Smallest Viable Tiered Highbanker

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Just wondering what the smallest viable tiered highbanker would be. I'm no spring chicken any more so carrying anything very heavy ( say 20 kg's )for more than a couple of hundred meters becomes out of the question.
So what would the smallest size banker to build be that I could run for 3 or 4 hours on my own with any reasonable chance of getting a return.
Space is also limited in both my car and caravan
cheers Keith :)
 
If you cant carry your gear for more than 200 metres than I doubt you will be able to do a lot of digging. Maybe you should consider power sluice instead. Its light and much smaller than high banker.
 
Oh C'mon Beagle, he's just looking for a small banker.
Xcvator, where do you go mate? Is it an option to carry all the crap on a trolley? Or do you go to very hilly areas?
 
Occasional_panner said:
Oh C'mon Beagle, he's just looking for a small banker.
Xcvator, where do you go mate? Is it an option to carry all the crap on a trolley? Or do you go to very hilly areas?
Well atm I don't go anywhere, but the Vic high country is about 4 hours away from me and I guess that is where I would be going, the GT is about 3 hours and Ballaarat is about 3 hours.
I guess I could use a hand trolley with very large wheels, but space is a premium in the caravan/car so the whole set up has to be very compact and light weight
cheers Keith
 
Have you looked into dry blowing? That's what the dry mongrel areas are good for. High country.... hmmm sounds like a bit too hard work for you mate, I busted my ass carting crap up and down hills. It can get hard up there mate. Sounds like a easy digging spot at eldorado with a banker would suit you or/ and a dryblower in the GT.
I could be wrong, but most of the high country alluvial gold was worked well out, it will take another 50,000 years to erode the mountains enough to get back to where it was in the 1850's.
But yeah there is a bit still there, but given the difficult terrain, may not be worth the effort.
I always look at it as a hobby, I asked early on, if you can make money doing it. Well the resounding replies were no, no and no.
Just go and have fun, even sitting at the creeks edge panning can be an awesome day.
 
Thanks OP hadn't thought of a dry blower, I did a bit of panning along the Jamison, Golbourn, and Big rivers a long time ago, like 50 years, while waiting for the trout to come on the bite. ;)
Very basic tin pans then, which I've still got and a set of sieves. Maybe just update the gear with new turbo pan and a classifier bucket
 
Hmm, well the bloody exempt list will stuff you up now mate. Goulburn and big rivers are no go zones now.
Turbo pan, I got one too, it's such a foreign way of panning, I just couldn't get used to it. perhaps someone learning from new would find it comfortable?? Dunno.
Anyway I'll keep mine and have a crack again when I see someone good to teach me.
I picked up a new minelab pan a few days ago, it's very nice, once again very different to what I'm used to, so it'll take a while to tell if I like it more overall to my last one. It looks like you need quite a bit of water in that sucker compared to other ones.
 
Yeah, but there are lots of small accessible streams that come off of the exempted rivers,I haven't been able to find out just how far from a river junction you have to be but I figure if you're in a defined creek bed upstream from the exempted river, even a couple of metres, you should be ok
 
Yeah, of course. You can be 1metre from a junction and be legal. As long as you are working in a stream which isn't on the exempt list you are fine.
I have done a bit of that myself and come home empty handed. But you go for it mate, it's great scenery there even if no colour eventuates.
 
1486240590_good_luck_and_crooked.jpg

That is the good luck creek and crooked river junction. I tested in that creek and didn't find much.

1486240667_talbotville.jpg

Talbotville is a good place to base yourself up there, lots of old mining up there, you walk 20 metres into the bush and you'll find tons of old workings.

1486240873_crooked_crossing.jpg

The crooked can get pretty deep though, so you'll need a snorkel.

But there are lots of other places in the high country you can pull a vehicle close to the creek. Maybe get a tyre tube and float the gear and pull it upstream?
 
Xcvator, in high country it is rather a hard dig. Lots of large rocks so the best chance to get gold is crevassing. I do really well up there just with a pan and a sieve. I have seen few guys using rotapan as well.
The advantage of high banker is that you don't need to classify the material. It is great in areas like Eldorado where you need lots of volume. The access to the river in Eldorado is very easy and its not that far to drive for you.
Alternative is a power sluice. You fill few buckets with classified material and than sit down and put it through slowly. You can get a small battery with bilge pump to run it. The whole thing will fit in to a backpack and it is much less than 20 kg.
 
