FINDING GOLD By Sky

PANNING Panning is the oldest and simplest way to find gold. It is important that the dirt, stones and gold are in the pan for a short amount of time so the gold can sink to the bottom of the pan. Once done the sand and dirt will simply wash away as you add water. As your adding the water move your pan from side to side or you can move it back and forward.

CRADLING Cradling is a large wooden tool. The miners would shovel a large amount of soil, gravel and sand into the hopper. The hopper had a mesh at the bottom of it allowing the gold to fall though but would catch large pieces of rocks and sometime gold nuggets can be caught in the hopper. When the sand, soil and gravel are in the hopper a miner would add water why another miner would rock it back and forth.

SHAFT MINING People started shaft mining when a miner found small veins of gold near the surface but the small veins of gold were also under the ground. The miners started to dig holes about one metre squared and fifty metres deep. To get the shaft to stay up they would put timber along the shaft to stop it from falling. They would need three to four miners working on one site, first miner would be down in the hole putting soil into the bucket. Second and third miner washes the soil into the cradle.

Puddling Puddling separates gold from clay. The miners would place the mixture of clay and gold into a large container and add water, they then start to stir the mixture making the clay dissolve leaving gold flecks and sand at the bottom of the container, the remaining mixture then would be panned or cradled. PUDDLING & MINERS PICK Miners Pick Miners pick is a tool to help the miners break things apart. This tool mainly breaks solid pieces of rocks. Miners pick also helps the miners to dig there shaft when the ground becomes to hard.

HOW DO PEOPLE FIND GOLD TODAY ? The miners today use open-cut mining and under ground mining. Open- cut mining, also known as open-pit mining, is the easy and cheapest way to get gold out of the ground. Open-pit mining is only used if the gold is close to the surface or if normal tunnel type isn’t possible. Under-ground mining or known as under-ground hard rock mining. The miners would dig a hundred metre deep shaft this provides access for machinery in search for their gold. The deeper the tunnels the deeper the risk of cave- ins and collapses.