Treasure hunt

Acouple of weeks ago, Terry and I joined a local gem and mineral club. It cost $15 to join and you get access to several mining claims the club owns.

One claim is about 15 miles from our house. After church, we went to check it out. A friend of ours knew how to get there so we met him and drove to the parking area. Then we had to hike in about a mile to the claim.

The area was full of holes and craters where people had dug over the years looking for sapphires.

Terry said this would be the best place to dig:

After you get a bucket full of gravel, you sift in these screens.

Close supervision is important.

And we found some! 5 sapphires and one garnet. Looks like one may be good enough to cut into jewelry.

Click on the picture for a better view.
And a bonus. Before we left, I put some of the leftover sand into a bag and brought it home. When I panned it in the creek, I found about 20 flakes of gold. I added it to the other gold found over the past couple of years:

Nice weekend

Looks like the beavers have been as busy as we have. This dam is about 4 feet tall and has backed up a pretty big pond.

Spring has arrived and everything is turning green.

Saturday, Terry and I worked on the forms and steel for the second bridge pour.

This one has a lot more rebar.
Concrete is very heavy so there has to be lots of support underneath so the form can't shift or sag during the pour.

We plan to pour the concrete on Friday.

22nd, mostly sunny 63 degrees

PHASE II

We pulled the forms off of the first section. It turned out pretty good. The plastic worked well to make it easy to separate and left a smooth finish. There were a few wrinkle marks here and there though.
Pepper doing what she does best:
The 3/8 plywood on the form bowed out a little between each stud on the first pour. I took the forms back over to the shop to add another stud between each of the other studs. Now the studs are every 6 inches around the curve instead of 12 which should keep it from bowing again. The form pressure will be a lot higher on the next two pours since the height will be 54 inches. (The first pour was only 36)

Look at the old bridge foundation. It's in pretty bad shape.

We set up the form again for the second pour:
Last time, Joe and I poured this little curving slab. This was to set the form on for the second part. It makes it alot easier and it won't settle when the 15000 lbs of concrete is placed.

I will have to make another one of these to use for the last pour.