The first Argonauts of 1848 used quite primitive mining tools: knives, spoons, a shovel, and a pan for washing the gold. Since these miners could only dig out bigger nuggets with such primitive equipment, they had to work on rich gold deposits. In the same year, technical improvements such as the cradle, the rocker, the long tom, and river damming, basically all known since the Middle Ages, were introduced by the more experienced Mexicans. The cradle and the rocker both worked on the same principle: wooden boxes with the top and front piece missing and a sieve on the bottom side through which the dirt containing gold was washed. On the bottom horizontal wooden bars slowed the incoming water down and helped to separate dirt from gold. With a handle on the side of the box, the whole mechanism could be rocked. The rocker required 3 or 4 people to work, one to shovel the dirt into the machine, one responsible for the water supply, and a third one to move the handle. Contrary to the individual washing with the pan, this more efficient technique required miners to find partners, thus establishing small mining groups of 3 to 9 people.
The long tom functioned similarly to the rocker but increased its efficiency. It also had the shape of a trough, but it was much larger, 12 to 15 feet long and about 2 feet wide. Mainly made out of wood, it had a metal bottom with a sieve and a ripple box at its end. This machine was put up with a slight slope, thus facilitating the water flow. While one man shoveled dirt into the long tom, making sure that the water was running, another mixed water and dirt while taking out big stones that could damage the sieve. At the end of the day, the dirt was taken out of the box and washed in a pan. Six to eight men had to work a long tom to fully exploit its capacities. A few miners started to employ the long tom at the end of 1848, and by 1850 it became a common machine.
River damming was the most advanced mining technique that also required groups of men to work together. The miners either stopped part of a river with a u-shaped dam, a so-called wing dam, or they led the whole river into a neighboring river or a valley. While the first technique was easier, both methods dried out the river bed to process its dirt in long toms. The miners had to wait until the water level of the rivers was low enough, at the end of June, before they could build the dams, a process which took until September. Soon, the seasonal rains would break the dams, leaving the miners only a few weeks to wash gold. As a big investment in time and labor force, river damming required larger groups of miners, thus leading to formation of companies that bore a striking resemblance to the joint-stock companies. Probably already existing in 1849, these mining companies established rules and laws and executive institutions that dealt with the miners´ legal and social concerns.
The sluice occupied a middle position between long tom and river damming. It was based on a system of water pipes, often several hundred feet long and required a lot of water to run through. This was achieved by partially damming the river or leading it somewhere else. Similar to the long tom, the sluice needed a slope so that the dirt could settle in a basin at the end.
The dry diggings required sinking a shaft into gold-bearing ground, usually a hillside, with a winch installed at the top of the shaft. Once the gold-bearing layers were reached, the miners dug a horizontal tunnel. Two men were able to work this mine with one digging in the tunnel and the other working the winch. They interrupted their work to wash the dirt. Since water proved crucial to the process of washing gold, the miners increasingly started to form water companies from 1851 onwards to secure water supply in the dry diggings. Modeled after 18th-century Massachussetts water companies that were organized to supply the communities with water to fight fire, these Californian water companies bore co-operative features with their financers and workers being identical. It was their task to build a trench or aqueduct to the diggings in order to supply the Long Toms with water.
Such companies proved difficult to organize and their costs were extremely high, sometimes up to 275,000 dollars per water supply for the diggings. Thus, the initial co-operative model increasingly gave way to separated joint-stock companies formed by entrepreneurs. These companies often acquired a monopolistic position in the diggings. Controlling the water supply, they could dictate prices for the precious liquid in the dry California climate where rain was scarce. Not surprisingly, the miners were outraged by the water companies´ price policies and increasingly went on "strike" or boycotted the source in an effort to reduce the price of water, particularly from 1855 onwards. The water companies´ transition from co-operative to private capitalistic forms of labor organization was part of the power shift from the individual small operator to companies and corporations with large labor forces, leading to conflicting interests between the capital owners and the miners, thus contributing to a formation of class consciousness and antagonisms.
Contrary to the placers where gold could be found in river beds in pure, granulated form, a lot of California gold was encapsulated in rocks. These rocks had to be mined and then mechanically crushed. Afterwards, amalgamization with mercury withdrew the gold from the stone dust. Quartz mining thus required the highest level of technique and financial investment. Therefore, quartz mining became common only from 1850 onwards and usually involved large mining companies who employed wage laborers.