Did you know that fine gold recovery usually makes up for the majority of gold found by small time prospectors? Its much more plentiful and it's usually found in places that are easier to get to. The problem with fine gold is that its so small and improperly set up sluice boxes can let it pass through unintentionally. To remedy the problem you must be aware of the main factors involved. Water speed and volume are critical! Even in a poorly designed sluice, if you have the volume and speed of water dialed in you will still catch gold more effectively than using a pro high end sluice that's set up wrong. Furthermore, the angle at which the sluice boxes lay are also very important. The angle will effect the speed of the water as it travels down as well as how fast the sluice is able to clean itself out. If the angle is too shallow bigger rocks and clay chunks can settle on or around the riffles and cause turbulence in the water that will effectively kill the back eddie action created by the riffles. It will cause you to lose gold! Those points being the most critical, next is the construction and design of your sluice. It's ability to catch gold and specifically fine gold are decided by and far by the designs of the riffles and or catch mat systems.

Finding the appropriate water flow and speed for your circumstances is absolutely essential. It can be tricky and might require you to block the flow of water from the inlet of your sluice, or feed extra water in. This can be accomplished by making a small dam with rocks in the creek or river bed. Depending on where you're prospecting this could be considered a violation of your local Fish and Game laws so be aware of them. Chances are, if moving rocks in the stream bed is considered a violation so is using a sluice box. Make sure you know the laws!!!

The more water volume the better and generally speaking it doesn't hurt to fill the sluice with water right to the top of the sides if you can. A good recommended minimum depth is about 2 inches. Volume is usually separate from the speed of the water so you can adjust it easily by lowering the sluice into the water more or by finding deep spots in the creek bed that act as a funnel for your sluice.

The proper flow can be judged by using small pebbles or a handful of sand. Drop it in the inlet of your sluice and watch as it flows through. all but the heaviest particles should be washed clean within 3 to 5 seconds depending on the length of your sluice. 3 is a bit quick but will allow for much faster production of concentrates at the cost of losing some fine gold. 5 is a tad long or just about right depending on the coarseness of the material you're sluicing. You should be catching lots of fine gold at that speed but at the risk of larger rocks getting caught in the riffles and disrupting the flow. You can adjust the angles for fix that though.

When setting up a sluice the proper angle must be observed. It's usually between 5 - 7 degrees of slope and should allow most round rocks and pebbles to pass through easily. You don't want the material zipping through but rather kind of tumbling through slowly. An Ideal speed is for a larger rock to clear itself out within 3 to 5 seconds on a medium sized sluice box. Also remember that the angle effects the water speed as it travels down the sluice. Furthermore, sometimes it is impossible to achieve the right angles if the creek is very flat. In such a circumstance you may be required to create a make shift dam out of more rocks to raise the level of water on one side so you can feed it through your sluice. But that can be a lot of work and you're usually better off trying to increase the speed of the water instead.

With the proper angle, water flow and speed set, it's now time to actually use our sluice boxes!! Many people pre-screen their material before feeding it through the sluice. It's a lot of work and a properly set up sluice does not need this. However, that being said, If you don't pre screen or classify the material you will likely lose some fine gold. This problem can be helped by using a classifying screen over your sluice inlet as you shovel dirt in. I used an old dishwasher rack I found in the creek bed and set it in the inlet of my sluice box. the water washed through it and as I dump material in, it washes it down leaving the bigger rocks and clay chunks for me to easily throw out. It's a great light weight solution that really speeds up my production. It's also a much better alternative to dry screening the material right at the dig site then carrying it the 10+ feet to my sluice. You results may vary but at this point you should have a fairly good intuition about the possibility of losing gold.

Pulling your sluice out of the stream can be a tricky process and will inevitably lead to some gold being lost. It is highly recommended that as you go to remove the sluice for the water stream you place a bucket or pan at the end of it to catch whatever might get accidentally washed out. I've seen fouled up attempts at removing a sluice cause small chunks of gold to be washed clean back into the stream. Be very careful.

After that, clean up is a breeze and not to mention fun. You finally get to see how all your hard work paid off. It's worth noting though if you've got one of the newer generation plastic sluices you often have the added benefit of an even easier clean up as well as a nice view of whats collecting during the sluicing process! The downside is the lower production ability.

Hopefully that should get any new prospector started! I hope you enjoyed my guide!


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_J_Walkin

Back in the days when we pre-boomers were in school, many of us were delighted when given an assignment that required research. Even if we had the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica at home, which cost our parents a pretty penny, a serious paper called for a trip to the library.

I was introduced to the local library at a young age, but didn't appreciate what a great tool this book repository was until I became interested in the opposite sex. Throughout high school the library was a good place to meet girls. I could share a study table with them without being too obvious. Sometimes we would work together on a project and talk about elements of the topic before being shushed by the librarian for disturbing the other patrons. When this happened, it gave me the opportunity to ask the girl I was interested in to have a coke at the ice cream shop down the street. In college the same thing happened, only I'd like to think the interaction was a bit more sophisticated. If not, at least the library was larger and more information was available. Those were the days.

As a novelist and writer of magazine articles as well as a twice-weekly blog, I spend a great deal of time doing research. But I never leave my study to get this work done, because it can all be accomplished on the Internet. That's too bad. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that access to all the information I need is right at my finger tips - more than I could have gathered as the result of several trips to the main library in downtown LA. What I miss is the smell of the book racks. The sounds or lack thereof associated with the main reading room. Searching through the Dewey Decimal System index cards to find the books I needed. And, most of all, I miss the human contact.

