New Nome Offshore Mining Machines

[outnaboutnak 3]

I wonder how a unit like this would do on the Nome beach?  Or is this more "jackass machinery".

 

 

 

[Got the bug 6]

Interesting very interesting ???

[manVSgold 5]

Heres my idea on it.I wont be going to Nome but I have my thoughts. This idea would use a boat to pull a weighted head with a sturgeon like mouth coming out of the bottom.Looks like this.Sorry i made it in like 2 min so its not to detailed.Its just a basic illustration and the actual intricacies of how it would work are not pictured.

 

 

Draging it would keep rocks of the bottom of the grizzly.

[Alaska Range Miner 0]

Outnaboutnak I really like that first machine. I think it would cost way too much to buy for a Nome beach mine, but I would love to operate it for a few days. The second picture is of a excavator with the long reach booms on it. This might work to wade out into the surf and reach out into the surf break and mine that area. I know that where the waves break is an area that the dredgers cant do and the beach guys cant either. That is where the ice dredgers are working mostly. That being said I would hate to have any excavator of mine sitting in salt water day after day. It would take a lot of gold to make it worth while.

[John Oates 9]

The state and EPA,environutz would blow a gasket on that monster on the beach. SMARA regs also. A good ol'school clamshell bucket design is the best in most placer situations,be it fresh or salt ALWAYS as no convalution of hydrolics in salt water. tons a au 2 u 2 -John

[Geowizard 122]

The only problem I can see is they don't allow mining on the beach.

 

Over recent years, there have been as anyone can imagine, thousands of ideas, mostly on paper of "how" to mine the nice clean sandy sea floor. I have not been out on the sea floor but I have listened to those that have. There are big rocks, and even rusted car bodies, etc. out there.

 

Cost of getting equipment to Nome is an issue. Yes, given all the money you need, anything is possible!  Heavy equipment is barged in from ports like Seattle or Seward. The logistics involve planning that precedes shipping by as much as a year.

 

There is risk. Unfortunately, weather plays a big part in mining at Nome. Even the transportation by airline is subject to weather conditions. An example, and it's the reason I pulled out of Nome, is when your scheduled flight attempts to land and can't. It's diverted to Kotzebue and then returns to Anchorage. In Anchorage, you find a long line at the ticket counter. The next available seat is two weeks later!

 

So, that's how it goes. The risk of not getting the job done because of weather affecting getting people in and out and the affect on mining on the Bering Sea.

 

- Geowizard

[Guest co1859]

Very cool 

[GoldBellMining 1]

 

 

Cost of getting equipment to Nome is an issue. Yes, given all the money you need, anything is possible!  Heavy equipment is barged in from ports like Seattle or Seward. The logistics involve planning that precedes shipping by as much as a year.

 

Or anywhere in Alaska for that matter!

[artic gold 4]

I don't know how to attach a photo but we have been operating an elevated excavator/wash plant offshore Nome for two year. We can go into 10' deep water so far. New designs in the works to go deeper. In Nome the sea floor is very gradual so it's some distance out. If anyone is interested I will post a pic of our rig. That is if I can figure out how to do it.    

[outnaboutnak 3]

That would be interesting to see what you've come up with.

[carter 3]

I live in ak. and often day dream of the Nome gold, but here is my armchair thoughts. No matter how I would do it, I would have a second and even a 3rd back up plan. People seem to expect a perfect world and then Alaska has its own idea of your plans!! From what I have read, watched videos of, and yes the reality shows, the biggest issue seems to be the weather stopping people from their fortunes. Dredgers seem to have the least overhead and setup but alittle weather sends them running or the water even gets too cloudy. So next is leaving rec. sights and running excavator on a barge, but then 3-4 ft swells shut them down, so my setup would be a excavator ex200/300 size on a 40'barge/w trommel. Except it would float to destination then the over sized spuds would lift barge out of water enough to manage the rougher water. I would use winches reduced down w/pulleys or could utilize the final drives hydraulics on excavator for spuds. Spuds would need "feet" on then from sinking too far in from the weight.

