Gold Miners used to keep Mercury in a bottle and they would take off their handkerchief and squeeze the Mercury through the handkerchief and then put it back around their neck to separate the gold So yeah some of those crazy 49ers were crazy for real! And you would be in a world of shit if you're caught with a gold pan and Mercury in California It's highly illegal!
Yeah I'm very aware of it. I always preferred a metal rusty one But I even used the hub cap off of my Mustang once and found color with it just proving a point!
I was born in Long Beach. And I worked for gold divers underwater mining equipment we made dredges but left for Nevada after the taxes got too high I didn't go with the company though I stayed in California but Mercury pretty much across the board is illegal throughout major parts of the US.
and understandably so, but since i left socal in '99 everything, and i mean everything, has become illegal there. even in blatant violation of the u.s. constitution.
No I know about it. And I'm sure you can find videos online Well movies of it I'm pretty sure Disney did a thing about using Mercury to separate precious metals I think it was on Disney world of color or one of those programs It's been over 40 years since I had anything to do with dredging and gold mining!
This still happens in South America. Mercury smuggling is a big business and cartels are involved. Only one country in South America (Guyana) allows mercury import by private citizens, and it's smuggled all around. Certainly many of the larger illegal mines have other sources, but the boutique mines by smaller individual miners in the jungle are mostly sourced this way.
What’s up with a gold pan and mercury being highly illegal in California. I’ve not heard this and I’ve seen people in possession of both. Mercury is a common way to extract gold from ore.
Yeah it'll get you in a world of trouble if they find it on you especially. A giveaway would be a copper pan back in the olden days. Because yeah you can extract easily extract the gold from the placer with it. And they're worried about people dropping it in the rivers and streams.
No video cameras weren't as common back in the 1980s back then It was only very rich people had video cameras and they we're bulky and weighed a lot! But basically you would just put the Mercury in the pan and it would separate the gold from the other elements and then you would squeeze it in your handkerchief and the Mercury would squeeze out of it and what you had left was your gold because the gold I think Disney made a film of it once the process!
I may be wrong but I thought they used mercury to form an amalgam. The mercury bonds with the gold to separate it from the sand etc. then they heat it up to vaporize the mercury and recapture it and the gold is left behind.
If gold and mercury form an amalgam I don't see how using a handkerchief as a filter would work.
You can pan for gold in many places in California. Dredging and high banking is illegal, but hands and pans is fine. Good luck finding good quality gravel that isn't claimed however. But there are public places you can use hands and pans.
East Fork of the San Gabriel River is a great place to use hands and pans. You won't find much, but you can find color.
Yeah we had a claim. And our couple jet could remove 1 and a half tons of rock sand and gravel a minute gravel a minute Yeah it's been made illegal now I think Keen was one of the few companies that was still making dredges last time I heard, I've been out of the game for well over 20 years!
Public Lands For The People just recently lost the Dredge Ban lawsuit. So, any profit from river claims is mostly impossible now. You got out at a good time.
I remember telling Burrell we haven't had a customer for a couple of weeks. And he said well you've worked here long enough opened up the safe and had gold ingots way before it was ever legal to trade with gold. He literally had millions of dollars in gold and when it became legal at $100 an ounce he made a fortune LOL
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u/Away-Ad-8053 Dec 15 '24
Gold Miners used to keep Mercury in a bottle and they would take off their handkerchief and squeeze the Mercury through the handkerchief and then put it back around their neck to separate the gold So yeah some of those crazy 49ers were crazy for real! And you would be in a world of shit if you're caught with a gold pan and Mercury in California It's highly illegal!