[dramatic music playing]
[birds cawing]
[drill buzzing]
[Mike] I'm not too much of a crazy scientist.
I'm just a scientist.
You know, after spending 40 years
in academia, teaching chemistry.
So, when I retired, I decided to come out here
and have a little fun.
Now I'm out here being a gold miner digging in the dirt.
[laughs]
I work in a desert.
This is dry mining, totally different.
Prospectors do this at a small level,
but very few people have
developed it to a mining level.
That's one of the things that we've tried to do.
Ready to run?
I've got to get better recovery.
I've got a lot of debt that I need to pay off.
I had to cash in my retirement
and had to borrow
$50,000 off of my life insurance for the kids.
I've gotta pay that back somehow.
I'm scared of running out of money.
I'm all in.
It's a serious commitment,
but I've got to make it better.
So, hopefully, Freddy and Juan can help.
[Freddy] Let's make some gold, guys.
[narrator] Freddy Dodge...
There's no guarantees in gold, buddy.
[narrator] And Juan Ibarra...
All right. Well, let's do it, huh?
[narrator] Have mastered the art of getting gold
out of the ground.
[Juan] Look at that.
[narrator] In the most rugged places on earth.
[man over radio] I'm feeling a little sick, Freddy.
[narrator] Now, they rescue struggling miners.
Ooh. That's not good.
[narrator] Who've risked it all to be rich.
[man] Whoa, whoa, whoa. Shut it down.
[narrator] But are about to lose everything.
[man] Eyeballs.
[narrator] To revive these failing mines,
Freddy and Juan engineer the impossible.
[Juan] I've never heard of a under sluice before.
[narrator] Deliver some hard truths.
[Freddy] This material you're digging now
is totally worthless.
[narrator] And track down the gold.
That's what dreams are made of right there.
[narrator] But if they don't at least double
the miner's gold recovery,
they won't take a dime in return.
That's 10 times the amount of gold.
-Woo! -[Freddy] That's awesome.
[laughter]
[wind whooshing]
[upbeat music playing]
You know, I'm pretty confident in our abilities,
but dry plants really aren't our forte, Freddy.
[Freddy on radio] It's still a similar concept.
You're still using gold's weight to capture it.
You know, gold always wants to go back
to the center of the earth.
We gotta stop it, Juan.
You know, it belongs out to the ground
and to be nurtured and cherished.
I think gold's home is in my pocket, Juan.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan head towards an SOS
from Mike Robinson on his dry mine
north of the historic gold district of Wickenburg.
Dry mining became popular here in the late 19th century
with the invention of the dry blower,
a sluice that uses air
instead of water to separate out gold from dirt,
allowing prospectors to mine in arid conditions.
[wind whooshing]
Well, what do you think?
-Let's go meet the guys? -Go meet 'em.
[Mike] Hello, gentlemen.
-How's it going? -[Freddy] Hi.
-[Juan] Hi. -[Mike] How are you doing?
[Freddy] Mike, I assume.
-Hey, Freddy. -How is... How is it going?
-Nice to meet you. Juan? -Me too.
-This is Ken. -I'm Ken.
[Juan] Ken, nice to meet you. Juan.
-Thank you. -[Freddy] Nice to meet you, Ken.
-Pleasure. -Freddy, yeah.
[Mike] Ken is my right-hand man.
[Juan] That's a nice little setup there.
-[Freddy] Yeah. -You guys are in for a real different treat here.
This is dry mining.
So, water's a problem.
-[Juan] It's a first. -[Ken] Yeah. Yeah. It's first.
[Mike] You just have to go with the flow.
So, if you got dry dirt, run dry dirt.
[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] Mike Robinson bought these desert claims
three years ago.
An inventor as well as a miner,
he expanded his self-built
dry plant last year
and invested in a backhoe
in the hopes of making enough gold to make a living.
[Mike] I retired about 10 years ago from University of Texas
and bought a home out here.
And so, I've got an idea to make a profitable mine,
and I've invested maybe
a couple of hundred thousand over the years.
And, in doing all of that, I actually had to borrow
another $50,000
out of my life insurance proceeds.
That was designated for my five kids.
So, I'm under the gun to kind of get that back in.
Sounds like you actually have quite a bit of money tied up in this
-and it's kind of a serious situation for you. -[Mike] Yes.
[Juan] In your opinion,
what's your biggest problem that you have?
[Mike] Big problem that we've had this year,
is we've had an extremely wet season.
Well, it even snowed eight inches the first of March.
-Yeah. -[Mike] The monsoon season comes in August
and we just have to shut down.
[Freddy] That's not good, I'll tell you that.