Beagleboy said:
If you cant carry your gear for more than 200 metres than I doubt you will be able to do a lot of digging. Maybe you should consider power sluice instead. Its light and much smaller than high banker.

Can you explain more about power sluices please
 
Power sluice is basically a river sluice with a header where you attach a pump. See link below.
https://highbanker.com.au/collections/all-products/products/10-inch-sluice-header-unit
High banker has a hopper with screen for classifying. See below.
https://highbanker.com.au/collections/all-products/products/8-outback-pioneer-series-highbanker
River sluice without the header can still be used without a pump as long as the river is flowing. If there is no flow, attach the header, hook up to a pump and off you go.
It is more versatile gear and also lighter than high banker.
However if you want to put more material through than high banker will be better as you don't need to classify and just shovel in.
The good gold is in hard to reach places. ;-)
 
mate, im 36 and carrying the 6.5hp pump to bank anywhere is such a pain in the arse, makes me feel 66... If your handy with some tools, build a small sluice with hopper you can attach to an old backpack frame, small pump in your buckets in one hand, shovels and the like in the other hand ... Bringing your gear to water or a decent spot to bank from is always such a pain. I prefer to camp the night now if i head out banking.
Drywasher's are your friend ... but same deal, you need octopus arms to carry all your stuff. Dont really think theres an easy way out apart from trolleys or carts, which can be just as much a pain as carrying stuff.

Recruit a grandchild/nephew/son to go 'camping' and help carry your gear :)
 
This is really interesting Golddigg.

I've been considering highbanker options for quite a while and this throws something else into the mix. I really like the look of it.

I wonder about the weight of the setup and the portability? Seems to look promising.

Throwing those shovel fulls straight in there freaks me out! But I'm coming from really small scale, I classify and feed a grubstake sluice.

Have you done a comparison with returns from this setup versus one of your bankers with the dream mat?

Thanks for posting this up!
 
Hey brendomac

Theres a few reasons why i take this out with me most of the time over my highbanker but the main one is portability weight and ease of setup.

A highbanker will process more effectively every day of the week. Thats really it's job a highbanker hopper needs to breakup clays and release gold then classify. My hooper designs also try to control feed as best we can. A standalone system like this requires a bit more manual processing which i dont mind.

The added benefit is i can fit my deep cell battery 4 meters of hose and my bilge pump into a 20 liter bucket and throw my sluice over my shoulder. Ive seen some pretty cool backpack conversions done with my slucies too.

As for throwing big rocks in there we are using dream mat cells these are designed with fluid dynamic principles we have extensive testing and there are parts in the design that keep large rocks bouncing down the system without contributing to gold migration.

The path a gold particle has to travel to exit the system is over 80 inches mate so im not fussed and the only time i woukd be marginly concerned is in an area where i was only chasing 400 micron gold. Reason for this vetter recovery for that size is got at 8 degrees which does not allow enough cleaning momentum to move thos mid size rocks.

Weight were talking under 10 kgs

To compare returns would be superfluous as a highbanker will run alot more material faster and in a more conteolled environment.

What do i mean by more manual processing. An example would be to feed the slucie if i hit a clay layer i woudl scrape that into a pile then toss rocks onto it and shovel through it like mixong cement before feeding. With a highbanker i would drop the hopper height and shovel straight onto the mesh in my hoper to be broken down.
 
I mostly run a 34 amphour battery my bilge pulls 16 amps so 2 hours run time which is plenty for me. If i need more ive got a larger battery wired into my patrol but to be honest in between digging pay and setting up 2 hours is heaps
 
Thanks for all the information, Goldigg. It definitely gives me something to consider. And fair call on the highbanker comparison. I guess I was more concerned with the size of the rocks travelling down the sluice versus a highbanker which spits them out the back before they can hit the mat. But you addressed that, with how the dream mat handles larger rocks.

The main reason I have been holding off on a highbanker is portability. I like the idea of being able to go for a bit of a walk up or down a stream. This certainly gives me that option.
 

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