Fine Gold Recovery information and questions

[shivan]

I was very interested in the Catch it II water table, but the problem was shipping to Oz cost as much as the unit did again :/ . Hope they found a way to make postage a bit cheaper, they said they were looking in to it.

 

[Ag Man]

Ramjet,
If you attend one of the camps, get someone good with a pan to show you good clean up tips.
Hours spent in the shed cleaning up the same cons over & over again is good practice too.
Don't put all your cons in one pan either - go with very small batches to begin with. Even a table spoon or teaspoon at a time. The snuffer bottles are usually only used to suck up the gold but they are great to use to push sands away from your gold too using a gentle water stream.

 

[Ramjet]

Thanks guys.
The 'Catch it II' seems to be a small miller table as in Joe's build in this thread...

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=491

Ag man That is the approach I'm taking. Small amounts at a time, slow and steady.
Keeping all the cons to re-process. I am getting gold, just don't want to miss any

 

[Danielkrupski]

Get an Angus mackirk predator 3 doesn't miss a thing

 

[headbut]

Hey Rod , if you do all your panning into 1 tub or container, you can always go back through it after when the skills are better, dont discard it

 

[gcause]

I just use my high banker it traps all the fine flour gold. I always keep a large rectangular bucket at the end of it to catch the tailings and have tested the tailings from it many times and it never lets the fine gold go through. You then simply pan off what's in the matting. One or two pans and you are done.

 

[Danielkrupski]

I forgot to mention about the Angus is to keep the material you have panned after it has gone thru the sluice. Re run the material in the sluice and pan that again. You will be surprised or at least I am always. Either it's really really good or I am just plain **** at panning. In my opinion best thing I ever bought for gold. I even went thru cons that I threw in the garden after I blue Bowled it and double panned and still found gold.

 

[Ramjet]

Thanks again for all the replies.
Daniel I have a mackirk grubsteak. Think I'll set it up at home.
Now that I have classified my cons very fine I'm interested to see how it goes.

Cheers

Rod

 

[joe]

Hi Rod, somehow missed this post yes put one together low cost budget. The most that cost me was the 23 dollar pump. Works great , the only mistake I did not applied primer before applying chalkboard paint on the glossy surface. had it outside running water through it for close to a day on a hot sunny day and the paint bubbled up.

i have seen cleanup sluice just from allum and cutting mat A3 $ 10 (cheaper that slate)

 

[Danielkrupski]

Ramjet I tried to do the same with my boss running 2 pumps . Not the same. I'm not sure if the riffles work different or what? But without an affiliation with Angus mackirk even though my predator 3 came buckled and twisted and had to use glue to fix the leaks in the spout cause it cracked . It is still the best thing that I have bought .i am how ever disappointed in the boss sluice. I think it takes a lot and a lot of water to run properly. But in my opinion the pedator 3 is the ducks guts just wish I had an auto feeder. Cause u can easily spend a night in the garage slowly feeding it. Plus I noticed surges in feed move visible gold. I think if your patience without and auto feeder u will be fine. Auto feeder is my next project. Hope this helps

 

[backcreek]

Hay Rod,
All I use is a similar method to Liz.
Lots of patience and practice, practice, practice. Go through your cons this way at least twice, more if you are not confident.
See it here at about 12:00 minutes



Cheers
Mick

 

[HeadsUp]

Ramjet I tried to do the same with my boss running 2 pumps . Not the same. I'm not sure if the riffles work different or what? But without an affiliation with Angus mackirk even though my predator 3 came buckled and twisted and had to use glue to fix the leaks in the spout cause it cracked . It is still the best thing that I have bought .i am how ever disappointed in the boss sluice. I think it takes a lot and a lot of water to run properly. But in my opinion the pedator 3 is the ducks guts just wish I had an auto feeder. Cause u can easily spend a night in the garage slowly feeding it. Plus I noticed surges in feed move visible gold. I think if your patience without and auto feeder u will be fine. Auto feeder is my next project. Hope this helps

i found that too , any surges in water flow can flush your gold right out the end of the mckirks and i guess most other styles of sluice too

if possible , have a ball valve on your sluice so you can turn the pump on and then slowly open the valve to avoid surges

i think the boss is similar to my foreman sluice which mckirk said is suited to 2000 GPH flow . any more flow than that and you can wave goodbye to 90 % of your gold