[thunder rumbling]
[narrator] Despite its desert location,
this part of Arizona is known
for its dramatic weather patterns
with short wet monsoon seasons followed by dry,
scorching heat, leaving Mike just four months
to mine each year
when it's not too hot for the electronics
in the plant or too wet to run pay
through the dry washer.
[Freddy] What's your gold look like?
[Mike] Yeah. It's real fine.
It's cornmeal and flour.
[Juan] There's a couple little chunks in there.
-[Mike] But very seldom. So... -[Freddy] Yeah.
I don't care what size it is.
I just want a lot of it.
[laughter]
Well, what do you think we run a test, huh?
[Mike] Let's go to work.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan conduct a four-hour test
to assess problems and determine fixes.
They then have five days
to transform the Robinsons' dry mine
before a second test
determines success or failure.
[Freddy] Well, these guys are running a dry plant.
And that's whole different ballgame
to what me and Juan have been doing with wet plants.
All right, Miss Kitty,
let's go to work.
Forward ho!
[Juan] This is a new challenge for us,
so we're really gonna have to kind of think
outside of the box and figure out
what we can do here to help these guys.
[Mike] Miss Kitty is my backhoe.
She's a Cat, so I named her Miss Kitty.
Get everything fired up and ready for a test.
Oh, there it is.
[Ken] I'm hoping for gold for all of this effort.
I look at Mikey,
I call him the Mad Scientist just for kicks,
but his mind never stops coming up with stuff.
And so, we got stuff made,
we put it together, and here we are.
Yee-haw, we're running dirt.
We're gonna make some gold.
First bucket, Juan.
First bucket.
-[Mike] Here we go. -[Juan] There it is.
[narrator] Mike's custom dry washers
work similar to a wash plant.
Pay dirt is loaded onto a screen
which removes larger rocks.
Four unique vibrating hoppers
funnel the pay into four dry sluices.
There, in place of water, a tailor-made air system
blows away the lighter dirt where heavier gold sinks
and is caught in the riffles.
-[Juan] Look at that, Freddy. -Oh, I know.
-Right there. -[Juan] Almost every bit of that
should have gone through that screen.
What we need to do is get a pan or I'll get a bucket.
[narrator] Finer pay dirt
that should be reaching the sluices
is falling off the end of Mike's screen.
To see how much gold he may be losing,
Freddy and Juan collect a sample to pan.
[Freddy] We'll see what came off that screen, huh?
-See if there's any gold in it? -[Juan] Yeah.
[Freddy] Getting down into the heavies.
[Juan] Yeah, I see them.
If there's heavies,
-you know there's gold. -There's gold.
[narrator] Hand panning reveals
heavier fine black sand or magnetite
that often sits alongside gold.
-There it is. -There's some gold right there.
[Juan] Look at that.
There's a couple sizable pieces too, Freddy.
[Freddy] Well, that's gold that could be captured,
but it never made it to the recovery system.
Six color, seven color.
[narrator] The sample size suggests
that Mike may be losing up to five percent
of his gold off the back of the screen.
[dramatic music playing]
[Juan] Hey, Freddy. Look at that.
Oh, that's real damp. Look at that.
It almost holds form.
-[Freddy] No dust. -[Juan] Yeah, no dust.
[Freddy] That's not good.
[narrator] Wet pay feeds through Mike's dry plant,
causing the hopper and sluices to clog up
and slows down the entire plant.
[Juan] You can see right here it's starting to pile up
-because how of damp it is. -[Freddy] It is.
[Juan] Yeah.
[Freddy] It doesn't like the moisture.
[Juan] No.
Tell ya, a dry washer has to be perfectly dry to work right.
Not only is it not feeding as good,
but the recovery system is not gonna work as good either.
The air can't get through it.
-[Juan] Yeah. -[Freddy] We need to fix that.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] Well, I enjoy mining.
You know, it's just fun to get out here
and do all this hard work
and see a little gold at the end of the day.
It makes it all worthwhile.
But, really, the longer term is for the family.
This is a picture of my five kids.
My son, Will, is gonna come out here and join us
the next day or two.
I wanna convince him that this is gonna be
a viable operation.
He's doing part-time stuff,
painting houses and other things.
But, you know, it's hit and miss
and it's not steady, steady, steady.
Well, the mining maybe would add to his
financial stability?
[narrator] Due to arrive in two days with wife, Erin,
Will is far from certain this is a gamble
they're ready to take.
So, my dad has basically created
this for the family.
And he wants me to learn this
so I could teach the rest of the family how to do it.
But, you know, there's a little
financial uncertainty.
You know, it's a very important thing.
You know, everyone has to eat and survive and pay bills.
[Will] We have kids and I don't wanna ever
put them at risk.
