel and really found out how tough it was to work this way.

Once the area with placer gold has been identified by panning and sluicing, it is time to bring in the dredge. During the Yukon gold rush days that machine was huge, possibly the size of a large house. The individual gold buckets weighed as much as 600 pounds and were made of cast iron.

The problem with those early dredges was that they were so big and handled such a huge amount of gravel per hour that they allowed a lot of fine gold to get by the sluice box. In fact, those who know these things tell us that they probably missed more fine gold than they found.

With the gold price per ounce you do not need to miss a very big gold nugget to see dollars passing you by. The spot gold price of gold remains at record highs so the fact of the matter is that you want to locate every little flake there is.

Today the gold dredge has been totally changed. They are very lightweight, easily transported and very efficient to use. No longer is the creek bed and the surrounding bank torn to pieces. The dredge is used to filter out the gold nuggets that lie in the gravel and between the rocks.

Designed to be operated by one man, the newer dredges use a two horsepower four stroke gas motor to suck in the gravel and provide the water to run the gold bearing gravel to run through the sluice.

The machine is built upon poly styrene floats allowing it to be used right on the creek itself.

The dredge uses Hungarian riffles, which are designed to develop a strong vortex or "eddy" when subjected to higher water speed. The dredge creates a stronger vortex behind the riffles to hold the values better. Added to that it doesn't have the tendency to load up on low grade material leaving the riffles un-shrouded to do their job more effectively.

The two inch hose is very efficient and easy to maneuver through the creeks and to get down to where the gold has settled within the cracks.

Some manufacturers use the new 4 cycle Honda motors that are capable of putting out 100 gallons per minute. These 2 horsepower motors eliminate the pesky chore of mixing oil and gas and also feature the low oil shut off valve.

Dredging has come full cycle and is a wonderful way to mine for placer gold.

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