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Indonesian Gold Part II -- Sumatra Gold!
If you haven't read part one of this blog series, go back and begin your journey HERE.
Last we left off my Indonesian business partner Guntar was traveling from Jakarta to the island of Sumatra, where much more gold has been mined and found.
(Photo's) what the river rock looks like.
When Guntar finally arrived in West Sumatra he immediately started taking photos of the mine. The sluice boxes looked very crude and the workers had huge pipes laying everywhere to pump water into the sluices.
What looks like a pond where the tailings fall out is just a section of the river that the miners made deeper and larger due to so much water being pumped around. They had also dug an enormous pit, which ended with them running into giant chunks of rock, possibly broken bedrock.
(Photos) Guntar and family posing with gold.
Guntar flashed photos of him posing with a day worth of chunky gold, possibly an ounce or more, laying on one of the Indonesians enormous metal gold pans. With him was his friend, uncle, and other relatives who owned an enormous amount of land. One of the owners is military, another is in a high government position, awaiting an election result in January.
"Customs very strange here friend", Guntar texted. When I inquired Guntar explained that you can't just come in and mine the land, the ways there are very old-school, and you need to have family ties and connections. He said that because he is family, we will be able to go in with the miners who need capital and machinery as they are just beginning.
The gold was very promising, and the fact that we had an inside connection into gold-rich territory that foreigners couldn't just buy out was huge. I asked Guntar if his distant family knew about me "the American" investing in this operation. He replied they did, and that I could come any time I wanted because whoever helps him, is a friend of theirs.
If you haven't been following, that is my main purpose here, to help my good friend who gets less than $30/month from the government, and has two wonderful children and a wife to take care of. This is not a greedy money-grab, this is my attempt to hopefully create a sustainable operation for a whole community who desperately need aid.
(Photo's) Sluice boxes with dredge pipes. Giant hole where the workers eventually ran into bedrock.
In fact, the locals have been allowed to pan the tailings off the sluices, and you can see a few of them doing just that in the river in the photo. So in this small town of Sumatra, it really is about sharing with the whole community. So in this small town of Sumatra, it really is about sharing with the whole community, and this stems from the ancient tribal culture and land-ownership customs there.
We are also going to avoid using mercury extraction, which has been devastating the Indonesian culture in areas where there is little to no illegal mining control.
After negotiations were made and we agreed on a 50/50 land and gold split with Guntar's distant family, Guntar did some test holes around the land, he immediately found gold-rich rock with the Garrett ATX metal detector. He sampled some with chemicals, and got gold readings!
As a follow-up, Guntar went back to the holes where he got the gold-rich rocks and took a few pounds of samples. He and his friend drove the samples to a rock crusher, and had them crushed and tested. They called 48 hours later, "start digging deeper" they said "your rocks have gold veins".
(Photo) Testing rock samples for gold with chemicals.
(Photo's) Digging holes where the Garrett ATX gave signals.
Progressing into deeper ground yields more larger gold.
Guntar and I were thrilled, because that area had proven it had chunkier gold the deeper you dug. There is quartz all over the land, and his family owns several hills and valleys so the possibilities are endless.
The next step I thought was to get good equipment in there that wouldn't lose a ton of gold. The sluices their using now have wooden slats and Palm tree hair rolled up for gold catching carpet, so that alone will tell you they're not set up right. Not to mention running their dredge pipes way too far from the sluice.
I ordered some major equipment:
~A 3" inch dredge/highbanker combo with an 8' foot X 10" inch sluice box, with an extra 150 feet of water hose in case we find gold farther from the river. With 1/4" and 1/2" inch hopper classifier screens.
~2, 4, 8, 12, and 30 mesh classifier screens.
~Gold bottle Snifters.
~One premium crevice tool, and another crevice tool.
~Gold black sand separator magnet.
~One dive suit for dredging, with boots, kevlar gloves, and a hood.
~One snorkel and diving mask.
~One weight belt.
(Photo's) Rock Samples with signals found by the Garrett ATX.
Guntar set to work on finding a rock crusher in Sumatra so we could avoid insane shipping costs that were already piling up. If I didn't already mention it, Indonesia is notorious for fine small gold. However, the deeper you dig, the chunkier the gold gets.
Our plan is to rent an excavator for the time being until we can afford to buy one. Judging by the sampling we've been doing we can get about .75 grams of gold for every two-three pounds of material--and that's on the surface!
If anyone reading has any suggestions for moving those huge boulders in the photos please email me. I would also love any advice or suggestions from seasoned miners!
We will be adding more updates to this blog series as we continue to explore the new land we own, and sample different areas. Things will especially ramp up after we receive the equipment, which should blow all the old equipment out of the water in terms of yielding more gold!
Email me at: kephns@gmail.com
Thanks for stopping by and happy hunting everyone!