So, I just don't know.
It's all... It's all up in the air.
And we're trying to decide, you know.
-[Juan] I like this guy, Mike. -I do too.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] Oh, I got a light on.
Engine's pretty hot.
[Freddy] That's not good.
[Mike] The needle's over here in the red.
Hadn't seen that before,
so I don't know why it's overheating.
[Freddy] Shut her down.
[narrator] Just short of the four-hour run,
the first test grinds to a halt.
[Mike] I didn't expect this to happen.
Got a major heating problem.
I got a hose that's broken.
With this down, I can't move dirt.
[wind whooshing]
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] It's overheating.
I can't move 10 feet without it going sshhh.
It's really hot.
If you don't mind, I'll take a look at it. Yeah.
[narrator] In 105-degree heat at the Robinson Mine,
a broken backhoe stalls the first test run.
Well, I don't know whether
I got an oil leak or water leak.
I didn't see anything on the road.
You have a coolant leak right there on your heating valve.
-Really? -[Juan] Yeah.
[Mike] Well, I can't work unless
I overcome the heating problem, so...
Go ahead and shut it off.
[narrator] With hours to fix the leak,
Freddy and Juan call time on the test,
10 minutes short.
[Freddy] Well, guys, get this cleaned up
and see you tomorrow.
[Juan] All right. See you tomorrow.
-[Mike] Yeah. -[Juan] Thanks, guys.
Mike and Ken, you know, they're both really nice guys.
You can kind of see some of their inexperience
just a little bit when they have an issue
with the backhoe.
But as far as their wash plant, it was a good little run.
I'm really excited to see
what this gold really looks like.
[wind whooshing]
[dramatic music playing]
-[Freddy] How's it going? -[Juan] How are we doing?
-Good. Good to see you again. -[Juan] Good to see you.
[Mike] Yeah.
This is my magnetic separator.
I invented this because everybody's
got a black sand problem.
So, now, we take out most of the black that's magnetic,
then I could get it really, really pure, okay?
Turn it on. You just pour it in.
[narrator] Magnetic black sand
is a natural byproduct of Mike's dry mine.
His ingenious invention
allows him to separate it from the gold,
speeding up his cleanup.
[Mike] So, there's the result, black and white.
-[Juan] There it is. -[Freddy] Pretty cool, huh, Juan?
[Juan] Yeah, pretty neat.
[Mike chuckling] I sell it online for $7 a pound.
[narrator] Separation process complete,
Mike turns to traditional hand panning
to finish his cleanup.
[Mike] So, that's desert gold.
[Freddy] Beautiful gold.
-Do you know the purity of it? -Oh, it's pretty high.
[Freddy] I'd say around 90, 89, 90.
-Yup. Your gold's pretty good down there too. -[Juan] Yeah.
-[Freddy] Good piece in there. -[Juan] Mmm-hmm.
[Mike] Ready to dry.
[wind whooshing]
[Juan] Well, there it is, huh?
[Mike] You wanna gonna pour that out and weigh it for us?
[Juan] Yeah. Let's take a look at that.
Well, a moment of truth, Fred.
[Freddy] Yup.
[soft tense music playing]
[Freddy] Beautiful.
It's pretty gold, boy.
-Quarter of an ounce? -[Juan] Yeah.
-It's quarter of an ounce. -0.25.
I'd like it to be better
'cause I got a son coming out depending on
making maybe a job out of this.
[narrator] An eight-hour shift
will get Mike up to $1,000 a day.
If he mines a four-month season,
it would net him over $100,000.
But with debt totaling $200,000,
it's not enough to support his son, Will,
and his family.
[Juan] In your mind, you know,
what do you need to see to be able to start paying
your investment back and make this profitable?
Well, I'd like to double it.
Okay.
And, really, the slowdown that we saw was
wet material coming out.
[Mike] Well, that's a big problem.
It rained months ago, but it seeps into the soil
-and it wets all of the clays. -Yeah.
[Mike] And the clays stay wet.
[narrator] Even in dry season,
Mike bogs down with wet pay
underneath the top layer of dry soil,
slowing down his entire operation.
Well, let's go put our heads together
and draw up some stuff.
Okay. Let's do it. Sounds like a plan.
-See you in a bit, guys. -Well, thanks.
[dramatic music playing]
[Freddy] Don't let the wind blow your gold away.
[Juan] Mike's got a lot on the line here.
This is a dry plant. This is out of our element,
so we're gonna have to pull something out of our sleeve here
to get that gold number up for him.
[birds chirping]
[dramatic music playing]
[Freddy] What do you think, Juan?
[Juan] I never would've thought in the middle of the desert,
we'd have an issue with damp pay.
