My name is George, I have been in love with gold since I got my first glimpse of it shinning through all the concentrate down in Quartzite Az. back in 1990, I know most of you will say "hell I was dredging up pounds back then"
. I was 14 at the time!! My grandfather had a buddy that would take me up on Q mountain down there, trompin through the washes digging out the goods to be processed. I grew up in Modesto Ca. and mining and the 49ers were a good part of our history classes and I was always facinated by the gumption of these old timers and wished I had grown up in that time. We were also always told that the 49ers got every ounce of the gold and that is why the gold rush moved on. I do know they made it harder to find unless you have good equiptment and a keen eye. Well I moved to Oregon in 2000 and got back into prospecting. So fast forward to present day, about 5 years ago I picked up my first A52 and had a ball. Little that I knew at the time but we would go out dig a hole find good flood gold clean up as much of a paystreak as we could giving time we had. Then the next time we would come out there was an old salt out there "cleaning" the bottom of our holes and damn near doing better than we were. So, now I know I was just making it easier on that guy to get his pay.. (I hope I have good joo joo comming my way) I bought a highbanker a few years ago and did ok mining some high benches that I still need to make my way back to, at the beginning of last summer a guy offered a Keene 3" highbanker dredge combo it came with a honda 6.5 P180 and T-80 air. I was stoked!! I picked it up and tried it out but wanted it to float so I found a frame and floats for 80.00 bucks and modded the frame to mount the sluice and hopper on!! As seen here!!
well this year I took the frame bought some alum, a flair, some steel bits and put together a 4" as we got REALLY bored with the three after plugups and the fact that the neighbor went away for a week and wanted us to "babysit" his 4 for him and told us he wanted fresh gas in it when he got back!!! what a difference. (hopefully next winter I will build a 6. I will keep going untill the gubmit and enviros say no more and I may just keep going after that
... super quiet, incog operation should get her done!!!here is a picture of the project so far, I did all the frame mods to get the motor up over the flair bent the sluice on the brake. It is a two stage sluice O/U with expanded metal over miners moss over carpet on the bottom and a clone of keene riffle pack on the top section. here is a pic of the progress so far!!
Sorry for being so long winded but there is my background... lol
and the lust continues as definately a terminal disease....and thats not all bad-great pix/story-John 
... I also was thinking of a sock of sorts on the discharge of the sluice, and a camo net to hang from trees to park the dredge behind... stick it to the man!!!! 
, err um I meant to hide my equiptment from possible thiefs....
Good Luck and keep your pan full of the yellow! 