GMPV Outing, August 26-27, 2006 - Bath, New Hampshire
Our common dig outing was held this past weekend, and let me say to the members who were unable to attend you missed the best outing of the year!
The weather held nicely, Saturday was beautiful, and Sunday held off sprinkling till 10:30 am. Saturday morning started with signing up for our common dig. 32 members signed up and got their share of the Gold! Mark was running his highbanker dredge combo, just upstream from my sluice box. He had Eric's help, for the day. Kevin was running a brand new Keene 2 " dredge, by my sluice, and his son was helping. It's always good to see the younger ones take an interest. I was running my large Keene sluice, the one that I won from the club raffle at the Plymouth outing. Dale sent down a new member, Richard, from Connecticut, and I showed him how to pan, and feed the sluice. After getting some gold in a vial, for him, I went back to helping Kevin work his new dredge. We had a few plug ups, as we took turns, trying to figure out the best feed rate, for the dredge. Mark was very helpful, and popped up stream a few times to check our progress. The sluice was showing fine gold in the ribbed rubber mat with every bucket of material and the dredge had more under its punch plate and in its black mat.
Air Force Mat showed up to help with the sluicing and shoveling. I left my sluice with him at noon so I could take all the concentrates back to camp. I had Mark's, Kevin's, and my concentrates all in one bucket. Meanwhile Jim and his wife were running their dredge on the opposite side of the island and I ran over to take a quick look. Jim said he was getting some flakes up high and finer gold was deeper. I agreed with him, most of the nicer flakes were in the top 8 " of the material I had been running. There were many other people running dredges, high bankers, or sluices. Fred had his 4" , somewhere upstream, Candy had a highbanker combo set up somewhere, Mark and Ellen, were running a Tee Dee sluice, Roger and Sandy were hard at work highbanking, and I'm sure I didn't get you all, but to all who participated, thanks.
Back at camp I set up Delor's spiral pan, classified some concentrates, and started running them through. It wasn't long before I had a volunteer to spoon in the concentrates. Ruth, from Connecticut, did a great job slowly feeding spoonfuls at the proper time. Joanne was already panning in the tub with Dale, and she was snuffing up some gold from another batch of concentrates. Sandy was running material through the green bowl. Everyone was doing something and things were going smoothly. I actually saw Lisa Davis have time to sit in a chair. That's a rare thing for her to do. She's always so busy doing things behind the scenes that a lot of folks don't realize. She puts in 200% for the club, thanks Lisa. Meanwhile the concentrates kept rolling in and the spiral pan really shined.
We had time to run all the concentrates twice. I believe that got most of the gold separated. There were a few more partial pans to pan out and Joanne and Dale were still panning. Terry showed up to help at the panning trough and slowly the dredgers trickled back into camp. Dale was busy bottling up the gold and Joanne was still snuffing up some flakes. We were using my magnet to help remove the magnetic black sand. This made the final panning a lot easier! With all the panning done, the tub was drained and Fred was busy bagging up black sands. Everyone on the common got a bag of black sand concentrates, to take home and pan, and yes, there was some gold in it because we did 4 or 5 test pans, every one had a little bit!
The gold draw came next, and I happened to get number nine. The pot luck dinner followed, and there was an abundance of good food! Then there was the club raffle. The lady with the red hair (sorry, I didn't get your name) won the 50 / 50. Air Force Matt won three times! I told him to hurry up and buy a Powerball ticket!! Someone won a bag of concentrates containing North Carolina gold. Joanne won a prize at the end of the raffle. After the raffle Tim Davis gave a little speech then Candy presented a birthday cake to Sandy and most everyone had a piece of it. Saturday night wound down with a few campfires, good conversation, and good friendship.
Sunday morning at 9 am Fred put on a metal detector event. For those of you who missed it I learned a wealth of detecting information in an hour and a half. Fred had sheets printed up that you could take to record your results. There were 40 targets each enclosed in a red, white, or blue envelope laying along the gravel roadway. You were to scan the envelope then record on your sheet if would you dig it up, Yes or No. On the sheet you list the chances that it would be a target you'd dig. There were approximately 13 detectors used for the event and when it was over Fred went down his list 1 to 40 asking you to raise your hand if you would dig? A count was taken and the identity of the item was revealed. Fred's wife Karen got most of the coin targets right. Her machine was obviously good at coin finding. Others had mixed or good results. Only one person detected the highest value item. I still say I'll waste my time and dig all targets cause you never know! It was real interesting to see the different makes, models, and features on all the different machines.
We found some targets buried in the roadway. The first one should have been a nugget but it was a large lead bullet. Nobody guessed that one right! The second was proclaimed to be definitely a penny by the majority. It turned out to be an old transmission oil seal ha! The third target was proclaimed to be pure junk, except by Richard from Connecticut. He said it was a penny. How deep, I asked. He scanned it again stating one half inch. We dug it up and it was a 2002 Lincoln penny. Well, he was the only one right. Imagine if it had been a penny from the 1700's. What a great learning experience, thanks to Fred for taking the time to put this on.
That's it, Bath outing 2006. If you missed it you missed a good one!!
Richard, from New York