 

[HeadsUp]

for anyone that fancies a bit of heavy reading on sluice design .

it is more comprehensive than the clarkson study which is the bottom link

http://hecklerfabrication.com/files/sluice-build-partIII-2.pdf

http://hecklerfabrication.com/files/fine_gold_recovery_sluiceboxes__Poling.pdf

http://hecklerfabrication.com/files/Clarkson_Riffle_Test.pdf

 

[Philski]

Some out their ways

If you can dry your concentrates thoroughly and add them to an ultrasonic cleaner at a very slight angle. a teaspoon or so at a time. The gold will separate out in a few seconds to approx 90% purity. Like a high speed shaker table or backwash and tap panning method. It works as well on flour gold and fines as pickers.
Underwater the same concentrates just go round in circles and wont separate out at all.

Edison built a static electricity (Electrostatic) gold separator for his Nevada expedition. Gold has an affinity to Static electricity. It worked, but again the cons needed to be 100% dry to be effective and his ground was damp.

The Klondike miners (fine gold) did heaps of sluice tests and found 1 - 1/4 inch expanded metal, classified material and carpet it had the highest capture rate. (under controlled conditions) They also had good success on clean up with no riffles or carpet in the sluice at all. Just a gentle angle and flow. It may have even been done on glass.

kind regards
Phillip

 

[Bushranger]

Sure is heavy reading...but was great for a novice to learn the basics. Great section on riffle dEsign in the fIrst article. Can't wait to try it out.

 

[HeadsUp]

Sure is heavy reading...but was great for a novice to learn the basics. Great section on riffle dEsign in the fIrst article. Can't wait to try it out.

i dont agree with everything he wrote

i ended up with wider spacing between riffles than his theories in order to get self cleaning , mind you some of my testing involved throwing gravel through up to 40 mm in size

i wanted to get a highbanker sluice that would take big volumes of gravel without losing gold

i probably spent 40 - 50 hours on reading , welding and bench testing various configurations , after 11 rebuilds or modifications i think i am close to my last mod .

I will let people know how the next field test goes

Edited :
Just to clarify ,even though I put big gravel through during testing , in actual field use I have a choice of either 5mm or 13 mm grizzly bar spacing depending on what size gold the area shows

Will post a photo next time I have it with me

 

[slowflow]

Love to see what it looks like, any photos?

 

[Greglz86]

Hey guys, I'm just wondering if anyone has any tips on panning the concentrates from a highbanker while out on the creek.
I have seen a few vids on youtube that make it seem easy (shivan, walnliz) but no matter how hard I try I just cant seem to get the same results.
Basicaly I can get it down to nothing but black sand easy enough but alot of the finer stuff always seems to be mixed in with the black sand and I just cant get it down to the botton of the pan.
I know some people would rather just take their heavies home and do it on a blue wheel or just pan it with rrinse aid or detergent, but this is refering to while out on the creek.
Thanks for your time
Greg

 

[G0lddigg@]

hey Greg,

The trick with separating that last bit out is to get your concentrate up in the top corner of your pan and leave just enough water in the pan to wash from the back of the pan over the top of your concentrate.

then basically while holding your pan upwards on an angle with the base of the pan low and further away high you tap the top of the pan whilst very slowly washing the water up and and back down thus bringing down a layer of black sand, if you see some gold come down a bit tap the top and the gold should jump towards the top of the pan. changing angle and how much water you use is a bit tricky to get right but it works, its a bit hard to explain very easy to show in person. I keep meaning to make a video for this and never have a cameraman handy when i'm at the creek.

 

[Ag Man]

If you got a full pan of black sands from your sluice clean up it'll be hard to pan it all off in one go.
Try panning it off in small batches & use your snuffer bottle to your advantage. You' don't have to pan it all off in one go - you just keep reducing your cons till there's nothing but gold left.