/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>57880518
>It's so easy to produce 1 ounce of gold, just move 3.3 tonnes of gold ore. Or 2 cubic meters of Earth.
Not sure if joking, but in real life

On a placer operation in the US you'll get a gram or so per ton or yard of earth moved. One strong man can pretty easily process 2 or 3 yards in a LONG day. Like 12 hours of backbreaking labor. So on a good placer you can get about 1/10th oz. gold per day by working your ass off.

about 2/3 of the dirt is actually oversize stones and pebbles which are going to be screened out. So most of your time and work is in tossing rocks and screening out gravel.

that leaves about 1 yard of paydirt which needs panned or sluiced. Which also hurts your back and hands but in a different way. After panning comes processing the cons, which depends on your method, but is probably the easiest part.

anyways, at that rate a person could perhaps pan an ounce every 10 days on a rich placer. Usually we work teams. I take my 2 adult sons out and we process about 3 yards per day together, but none of us is working very hard. If we really wanted to go nuts we could probably work 6 or even 9 yards a day and perhaps get about a third of an ounce of gold per day between the 3 of us.