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- Jan 2, 2017
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Imlucky enough to live in area where I can use my banker regularly, and beleive me at first appearance after a build it can look the part.
But after your first day out you find a few things that could be changed to suit you better, even after fifty uses you come up with a better modifiation, So I hope some of this info will help avoid some modifications that may of been needed, or help you choose on your banker design.
This is not in any way a personal attack of Wal's design, but posted for those who are uncertain of some differences.
It's a personal running preferences of set up that some may, or may not like. But worth consideration.
This may also depend on what your hunting for exactly as well. Strictly gold, or gems as well.
If your hunting for gold, this should allow you to shorten a "Wal banker" considerably. As Wal has mentioned previously.
But I strongly advise fitting the rear legs at the very back of the banker for stability, especially if you decide at a later date to shorten your banker.
I dont run a "Wal Banker" personaly, as it dose not offer me a simple compact one man operation.
A teared hopper can take the need of having tostop to rake after every shovel. This is very time consuming and uses up uneeded effort, dropping the shovel to rake, stepping up out of a trench or hole. I often shovel a long handle shovel length away from the hopper when throwing it in. Occasionally tickling the material in the hopper to fall with the end of the shovel.
Having a variable teared hopper allows for tailoring a desired angle to suit the type of material your shoveling at the time.
River gravel can be stripped quickly, thus you can elevate the hopper at a steeper angle, yet hard dirt takes a bit longer to strip, so I lay the hopper down to a lower angle allowing extra wash time. This also affects your feed rate generaly.
The "Wal banker" hopper angle can not be adjusted, as it is a fixed ratio dictated by the desired fall ratio.
Personaly a "cross flow" spray bar would simply get in the way of easy raking and tickling.
The "U" principal spray bars offers a far better open hopper arrangement.
I often place large sticky rocks on the cable tray to strip down, a cross bar arrangment would impede this process.
Having black poly spray bars extend just past the lower end of the hopper allows an easy option to make slight spray angle adjustments with a small twist on the thread.( use of white pressure pipe glued dose not have this option).
I also have a dirt breaker pair of spray bars (slot arrangement differs) that can be easily fitted in under a minute.
The vertical cat walk mesh is the key instrument in the "Wal banker" !!!!
And I swear by it! It seems to be miss understood by many of how it works exactly.
The air gap off the bottom plays a critical part in this settling, washing technique. It must have some water flow "under" and "over" the mesh.
It works more of a baffling flow process, creating turbulance on the material as it works its way through.
There's an upwards current, and downwards current.
This allows the gold to sink to the bottom and then it simply stays there. Sand and lighter material is kept floating like the sand in the white wash on a beach.
I have tailored the mesh in my bankers, scollping parts of the top edge that has added extra turbulence. And I run a much larger air gap underneath the mesh with a bottom flow restricted to a 5mm air gap. The bottom gap of the mesh cat walk is higher than this air gap. This choice was made after considerable experimental trials.
***Note, that this may only apply to unit running a teared hopper, that has a smaller concentrated drop zone at the back of the sluice that drops material and water like a waterfall effect, than a showering style to a drop zone as Wal's is.
Another great advantage of this cat walk mesh principal, is that it is not a sensitive to getting the angle and water volume exact. Even a small side angle is possible.
Leveling the East/West is easily done with water in the trap area of the mesh. Looking at the water level to top edge of mesh.
After feeding aprox ten shovels, one can see the build up in the mesh area, I've found it best to have a 3/4 build up during running. If I have less than this, I have the choice to either raise the front of the banker and flatten out the angle, or decrease water volume.
I usualy opt to decrease the fall angle.
This all depends on the type of material being processed and feed ratio.
(This may not be so visually easy with a "Wal banker", as it has the cable tray over the top of the mesh.)
I have run numerous traps after the cat walk mesh, and none have yet really proved to be worth while after assessing at clean up.
This convinces me at this time that Wal's legendary mesh pricipal is working great.
But im yet to try the dream mat past the mesh.
The fall angle I can run is 1/10. And no, that is not a typo! Little fall is needed to run this mesh principal.
