WPxdwt

Ok, so Mrs dwt lent me the iPad for the arvo, so it was a slow one on the wash scene, I only managed a full hour on the shovel, wasn't as good a day today as the other day, but what ya gunna do!!
First pic of the unit set up, ready to roll


I included some moss in between 3-4th riffles as GD suggested in the sluice box to see wether any gold was making it that far down, recheck the degrees and set for 9-9.5

One of the mods I made was installing 16mm double crimp stainless woven mesh under the angle iron grizzley, this way I gauranteed every rock was washed clean, no matter what the size

A look inside the belly, with the flip out grizzley out of the pick, pumps speeds are on idle for the photo, didn't want to wash the iPad as well :lol:

Here we can see the build up of black & the notorious white sands build up on the down stream side of the Hungarian styled riffle on the moss

Fine gold trap built into the base of the sluice box, I run carpet in the sluice box with no V rubber, this was installed as a clean up fine gold trap for anything washing through or down the sides of the carpet, it tapers from one side to the other then out the outlet pipe into a pan with the low side of the pan having the riffles facing out

A view from on top of the fines trap with carpet and moss removed, you can see the water skimming over the top, with a 30mm gap it allows for any heavies to drop down and fall into the pan

This pic is of the carpet at the top of the box, under punch plate with a rubber flap to even and slow the water flow, allowing the heavies to drop, close inspection will show 3-4 pieces of fine gold

And the final clean up, wasn't as much as I was hoping for, but with such small fine pieces I'm happy nothing else is making its way through, in between the 2nd and 3rd riffle is expanded mesh on top of the carpet, forgot to mention that sorry :8
Anyways happy digging people's

Looks like the same type I've been in mate. I like the mesh addition, good work. How deep are the digs? Can't wait to see the blue machine onsite doing its thing... many frogs around?

Hi DWT,

That's a very interesting concept and could come in handy in a variety of situations. It looks like its collecting the goods pretty well.
Have you thought of flushing the hose out at the end of the day to see if any yellow has settled in there?

Great pics and explanation too, cheers

MJB said:

Hi DWT,

That's a very interesting concept and could come in handy in a variety of situations. It looks like its collecting the goods pretty well.
Have you thought of flushing the hose out at the end of the day to see if any yellow has settled in there?

Great pics and explanation too, cheers

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Was wondering the same thing MJB and agree with its versatility!

Mr DWT, that is a great bit of gear!
Thanks for sharing it!

Cheers,
Billy.

Goldtarget said:

Looks like the same type I've been in mate. I like the mesh addition, good work. How deep are the digs? Can't wait to see the blue machine onsite doing its thing... many frogs around?

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Hey dude, digs are still quite shallow, only going down 12" at the most, the creeks water hole holds level across the whole area so I can't go down far till the water hole empties to the next one, and that's the Beaty of the unit, with the sluice box 6 plus meters away I can keep digging without refilling the area I'm in with water and or waste, hanging out to start heading down deeper
No frogs, but two resident wombats not far away and a couple of inquisitive black snakes, oh and 1 x Bullvye, who's happy just to laze around and not pull his weight :lol:
I'll definetly throw it on the trailer for a GT run date, and maybe a large banker as well, see how the last one goes

MJB said:

Hi DWT,

That's a very interesting concept and could come in handy in a variety of situations. It looks like its collecting the goods pretty well.
Have you thought of flushing the hose out at the end of the day to see if any yellow has settled in there?

Great pics and explanation too, cheers

Click to expand...

G'day mate, I treat the black pipe like a mongrel dog about to bite, shake and kick the crap out of it :lol: yeah mate, it gets disconnected and flushed through in to a bucket

Love it.