Yeah, there's water, though, huh?
It's just underground.
[Juan] In order for him to be able to mine in the...
In the wet season, he's gonna have to have a dryer.
What do you think? Like a 30-inch tube, Freddy?
Like a trommel drum?
[Freddy] Yeah. Maybe a framework, right?
You do your magic with the rollers.
Pipe goes in it.
It'll have to be a feed hopper back here, right?
You gotta fix that backhoe anyway, don't you?
-Yeah. -[Freddy] Okay.
[Juan] You saw that problem coming off the end of the screen.
[Freddy] What I think we do there, Juan, we put,
let's say, a piece of square tube...
[Juan] Okay.
[Freddy] and then we hang some canvas as a dampener.
You know, that's a cheap easy fix for that.
Well, I like it, Freddy.
Why don't we go chat with Mike and Ken
and see what they think?
[Mike] I'm anxious to hear what the hell they think
they can do to that plant.
[ken] Yeah.
Well, gentlemen, we got good news and bad news.
[Freddy] You've seen it's taking that bucket
sample off your grizzly...
-Yes. Right. Uh-huh. -[Freddy] Where the material was coming off?
Well, we just did part of one bucket and--
[Juan] Really only a pan out of one bucket.
[Freddy] Yeah. They're small, but they're there.
-Do you see them, Mike? -[Mike] Oh, I see 'em. I see 'em now.
-Yeah. -[Ken] Oh, yeah.
[Freddy] Probably lose enough right there to pay
for all your fuel and then some.
Well, we got to fix that.
We got an idea to stop this and it's simple.
We put a piece of square tube across your grizzly,
and then we hang some canvas as a dampener.
[Mike] That would really be great.
[Juan] You know, the other thing that we saw,
wet material going through the plant.
Your hopper assembly was getting clogged up,
and then, on top of that, your sluice box
is actually getting stacked up.
You had to slow 'em down
to be able to get that material go through.
That's a big one.
-We wanna build a dryer. -[Freddy] Mmm-hmm.
-Really? -[Freddy] A commercial-type dryer.
It's not a toy.
Your better pay is actually in that wet material.
You'll be able to run that material right into the dryer,
get it dried out, and run it that same day.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Freddy and Juan will build a canvas dampener
to stop pay dirt spilling off the back of Mike's screen.
To dry the wet pay clogging the plant
and extend Mike's mining season,
they'll construct a huge pay dirt dryer.
A steel frame fitted with pitched roller benches
will support a 600-pound trommel.
At one end, a hopper will feed pay dirt into the drum.
At the other, a 30-kilowatt heater
will blast the pay with hot air.
[Freddy] Get that wet material dry,
you're gonna increase your gold, that's for sure.
[Mike] Well, you know, guys, that'd extend the season,
not just to get better pay for one day,
but now, we're mining maybe six,
eight months rather than three or four.
[Juan] But, in total, it's kind of a big number.
We would like to see material and our labor
is seven and a half ounces of gold.
Seven and a half ounces, at the end of the season.
At the end of the season.
[sighs]
[Juan] I know that's a big number, but if we don't
double this gold intake,
I'm willing to do this for free.
Yeah. I'm that confident.
No, I think you got good gold where you're at,
from the test, but we can add to that.
[Mike] Well, I want it improved.
I got to prove that for William and Erin
and the family.
-We'll do it. -[Freddy] All right.
-Deal on -[Mike] Thanks, guys.
[Juan] Right on.
[Mike] I was shocked at how much gold we were losing.
If I can get the gold increased,
both from being able to run more
times a year with wet dirt,
drying it out, and then
getting better recovery off the screen and everything,
I'm really enthused about that.
[dramatic music playing]
[Juan] This may be a game-changer for Mike and Ken.
Freddy and I have never built a dryer like this before.
It's gonna take every bit of,
you know, creativity and drive that we have
to be able to pull something off here
to make this work for these guys.
We better get to work, Juan.
[wind whooshing]
[dramatic music playing]
[Kenneth] Hey, guys. Got your steel here you ordered.
[narrator] In Central Arizona,
Freddy and Juan have called in a local favor.
[Kenneth] Some 30-inch pipe, 2 by 6 by 316-12 tubing,
and some two-inch straps.
[narrator] $7,000-worth of custom cut steel
to attempt their first-ever pay dirt dryer build.
[Juan] Oh, we got the tools we need now.
I'm happy these guys were able to come down
and give us a hand and get it all down here to us.
So, now, the work begins.
[Freddy] Back up a little bit, Juan-o,
so I don't cramp your style coming in.
[Juan] That's as far as it goes. I got it straight now.