Of course I can get the research done faster and more completely through the use of my computer, but I'm not in a big hurry today. I like to breakup my work schedule with some pleasant conversation, so I meet friends for coffee at the book store not far from my home. It's nice, but nothing rivals those fun days spent at the library when I was young.

Don Potter, a Philadelphia native, was born in 1936 and is a 50 year veteran of the advertising agency business. Now living in Los Angeles, he has written two novels in retirement, frequently writes on marketing issues, and has a blog dedicated to pre-boomers (those born between 1930 and 1945).



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Don_Potter

Many recall the playing of "Dixie," the standard-bearer of the white South, on the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, during the 1960s; this city is where many of the worst and most violent Civil Rights Movement protests occurred. The South was preoccupied with their deep losses during the Civil War. This preoccupation was not unlike that of Nazi Germany, after Germany's deep losses during WWI, before the Nazis were even formed. Largely, like the Nazis, the pre-Civil-War South had severe economic problems. Seven immigrants out of eight from other countries settled into the northern United States, and twice as many whites left the South for the North as the ones heading in the other direction.

There were deep-seated controversies over adding the slave state of Missouri to the Union, the acquisition of Texas as a slave state in 1845, and Manifest Destiny being used as an argument for gaining new territories where slavery would become an issue, which mostly occurred after the much less devastating Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Meanwhile, the extremely popular anti-slavery novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 helped increase northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which was designed to recapture escapees.

It has been said that the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, John Brown's raid of Harper's Ferry in 1859 and the split in the Democratic Party in 1860 all led to the war, and the election of Lincoln in 1860 was the last straw for the South, being the main trigger for the secession. During this period, many looked for a compromise, such as having some of the states "free" and some remaining "slave," or perhaps allowing the expansion of slavery for a few more years.

The best known of these attempts is the Crittenden Compromise. It was an unsuccessful proposal by Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden, which tried to resolve the secession crisis of 1860-1861. It addressed the concerns which were leading to secession, containing a preamble, six proposed Constitutional Amendments, and four proposed Congressional resolutions. But both the House and the Senate rejected it in 1861, as it was seen as making too heavy of concessions to the South. President Lincoln stopped it cold, because he was elected primarily for opposing the expansion of slavery, and the South's reaction to this rejection led almost immediately to the Civil War.

In short, every effort to compromise failed. Slavery was neither easy to resolve, nor was it an issue that would "go away." The South stubbornly and steadfastly maintained the belief that slavery was a needed thing, and that they would not stop until they had their ways about it. It would require firmer actions on their part, but mostly, they oriented toward taking it out on "the Negro," who was supposed to warrant such treatment.

"He" was their favorite scapegoat, whom they blamed for the Confederacy having lost the war, even after an untold number of black soldiers had died on the South's side, fighting for them. In Birmingham during the Sixties, whites were known to "scapegoat" young black men, breaking their backs with high-pressure water hoses during peaceful civil rights protests. They also bombed black people's houses, businesses and churches, threatening the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this way dozens of times. His primary "seat" of operations for his beloved Civil Rights Movement was in Birmingham in the 1960s.

During these dreadful times, the South had sporadic outbursts of lynching, mutilating and burning black men alive. They particularly wanted to oppress the blacks, as they were perceived as "troublemakers," too inferior to be perceived as "real people." Dr. King's and many other people's popular term for black people during his times was "Negros," and it was qualified how Negro people felt about themselves and their lives.

During the 1960s, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered Dr. King to be followed around by listening devices, with all of his places of residents being "bugged," and several of his private life statements were put on tape. One of these many hundreds of FBI tapes supposedly recorded MLK during a moment of passion yelling, "I'm not a Negro tonight!" Howsoever, just before King's assassination, many black men or Negros wore signs that boldly stated, "I am a Man" during their protests. They were promoting the idea that they were people, and not animals, as they'd been labeled during the slavery period.

In any event, many such black men fought and died passionately for the South during the Civil War for a variety of reasons, including the many different opinions about slavery and how the overall structure of it should be handled. Also, many such slaves grew up in close circumstances with their white masters, and were actually steadfast friends. Their actual circumstances are hard to fathom, but they didn't want to see the depravity and degradation that would occur should the South lose. Sometimes, slavery was not an entire evil, as some masters were more conciliatory, so this caused much factionalism. But on the whole, it is thought these black men were trying to aid the white South and impress them with their raw courage and utmost perseverance against all odds.

Often, both southern slave and freedmen blacks and their northern counterparts fought with extreme ferocity, leaping into the fray even when their jobs did not entail a soldier's duty. For one thing, the white North was reluctant to use them, and it took a long time to get the Union Army to accept black troops. They didn't need them like the South, where nearly a third of their population was now black. For another, the white southern attitudes that were extremely pro-slavery meant blacks were supposed to be indolent, permissive and docile. When southern black cooks, bottle-washers and horse tenders leapt gladly into battle with shouts such as "Fo' Massa!" and "Give it to 'em boys - give 'em Hell!" for their side of the gruesome fray, whites were shocked, impressed - and appalled.

This caused the development immediately after the war of several groups of white people who wanted to oppress, subjugate and otherwise control the growing black southern population. The most famous of these groups was the Ku Klux Klan, which of course hid their practices under many other names as well, as they were an illegal and secret society of white racial supremacists, which had been formed up immediately after the South lost in the Civil War. The original idea behind the KKK, or Klan as they are often called, was to "avenge" the losses of the white South - by taking them out on Black Americans.

Read the next article in this series, "The Ku Klux Klan - Begins in 1866" and the other articles in this long article series about why racism was and is so prevalent in the American South.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Karen_Peralta