Hello Custard, you've got a really interesting project here. How come you moved away from the 3 Keene trays to the ones you built yourself? Was that so you could use bellows?
DIY 3 tray dry blower
- Thread starter Custard
- Start date
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- dry blower dry washer
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G'day Bevn,
Found out early when looking into what to build the bellows or constant air discussion is like the Ford or Holden.
A few things drove my decision,
1) Cost - by the time you buy three keene trays and air supply is quite expensive. Then you still have to build the rest.
The one I'm building will cost about $6k (excluding labour). Is alot of bloody work though
2) When looking at throughput it appeared i would get more through the 2 X bellows trays than I would through 3 X keene trays
3) I was introduced to a bloke who had built 4 X 6 tray bellows units, so there is alot of knowledge available.
4) Really enjoyed Moneybox's and Nightjar articles and builds, looked like fun.
5) Bellows sound cool.
Moneybox
Philip & Sandra Box
Yes I realise those are HD engine mounts however they are designed to insulate engine vibration while preventing excessive engine movement. I think you'll find that they will keep your screen nicely steady when you really want it vibrating madly
but as you say, you'll never know until you give it a go and it's easily corrected if it doesn't work well.
Custard, Comment (5) When you finally get into dryblowing you'll find nothing "cool" it's more like sweat and tears.G'day Bevn,
Found out early when looking into what to build the bellows or constant air discussion is like the Ford or Holden.
A few things drove my decision,
1) Cost - by the time you buy three keene trays and air supply is quite expensive. Then you still have to build the rest.
The one I'm building will cost about $6k (excluding labour). Is alot of bloody work though
2) When looking at throughput it appeared i would get more through the 2 X bellows trays than I would through 3 X keene trays
3) I was introduced to a bloke who had built 4 X 6 tray bellows units, so there is alot of knowledge available.
4) Really enjoyed Moneybox's and Nightjar articles and builds, looked like fun.
5) Bellows sound cool.
Shaping up very well
Morning all,
Managed to finish Dry Blower (Libby) just before our trip.
She didnt miss a beat, worked for about 60 hours over two weeks with no breakdowns, so very happy.
Being our first time there was a massive learning curve in how to have her set up and adjustments made harder by changes in different dirt we ran.
Total for Libby was 89.46 gms. Best day was 26 gms in 6 hours.
We loaded once with excavator (very short time) land the rest with a Bobcat and we estimate just over 5m3 per hour (we did slow it down for some dirt).
We were surprised by the lack of very fine gold, either not there or in discharge. That being said we used a Keene dry blower to check random piles of our fines discharge and found no gold in what we checked.
All up, very stressful trying to get it finished and alot more work than I expected but rewarding with running time, through put, reliability and gold return.
Managed to finish Dry Blower (Libby) just before our trip.
She didnt miss a beat, worked for about 60 hours over two weeks with no breakdowns, so very happy.
Being our first time there was a massive learning curve in how to have her set up and adjustments made harder by changes in different dirt we ran.
Total for Libby was 89.46 gms. Best day was 26 gms in 6 hours.
We loaded once with excavator (very short time) land the rest with a Bobcat and we estimate just over 5m3 per hour (we did slow it down for some dirt).
We were surprised by the lack of very fine gold, either not there or in discharge. That being said we used a Keene dry blower to check random piles of our fines discharge and found no gold in what we checked.
All up, very stressful trying to get it finished and alot more work than I expected but rewarding with running time, through put, reliability and gold return.
Attachments
No breakdowns, no fines missed and a nice haul of nuggets - all on just the shakedown outing!
Great results I reckon, well done.
Great results I reckon, well done.