Well, right now, we're starting on
the framework for the dryer.
We'll start cutting pieces here,
get as much cut as we can,
and start fabricating it.
[narrator] The dryer will work similar to a trommel.
Wet pay dirt is fed into one end of the massive cylinder.
A propane heater
will dry the dirt as the trommel spins.
[Freddy] Eyeballs.
[Juan] You know, Freddy and I wanna build something from scratch,
from the ground up, so we're gonna have to build a frame.
We're gonna have to build a roller assembly,
the drive assembly, and also the drum, which is a ton of work.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Just outside...
[Mike] Yeah, there they are.
[narrator] After a 1,500-mile trip from Louisiana...
[Mike] Let's walk over there and meet them.
I'll introduce you guys.
[narrator] Mike's son, Will, and daughter-in-law,
Erin, arrive to assist the operation.
[Freddy] Yeah. And they go right below the edge, you know?
[Mike] Hey, you guys. I want you to meet my son.
-This is Will. -[Juan] How you doing?
-Will. -Will, nice to meet you. Juan.
Juan, this is Erin, Will's wife.
-Nice to meet you, Erin. -[Erin] Good to meet you.
[Mike] And this is, Freddy. Freddy Dodge.
-Will. Will, I heard? -[Will] Yes, sir.
-[Mike] And... -Erin.
-[Mike] Erin. -[Freddy] Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
[Juan] Came in to see your future, huh?
Yes, sir.
-[Juan] All right. Well-- -[Mike] He's got a family,
couple of kids by marriage to take care of too.
They might be worried about spending a lot of money
and maybe spending it foolishly,
but I wanna prove to them that it's not a fool's errand,
and I'd like this mine to support his family.
Have you done any mining before?
[Will] I came out here, what was that, two years ago?
-[Juan] Okay. -[Mike] We mined for 10 days.
We put an ounce of gold in his pocket
and a half an ounce in mine.
-We were doing it by hand, just shoveling. -[Juan] Oh, no kidding?
[Mike] I said we need a bigger shovel.
[laughter]
[Mike] So, I went out and got a backhoe,
upgraded to a real miner.
[Will] Dad wants to support us and our kids
to move out of a bad situation,
a bad neighborhood.
Moving from job to job,
it's a major stressor in our lives
with me and Erin, and we're trying to see
whether it's economical for this to really work out.
[Erin] Moving out here, I would be leaving,
you know, my mom and dad, my gran,
my aunts and brothers.
With the kids and everything,
it would have to be something that we knew
we could depend on.
You wanna come down and give us a hand, man,
you're more than welcome to come give us a hand.
Yeah. I'd love to see what you all can do.
[Freddy] Have you welded at all?
[Will] No. I have a lot to learn.
[Freddy] We can set it up here and teach you some stuff.
Yes, sir.
I'd appreciate that, for sure.
[Freddy] If you're gonna be here with your dad,
you need to start getting some of those skills.
[upbeat music playing]
[Freddy] Will's gonna have to
go on a crash course of skills,
but if he is enthusiastic, learning comes easy.
I've already got 'em laid out,
so I'll have you hold 'em while I tack 'em on.
[narrator] Drafting in Will,
Freddy starts on some teardrop gears,
which will enable Mike to pull
the dryer around the claim.
I'd like my dad to succeed here.
He's all heart and all mine too.
He wanted to set up something good for the family.
Be like coming out here and mining,
and doing that together.
And I think he knows what he's doing,
but he did spend his entire retirement
to settle here and mine,
so it's very important that he succeeds.
[Freddy] Okay.
This is 6010.
So, the way I'm welding with it,
I'm acting like I'm stacking dimes.
[Will] Okay.
It's a big deal. Yeah.
It would be a bad thing if what he worked all his life
to gain went wrong.
[Freddy] Give her a try, bud.
There you go.
Stack those dimes.
There you go. You're done.
It may not be purty, but it's kind of welded.
-Get some leathers. -Yes, sir.
[Freddy] And start practicing.
[Will] Thanks for showing me.
-Appreciate it. -You're welcome.
I was nervous, you know?
It's, like, I'm next to Freddy,
and I'm learning how to weld.
Never done that before,
but it's good experience, good knowledge.
So, I gotta practice is what he says.
Practice makes perfect.
[Mike] You got a teaching from a master there.
-Yeah. -Well, you got to show me something, all right?
-Deal. -Deal.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] At the cut trailer...
[Juan] Just finished up the roller assemblies.
It's what the new dryer's gonna ride on.
That way, we can get it onto the frame,
get it put in place and we can set the drum.
[narrator] Heat-resistant steel rollers
will sit on Freddy's steel frame
and allow the drying trommel to turn.
