Intr oduction and 2009 Season

Aerial view of the Devlin's Bench Mine during an helicopter flight in the summer of 2009.

Devlin's Bench Mining Ltd is located in the Cariboo gold fields District of British Columbia, an area of aproximately 400km in size, the center of the district is Williams Creek and the famous gold mining town of Barkerville, http://www.barkerville.ca/ . Historically Williams Creek was the largest producer of bullion in the Cariboo District and the third highest producer of placer gold of any creek in North America. Only to be outdone by two creeks in The Klondike goldfields, Bonanza and Eldorado.

Devlins Bench is a historic group of claims, on a high bench of Williams Creek, located at the lower end of the Williams Creek drainage. This group of claims has not been put together as one unit since the turn of the century. Devlins Ltd has succeeded in putting together the whole of Devlins Bench under one owner after over 100 years of property disputes and fractioned claim titles.

Devlin's Bench Ltd, a new company formed in August of 2009, conducts a Placer Gold Mining operation on Williams Creek and provides employment to local residents, between 12 and 15 this season. Providing much needed economical boost for a remote area and town with the injection of hundreds of thousand dollars in the local economy, with the use of as many local bussines's as possible in the town of Wells and Quesnel BC.

The mining season usually starts around May 1 and extends until the end of October each year, with winter months reserved for equipment repairs and maintenance.

The mine is located within the cool temperate climatic zone in the Cariboo Mountains at an elevation of 4000 feet. Winters are significantly long and heavy snow loads are present every year. The picture above shows the mine at the beginning of the 2009 season. At that time, the mine only had one bulk testing plant, which is seen here without the new white 60ft stacking conveyor belt installed in September 2009.



The trommel-scrubber screener is fed by an excavator, 6 days a week from 7:00 am to midnight. The trommel scrubs and classifies the placer gravels, the heavy materials are pushed by water along the bottom of the recovery boxes, until they are trapped in various gold stopping devices commonly called sluice boxes. The sluice boxes and boiler traps produce a "concentrate" which contain gold, heavy mineralized magnetic black sands, natural lead and pyrite particles.


This concentrate requires subsequent processing to eliminate the magnetics and other heavy minerals to produce gold that is clean enough to be melted into bars.This is a long and involved process that is performed by an entirley other group of machines at the cleanup facility.



During the 2009 season, Devlin's Bench not only developed a producing gold mine, but did extensive permit completions, cleanup the mine site, undertook reclamation activities, setup the site for future mining activities, did some exploration, bulk testing and the built and installed a new larger trommel (scrubber/screener plant).
This trommel was completed on August 19, 2009 and was put to work immediately after. The trommel processes 800 to 1200 cubic yards of dirt every day it is operating. This trommel is fed by an excavator or a frontend loader, the loader also forwards dirt closer to the excavator from the payface and moves the coarse tailings away from the plant. We will be adding a stacking conveyor to handle the coarse tailings next year, followed by a gravel pump to transport the fine tailings away from the processing plant therefore eliminating the need for another operator and an expensive frontend loader.


John Deere excavator loading the new plant.

The construction of the new plant required extensive work and expertise. Wright owned and operated two service trucks in the Atlin Goldfields during the 1980's, specializing in placer gold plant design and fabrication of gold washing and recovery equipment.

The picture above shows the welding of anti wear plates in the new scrubber plant in August 2009, note the 250 d4 cat pads in the beginning of barrel welded in by Wright to provide flipper bars and wear plates.
The new plant "feed hopper" was built from scratch to operate under several loading capacities. A new drive system "Radicon" was installed on the new trommel.

The mine requires the use of generators for power. Several generators provide power for the numerous water pumps, trommels and lights for night operations. We have on site 3 - 100kw plus units and 4 small light tower kubotas and deutz sets.

The new trommel receives its water from the new Magnum pump as seen on picture below and several add on pumps on site one Yanmar high head and a fleet of electric pumps.

Gold Clean Up
Gold is significantly heavier than other minerals and is trapped by the sluice boxes and in the boiler traps of the washing plant. The upper traps containing 90% of the gold are emptied daily after each shift and the lower riffles are cleaned once a week on each trommel/washplant.

Cleaning Sluice Boxes.

Wright cleaning gold recovery traps and mats. Note the Yukon boiler box below Wright's knee, with the agitation pressure pipes plumbed through the box.

The pictures above show the first gold clean up of the new system and lower screens and a regular recovery test on the new yellow wash plants recovery systems. This is the most important aspect of any modern placer gold operation, a systematic test from the bottom end to the top of the sluices to determine how far the fine gold particles are travelling down the sluice boxes, so as to assess the recovery and feed rate of the washing plant.

The concentrate, which is mostly made of a mix of gravels, heavy minerals (pyrites and lead) and black magnetic sands, these gravels need to go through several other cleaning processes, classification washing and sorting. Therefore, the gold needs to be sorted a second time, quite often by hand. The concentrate is brought to the “Green Machine” which is the first step of the cleanup process. The Green Machine is a vibrating screen with a live bottom rubber pulsating sluice.

The Green Machine produces a high grade concentrate which is sent to the gold clean up lab also located at the mine site. At the exception of the green machine, the gold cleanup is effectuated inside the lab, where the small pieces of equipment are protected. Inside the heated gold cleanup lab, we house a various assortment of cleanup tools such as magnets, screens, hot plates, fume hoods, melt ovens, gold wheels, wave tables, scales and a large variety of traditional gold pans.

October of 2009, the instalation of two electric water pumps in the clean water intake of Williams Creek simplified the cleanup areas water system. Also, with the installation of a 20kw camp gen set, and replacement of three honda engines, allowed us to put all operations together including pumps on the new generator set, effectively cutting the use of hydro carbons in the riparian zone (waterway containing fish and wildlife). Not to mention electric pumps have a self draining ability for late season freezing problems.

We also removed the honda engine from the green machine installing a 3 hp electric unit running off the one gen set.

Wright and Mine manager, Dave Bjorgenson, performing gold cleanup sept 2009

The larger coarse nuggets are hand picked by the staff inside the lab as seen in the picture below.

Dave, the mine manager, running the gold wheel in the lab. The gold wheel is used to separate finer gold from other heavy minerals.

Final Product

The gold is also melted into bars on site inside the gold clean up lab, 30 oz bar in gold pan next to 1-2oz slugs recovered from Devlins Bench. Gold assay is averaging .822