Finished the last of the mods today, added another water inlet port on the side of the cone, teed off that and fitted a hand held spray nozzle with hose to it, just to make for faster rock washing.
Sample panning the area of creek was completed today also, cross section samples taken to prove up the richest ground, so by this I went from (using a clock face as a reference 12 o'clock being North) 3 to 9 (or East West) taking sample pans every meter, 10 to 4, 11 to 5 and so on, this led me to the realisation that the "pay streak" I was looking for was running from the 2 o'clock position across to the 7 to 8 o'clock position, the ground colour was a reddish colour and if there wasn't heavy white sands in the pan there was absoloutley no gold, first time I'd come across this, usually if I'm finding black sands, I'm finding gold, but in this case on the outer edges of the "pay streak" line, we had plenty of black sands but no heavy white sands.
So it's dig dig dig time and see what gets dragged up

You certainly have some nice equipment DWT and it will handle a massive amount of material.

I can see your gold jar will be overflowing very soon.

Cheers

The clean out after yesterday's dig, had a lot of trouble trying to clean the White sands out of the gold, so Ithought an overnight soaking in some Alloybrite would do the trick...........nope!!!!


The final result, it payed off doing a cross section search of the creek, the yield was better than the last few days by a mile,
I'll be using this technique in the future to narrow down the dig area, with only a narrow window of time left before I had to pull out and head home, I was a happy boy when it came time to wash the mat's out.


These were also found in the clean up, photo was taken under a 10x loupe, I have no idea about gems or anything else besides Au, having being obliviously heavy in weight, and colour to it I thought it better to hang on to them and put the question to some experts

All in all not a bad few days out, well short of my 5ounce (hopefull) haul, but with the area surrounded by private property, and definite alluvial lead no more than 10 meters from where I was digging behind stuck in a natural eroding bank, I'm sure this spot will be giving up the ghost for well after I've gone the way of the dodo
Cheers guys, happy digging

Nice work mate. Putting the shovel in the right place by the looks of that.

4 little Sapphires and a buggeredifIknow. That White sand DWT is more than likely Zircon sand (a mineral sand), which is why it's hard to separate, it has a higher specific gravity than most of the other stuff, same with the Sapphires. Keep the gems mate, might be some bigger ones about.

To be honest DWT I think you are onto a winner with this contraption, it really looks the part too.

a new concept and design that works...awsome build mate

Great post and work from the build to the creek .you put a lot of thought into it clearly.

Nice gold mate and nice technique ill have to try that..

Just wondering Dwt with the black pipe ,could you have a series of straight pipe with flexibile joints per 2m or so if there's any length to the pipe .save cleaning .

Heatho said:

4 little Sapphires and a buggeredifIknow.

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Thanks for the tip on the sapphires mate, the other 2 rocks have a strange green tinge to them in the sunlight, couldn't get much of a better photo than the ones posted

Dug said:

Just wondering Dwt with the black pipe ,could you have a series of straight pipe with flexibile joints per 2m or so if there's any length to the pipe .save cleaning .

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Amazingly enough, I've never had gold come out of the black pipe upon clean up, I've had everything stuck in the sluice box from .3gram flat nuggies to the same weight in rounded pieces, old .45 cal lead shot and some half pieces, the black pipe was allways going to be a problem on first build, from memory after I first built it, it was hours of work trimming back the black pipe to get the right length that dirt and water would move through evenly and, not blow strait out of the end of the sluice, or, simply settle in a low section of the pipe and eventually block everything up, however, I regulary do walk and kick the black pipe on my way to check out the sluice, and disconnect the pipe and flush it at the end of each day.
So to answer your question mate, you could quite possibly have shorter sections with Flexi joins, but you would have to be aware that there is more chance of leaks or blow out and it wouldn't be easy to get the pipe lying flat on the ground. If you could get past these couple of hiccups, I'm sure you would have no probs at all mate

Just a note for anyone planning one of these builds, larger or smaller, this was an absoloute necessity, not only does it help break down any dirt clods or help clean rocks this also assists in pushing towards the sluice box, it's located just after the wash unit about 5-600mm from the start of the black pipe

And everything packs up nicely onto a 6x4, however I am thinking of a custom built trailer just to suit this unit