I'll be done with these welds in 10 minutes.
Okay. Perfect.
What are you gonna do, back in and grab the frame?
Yeah, I'll just back my truck in right here.
We'll lift this up, set it on the ground,
then we'll lift the trommel drum up, get it right on top.
-Five, I'll be done. -[Juan] All right.
[wind whooshing]
[dramatic music playing]
[Juan] We're gonna find out if our measurements are correct, huh?
[Freddy] Yeah.
That's absolutely perfect.
[Juan] What are the odds of that?
If you look in between the wheels here,
between the wheels and the drum itself,
they're perfectly flat up against the drum.
Over here as well.
And that just tells you that we got our angles right.
I like it.
[Freddy] Yup.
I'm glad to see it coming together.
I'm anxious to see the final result.
[upbeat music playing]
All in all, you know, it was a good day,
but a plant needs a lot of work,
so time is of the essence right now.
It's definitely a new challenge for us.
[narrator] Coming up...
Hey, guys, you're just gonna have to let us roll today.
What's taking so long, Freddy?
[Freddy] Glad I didn't eat any bean burritos last night,
because I'm gonna be in this tube for a while.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] I added a little too much, gotta take some out.
Well, what I'm doing is I'm selling black sand.
This little box will be seven pounds
and I'll sell it for $21.
[narrator] Rare metals found in black sand
are used in the construction and electronic industries.
Mike can sell up to five gallons a month
bringing in an extra $1,700 a season.
I saw other people doing that and I thought,
"Yeah, I can do that. It'll make money."
William knows there's some good gold around,
but he hasn't seen this level of mining.
Hopefully, Freddy and Juan help me get that level up
to prove that it'll work, economically.
We'll see.
[narrator] Outside...
[Will] I just wanna show you quickly how to pan.
So, get it all on one side. I tap it like this.
[narrator] Mike's son, Will, gets back to his roots.
[Will] Start walking it back.
[Erin] How did you learn how to do this?
[Will] When I was a kid, with my dad,
we went and did a test sample of some soil
down in the riverbed right away from the house.
So, I've been doing this since I was seven or eight.
Dad has always been interested in mining.
I always liked geology and rocks,
and I think it's because of dad.
When I was a kid, my parents got a divorce.
You know, I've always known my dad and he's a great dad,
but I didn't have the relationship
with my dad that I wanted.
And coming out here can give me that
and also I could have a new start for my family,
which we really need.
-Look at that color. -[Erin] Oh, wow.
-[gasps] Oh, my goodness. -[Will] Yeah.
-That's a piece of gold right there. -Do you see all that?
[Erin] Oh, my goodness.
I think this could be a new beginning.
And so, hopefully, Freddy and Juan help us succeed.
We need to know that it's gonna be totally,
you know, steady, steady,
you know, something to always fall back on.
[soft country music playing]
[upbeat music playing]
[narrator] On the other side of the plain...
[Freddy] Hey, guys, you're just gonna have to let us roll today.
We don't have time for TV.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan turn and burn.
Just 24 hours left before the final test run.
[Juan] After this break, you wanna start
making it smaller here to what, three?
-[Freddy] Three tall? -[Juan] Yeah.
[Freddy] And then, we could knock it down if we need to.
-Okay, I'll do it. -Sounds good.
-Thanks, man. -All right, no problem.
Freddy made a quick sketch and some measurements
of what he wanted, so
really, now it's crunch time.
We gotta get this done today.
Damn this plate's hot.
Woo!
This may be a game-changer for Mike,
to try to make sure that we come up
with great solutions to their problems.
If we don't double their gold recovery,
it's free.
It just kind of pushes us a little harder
to try to help him get more gold.
[narrator] By the trommel,
Freddy inserts thin pieces of steel called lifters
that will help separate the wet pay dirt inside.
[Will] You mind if I watch?
[Freddy] No, stand wherever you can see, buddy.
Yes, sir.
[Freddy] Still fabricating, you know, Juan and myself
mentally pictured what we wanted to build
for this situation,
and got steel and started putting it together.
So, imagination's most important.
[Will] Okay. So, you just kind of...
You figure it out, you design.
-Picture it in your head. -Basically a engineer.
Picture it in your head and then go from there.
[Will] Basically, I don't have a lot of experience,
so it's invaluable to really learn
from Freddy and Juan
whatever they can share with me,
so that I can really learn from all their experience.
[Freddy] Here we go. We'll knock this son of a gun out.
[whimsical music playing]
[Freddy] And this is frickin' comfortable.
-[clangs] -[Freddy] Ouch.
I'm glad I didn't eat any bean burritos last night
'cause I'm gonna be in this tube for a while.