 

 So your elevated excavator, What happens if you get it stuck out their? How wide are your track pads, Really surprised it can be done(without agencies watching like a hawk) containing oil leaks of any kind. I would love to see video or photos also!

[artic gold 4]

I have tons of info. on this subject of offshore mining machinery in Nome. We built what we call a surf crawler based on a large set of tracks with a 200 class ex. and wash plant mounted on an elevated frame to operate in 10' deep water. I need to learn how to post pic.  When I try to attach anything now this site sends me a file too large message. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. If you're thinking about Nome it's worth the cost to go up there first and talk to the guys doing it now. Most of them are very helpful and will share info when they are not working. I see some people think they have the magic idea on how to get the gold up there,,, Make sure you do your home work before you reinvent something that has already failed up there.  

 

ps if you apply for and get an Alaska Airlines CC they will give you  25k free miles, That is enough for one round trip from lax to ome on select days. 

[outnaboutnak 3]

There was a brief shot of one of the large excavator barges in the last episode with a machine in the background. It looked like an excavator and it had four spuds sticking up. Yours? I'll have to go back and look at it again.

[outnaboutnak 3]

Try an external photo upload through photobucket, imageshack or flickr?

[carter 3]

So correct me here, any mechanical setup has to be on a leased claim? Dredges up to 6" or 8" can be in the east/west rec areas with just permit. Ive been on dnr site for Nome a yr ago but forgot and figure things are changing up their every yr. Hope to see some pictures

[artic gold 4]

There was a brief shot of one of the large excavator barges in the last episode with a machine in the background. It looked like an excavator and it had four spuds sticking up. Yours? I'll have to go back and look at it again.

That is not ours. The jack up barges you have seen in the background belong to Pacific Marine. They have two in operation 2013. Another barge of similar design also started last season. I have two crawler working within a few hundred feet of Hank and Shawn and have no idea how Discovery is able to edit them out of all the shots. Looks like they may shade them out. We would not sign up for the show. But we can not keep them from filming equipment so they should show up at some time. Most of the show is bs. To bad there are a lot of very good story's up there that would be interesting to watch. Seems all they want in the edit room is drama and more drama. The production crew don't seem to agree with the way they edit what they send in. They say 100 hours of filming = less that 1 hour of show.  I still can not manage to upload any pic.  

[chickenminer 42]

I'm posting these photos for user 'artic gold' .

 Pretty neat machines! Any questions should be

directed to him.

 

 

 

[outnaboutnak 3]

Very cool. I wonder how they deal with the unevenness of the sea floor in regards to the sluice boxes on the plant? Though maybe its smoother than I think under the water?

[carter 3]

Komatsu/Cat have to love these! I assume the ocean shortens the undercarriage life exceptionally.

[artic gold 4]

A little history on these machines, The Cat was the first machine we built two seasons ago. We put an old Cat 225 ( cheap ) on top the first year and it was very worn so we replaced it this season with the 320 B. It was a huge improvement.  The Komatsu was new this year, built winter of 13. I put a derocker on the first machine and a shaker on the 2nd one. No problem with the undercarriage after we learned how to keep the water out of the gear boxes. The sea floor has a very slow gradient up there so no big problems with keeping it level enough to run. Machines are very stable even though they look top heavy. The tracks are about 40k lbs from much larger excavators. We can dig about 13' deeper than the tracks but most of the time all we dig is about 3 to 5 ft. We can work most days in water up to 10' deep including what ever the surf is on that day. We have been able to run 24/7 several times but hard on people and equipment. Still a lot to learn about this type of mining. One group copied our design and built a machine. They have it up for sale after one season. There were 5 clones of the first one on the second season. Think several more are under construction this winter. I think the next generation designs will have cutter head and solids pumps on the stick instead of buckets.  Seems the biggest problem will be finding ground to work. These machines are pretty cheap to run and can take on some pretty crappy weather so they don't need the very best ground to be profitable. Jim