Ho, Ho, Ho & Happy, Happy!

[easy goer]

Joe

I switched to Stihl Motomix a number of years ago for all of my small engines. Guess what, ZERO carb and fuel line issues. Yes it is expensive but I only cut so much firewood every year. The beauty of Motomix is it is good for 10 years unopened and 2 years after opening.
I stupidly left fuel with ethanol in my 2 GX630 Honda motors. I will find out this summer how bad that will be. Fingers crossed, they are Honda's!
My plan going forward is to run my engines out of fuel at the end of the season( I will be using that cheap Nome gas) add 2 gallons of Motomix to the empty fuel tank and run that through my motors until it runs out. Whatever fuel remains should be fine until the following year. $27 a gallon is cheaper than a non running motor. I will keep you posted as to how this works.

Easy Goer

[Joe S (AK)]

JEEZ DICK, Where did you find Gas-a- hol in AK? I understood that Ethanol froze too easily at cold temperatures and so just was never introduced into the fuel mix in The Great State. Was I mislead, somehow??

It used to be back in the olden days everyone thought that the only way to effectively recover small Gold was by using relatively slow, laminar flow water to gently coax black sands into washing around and past the heavy Gold.
Generation after generation labored away with their Miller Tables, doing their best to somehow recover flour Gold.
THEN, substantial and meticulous study helped to create radically designed, new catchments (lumped into the name "riffles") that work oh-so-quickly and efficiently while using more robust water flows.
With all things considered, using a pan to prospect with, followed up with equipment of some scale to work the bank run, creating concentrates to be run through a mini sluice of some sort and then finish panning in camp seems to be a pretty sound plan for little old me. Of course a larger scale operation with a ton of concentrates would need some revisions to my simple "True Temper # 2 Enterprise".
Dick, how are you handling your World Class operation? Are you just throwing your 1/2 + ounce nuggets in a 5 gallon bucket and saving the rest as "Winter Work"?

[Slatco]

Must be that (mis)management concept that simply deferring plowing will be a mute point come July.

Down to Zero (F) two nights ago here in Northern Idaho but warmed up to a balmy +4 (F) this morning at dawn. Only a trace of snow - but February is coming ! ! !

A ton of winter work getting done - including mining equipment maintenance. Even though I was stuck here for the past year with a medical "thing" the engines still need to be maintained. I'm trying to convert a couple of small engines to Propane to try to reduce the carb problems that show up regularly. GenSets are the worst if they just sit for a couple of months. Draining all fuel helps a lot but even so ..........
Anyone trying any new style of equipment this coming summer? SOMETHING new just must have popped up for us to look at.

All the Best!
Joe

Nothing too crazy for offseason projects for myself. I am going to build a extension sluice for my little trommel I built last year which will be more for putting the fine tailings in the same spot as the coarse and not necessarily increased recovery. I am still going to run riffles and maybe some rubber matting that everyone claims is the greatest so time will tell. Also picked up a minelab Equinox 800 so will spend some time prospecting with that. First trip in is booked for May 10 and it can't come fast enough!