[narrator] With Freddy in a tight spot,
Juan switches focus to the broken backhoe.
[Juan] I'm gonna pull this floorpan out,
and then we're gonna replace the valve.
Nothing worse than having a piece
of equipment that's down.
So, that's the valve we're gonna replace
right there.
It's actually the hose going to the valve,
it's been chewed through by pack rats or mice or something.
They've had a field day here.
There it is.
Now, we'll just put the base plate
back on and call it good.
[machine whirs]
[engine turns over]
[narrator] With the backhoe back in business,
Juan turns to the heating element for the dry blower.
What I'm doing right now is I'm cutting out
the pieces that I need to be able to mount
the heating unit on the front of the dryers.
I'm hoping that we have enough heat
to be able to dry that material.
[narrator] A 30-kilowatt propane heater
will blast the wet pay dirt
with 100,000 BTUs of drying power.
[Juan] We're gonna make it adjustable
so we can adjust the pitch
on the heater to be able to hit
the material where we want it.
It looks good.
It's ready to go on.
Perfect.
This is adjustable, so we need to adjust it.
[Mike] That's really slick.
What angle do you recommend?
Well, we don't know yet.
We're gonna find out.
[bird caws]
[narrator] Freddy's final fix.
[Freddy] We're gonna put a cloth dampener in here.
We're gonna make it where it's removable.
[narrator] A cloth dampener that will prevent pay
bouncing off the screen.
[Freddy] Are you in your slot?
[Ken] Yes, it is.
[Freddy] How far out are you sticking, Ken?
[Ken] Cloth hanging just about right.
[Freddy] Okay. So is mine.
So, as it comes down through, it'll hit that cloth,
which will stop it from bouncing,
and then more of it'll go through the screen.
I like it.
[Ken] No way in hell that's bouncing out of there.
[Freddy] Well, thanks, guys.
[Mike] I think it's a really neat idea.
You know, Freddy's got so much experience
to have the intuition or the confidence
to do something like that.
It's just surprising to me
and that's why we want it around here.
Quite different than I expected,
but I wanna see it work now.
[wind whooshing]
-Hey, Freddy? -[Freddy] Yes, sir.
I'm gonna spin it.
[narrator] Back at the dry blower,
the trommel is finally ready for a test run.
Watch yourself.
[rock music playing]
[Freddy] Cooking with gas now, Juan.
I like it.
I'm really happy with what I see right now.
We got it spinning, the hopper's in.
It's beautiful that you just dream something up like that,
cut some steel and weld it together.
[Mike] It's amazing.
To do this kind of work in the field?
It's really something.
[Will] Yeah, we're real adamant to see
what the plant can produce.
That's gonna be a decision-maker or breaker.
So, we're gonna see what Freddy and Juan have done.
[Freddy] The lifters are welded in.
Nice.
[Mike] So, how long do you think it'll take to finish it?
[Juan] Another four days.
[Mike] Oh, God, I wanna see it run.
Hurry up, guys.
-Gotta hurry up, Fred. -[Freddy] Right.
-What's taking so long, Freddy? -[Mike] Yeah.
-[Freddy] That's right. -[laughter]
[Freddy] Didn't see anybody else offer to climb in this pipe.
[laughter]
Where do you want it, Fred?
[narrator] As night falls,
Juan uses his new electric loader
to move the pay dryer closer to the mine.
[Juan] Inside the controls are exactly
like what it would be on a regular machine,
only difference is it's electric.
Love it, Juan.
Come on ahead a little bit more.
That'll work.
[Juan] It's impressive how powerful this thing is.
You know, you think electrical,
you think it's gonna be kind of sluggish.
It's gonna be doggy. It's not.
Perfect.
[dramatic music playing]
[wind whooshing]
Looks good.
[narrator] At the Robinson Mine...
[Juan] Well, you see what we did, right?
[Ken] So, you guys got a little paint on it last night, huh?
[narrator] Freddy and Juan's custom-built dryer
has been given a creative touch overnight.
[Juan] Dragon Breath, right?
-[Freddy] Dragon Breath. -[Mike] Dragon Breath.
-[Juan] I like it. -[Freddy] I like it, too.
[Juan] It's ready to roll.
[Freddy] Fire it up.
[narrator] Before, Mike's pay was too damp
for his dry plant,
making it slow and inefficient.
[Mike] All right, Miss Kitty,
we're gonna get down and dirty.
[narrator] Now, the new hot dryer
should remove moisture from the pay
before it is run through the plant.
[Mike] We can dry it out, we get more gold,
then we can run twice as many months out of the year.
So, hopefully, this is gonna work.
[Juan] Holy crap, that's hot.