In very sandy area's with fine gold, I have run this unit flat!
Hope its helps those choosing.
But after your first day out you find a few things that could be changed to suit you better, even after fifty uses you come up with a better modifiation, So I hope some of this info will help avoid some modifications that may of been needed, or help you choose on your banker design.
This is not in any way a personal attack of Wal's design, but posted for those who are uncertain of some differences.
It's a personal running preferences of set up that some may, or may not like. But worth consideration.
This may also depend on what your hunting for exactly as well. Strictly gold, or gems as well.
If your hunting for gold, this should allow you to shorten a "Wal banker" considerably. As Wal has mentioned previously.
But I strongly advise fitting the rear legs at the very back of the banker for stability, especially if you decide at a later date to shorten your banker.
I dont run a "Wal Banker" personaly, as it dose not offer me a simple compact one man operation.
A teared hopper can take the need of having tostop to rake after every shovel. This is very time consuming and uses up uneeded effort, dropping the shovel to rake, stepping up out of a trench or hole. I often shovel a long handle shovel length away from the hopper when throwing it in. Occasionally tickling the material in the hopper to fall with the end of the shovel.
Having a variable teared hopper allows for tailoring a desired angle to suit the type of material your shoveling at the time.
River gravel can be stripped quickly, thus you can elevate the hopper at a steeper angle, yet hard dirt takes a bit longer to strip, so I lay the hopper down to a lower angle allowing extra wash time. This also affects your feed rate generaly.
The "Wal banker" hopper angle can not be adjusted, as it is a fixed ratio dictated by the desired fall ratio.
Personaly a "cross flow" spray bar would simply get in the way of easy raking and tickling.
The "U" principal spray bars offers a far better open hopper arrangement.
I often place large sticky rocks on the cable tray to strip down, a cross bar arrangment would impede this process.
Having black poly spray bars extend just past the lower end of the hopper allows an easy option to make slight spray angle adjustments with a small twist on the thread.( use of white pressure pipe glued dose not have this option).
I also have a dirt breaker pair of spray bars (slot arrangement differs) that can be easily fitted in under a minute.
The vertical cat walk mesh is the key instrument in the "Wal banker" !!!!
And I swear by it! It seems to be miss understood by many of how it works exactly.
The air gap off the bottom plays a critical part in this settling, washing technique. It must have some water flow "under" and "over" the mesh.
It works more of a baffling flow process, creating turbulance on the material as it works its way through.
There's an upwards current, and downwards current.
This allows the gold to sink to the bottom and then it simply stays there. Sand and lighter material is kept floating like the sand in the white wash on a beach.
I have tailored the mesh in my bankers, scollping parts of the top edge that has added extra turbulence. And I run a much larger air gap underneath the mesh with a bottom flow restricted to a 5mm air gap. The bottom gap of the mesh cat walk is higher than this air gap. This choice was made after considerable experimental trials.
***Note, that this may only apply to unit running a teared hopper, that has a smaller concentrated drop zone at the back of the sluice that drops material and water like a waterfall effect, than a showering style to a drop zone as Wal's is.
Another great advantage of this cat walk mesh principal, is that it is not a sensitive to getting the angle and water volume exact. Even a small side angle is possible.
Leveling the East/West is easily done with water in the trap area of the mesh. Looking at the water level to top edge of mesh.
After feeding aprox ten shovels, one can see the build up in the mesh area, I've found it best to have a 3/4 build up during running. If I have less than this, I have the choice to either raise the front of the banker and flatten out the angle, or decrease water volume.
I usualy opt to decrease the fall angle.
This all depends on the type of material being processed and feed ratio.
(This may not be so visually easy with a "Wal banker", as it has the cable tray over the top of the mesh.)
I have run numerous traps after the cat walk mesh, and none have yet really proved to be worth while after assessing at clean up.
This convinces me at this time that Wal's legendary mesh pricipal is working great.
But im yet to try the dream mat past the mesh.
The fall angle I can run is 1/10. And no, that is not a typo! Little fall is needed to run this mesh principal.
In very sandy area's with fine gold, I have run this unit flat!
Hope its helps those choosing.