[Freddy] Frickin' hot, boy.
Dry.
[Juan] Mike.
[Mike] It's hot coming out of there.
Damn near fry eggs,
it's that hot.
[Erin] I think it's badass.
[Freddy] Let's get your plant fired up,
run some dry material through it.
[narrator] The first run
was only three hours and fifteen minutes
due to a backhoe breakdown.
This time, Will takes over operation from father, Mike.
[Ken] First bucket.
Let's make some gold.
[Will] If this works and we can make money,
I think we're gonna do real good out here.
[Mike] Yeah, baby.
That's what I like to see.
[Freddy] Dry as a bone, huh?
-Like sand through an hourglass, Juan. -Yeah.
[Mike] We got two more yards,
we can actually run the trays faster,
so it's really looking good.
[Freddy] Juan, you gotta see this.
-It's perfect. -Good, huh?
[narrator] At the hopper, Freddy's bush fix dampener
keeps the pay dirt from falling off the screen.
-[Freddy] It's pretty simple. -[Ken] Yes, it is.
[Freddy] A piece of square tube, a welding blanket,
and two bungee cords.
Five percent of your gold or more.
Last bucket.
[Will] Okay.
[upbeat music playing]
[Will] I think Dad, he's trying to make sure
that there's a safety net.
That's what parents do.
They create safety nets for their kids.
We've really bonded.
He's a good dude.
He's appreciated and loved.
[Mike] I like that Dragon Breath.
That really dries it out.
But you don't know how it's gonna go.
So, let's weigh it up and see what we got.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] Oh, look, here they come.
-[Juan] Hey, guys. Hey, everyone. -[Erin] Hey.
During our first test run, you guys got a quarter ounce
and you wanted to double that, right?
Yeah. You know, if you're gonna wish, wish big.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan's fixes
must double the 0.25 ounces from the first test
or they agreed to waive their $15,000 fee.
[Juan] Now, Will, would half an ounce
be enough for you guys to be down here?
-Half an ounce would get us down here. -Yes.
-[Juan] Yeah? Okay -For sure.
[narrator] Half an ounce would mean Mike,
Will, and Erin could earn over $300,000 a year,
enough to pay off Mike's big debts
and live on the rest.
-Well, proof will be in the pudding, huh, Juan? -[Erin laughs]
-[Mike] Oh, my goodness. Look at this. -[man] Zero her out, Fred.
There's double right there.
-[Will] Nice. -[Freddy] Over double.
-That's 0.60. -[Mike] Are you kidding me?
0.75.
[narrator] The second wave brings in a whopping
200% increase.
The Robinson Mine can earn as much as $2,850 a day.
-Exactly three-quarters. -Come here, guys.
-Give me that. -Pretty dang good.
What do you say, Freddy?
-Thanks a lot. -[Freddy] That's pretty darn good.
[Mike] That's good gold.
[narrator] With his season extended
to at least eight months,
Mike could earn nearly $700,000
a year, allowing him to pay his debt and provide
enough money for Will and Erin
to come in on the business.
-[Will] I appreciate it. -[Freddy] No problem.
[Erin] There's no question anymore.
We don't have to even... The decision is made.
We're gonna be new neighbors, Mike.
How you feel about that?
I'm gonna have to buy another camper.
[laughter]
[Mike] I was totally blown away.
I used to teach chemistry.
I'm a lab guy and a lecture guy, you know?
So, to do this kind of a change,
and then it become a reality?
When family like what you're doing,
and you've convinced them that it's worth their while
and it could be their livelihood to come out here,
it gets you right there.
[Will] Arizona smile is what they call it.
When you see it in the pan and it's just a gold ring.
Or you see it on your wife's face,
when your life has changed,
that's what you call a Arizona smile.
[Juan] Well, it's been a tough week for Freddy and I,
but we got it done.
The great news is now they got what they need
to be able to be successful in the future.
The American West was built because of gold mining
and gold.
One thing gold does to people, it inspires them.
We're really happy.
-Thank you. -I love you.
-[Will] I love you, baby. -[Erin] Love you.
[blues music playing]
Since Freddy and Juan left,
we were getting really good dirt.
The last run that we actually did
was really high in recovery.
More than a gram a yard.
So, we were doing really well.
August is the monsoon season.
We're waiting on that now with bated breath.
That's when we expect to be using the dryer a lot.
Will and Erin are excited to come back
and planning and working that direction.
[Will] You know, we've got the mine,
we've got each other, and we've got family.
And getting that gold in the ground
and having all that fun and it was just an experience.
It was very important.
The hugest shout out to Freddy and Juan.
This has opened up huge things.
[Will] I'm a welder now.
It's badass.