Recirculating fine gold sluice

[ProspectorPete]

It's been a long while coming but I finally got the fine gold sluice plumbed up this morning and here's the first run, put about 20 small scoops through to test.
Still need to extend the matting, put scotch brite pads up under the spray bar to get a more even water flow as well as attach the spray bar properly. My fine material has been sitting in the bucket for months so it's thick with clay balls in there, trying to pick the clay out as I go.
As soon as I get a bench in the shed I'll set it up properly to make it easier to play with.
I did a quick video to see it in action, do I need more water flow and less angle? The current fall is 250mm over 1200mm.
The setup is a 3700gph bilge pump running off my old Waeco 240/12v converter with 25mm hose, 1" ball valve throttled then through to the 15mm spray bar and Bunnings ribbed matting.
[video=480,360]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRIPG_0D7jg[/video]

 

[Jaros]

Looks good PP. But, after listening to that water running for 1.53 mins....... I had to run as well.
Jaros

 

[ProspectorPete]

Ha me too Jaros, luckily my citrus trees are just outside the shed

 

[Bacchus]

G'day Pete

Great job mate , I was looking at that pump in BCF today so helps me to see
one running , will follow with interest.

Cheers

 

[20x]

stir your material again before feeding so all particles are seperated for the release of possible fine gold in the clay balls and to minimise the possability of the balls of clay/silt rolling down the sluice and stealing gold back out of the v-mat

 

[ProspectorPete]

Thanks 20x, I did just that a couple of hours ago and it ended up a big bucket of slop, ran 3/4 of the material through and did a clean up. It was getting dark so the panning will be finished tomorrow but I've already seen about 6 small chunky specs and what looks to be a couple of tiny species too in the loupe. The scotch brite made the flow a lot more even so I'm expecting the last 1/4 of material to be interesting tomorrow.
I'll probably re-run the whole bucket again just to make sure and post my results when the final clean up is complete.

 

[Dug]

Ppete what thickness ,is the aluminium sheet ??looks pretty strong . Good job!

 

[G0lddigg@]

Good job Pete bet your dying to see if theres any gold in them buckets. ... small trick i find running warm water helps the sediment drop out a bit quicker than cold. Cant wait to see how you go

 

[Westaus]

I have heard to put a couple of drops of dishwasher rinse aid to release the water tension, seeing you are recirculating this should work ok. I wouldn't be using dish washing liquid as it may sud up too much, hence the rinse aid ?

Best of luck can't wait to see the result.

 

[20x]

Thanks 20x, I did just that a couple of hours ago and it ended up a big bucket of slop, ran 3/4 of the material through and did a clean up. It was getting dark so the panning will be finished tomorrow but I've already seen about 6 small chunky specs and what looks to be a couple of tiny species too in the loupe. The scotch brite made the flow a lot more even so I'm expecting the last 1/4 of material to be interesting tomorrow.
I'll probably re-run the whole bucket again just to make sure and post my results when the final clean up is complete.

try running a hose into your bucket of material and stir/puddle the silt out of it until the water comes clean, this way you will be able to see the behavior of the gold and sands in the v-mat. when i first started gold i was doing exactly the same as you are and because of black and white sands and fine flour gold i had a nightmare with it. i tried every sluice angle and flow rate to try and find that fine line between the 3 materials and failed!!!

1 year later and ide finally fine tuned my wierd panning technique to deal with this seperation problem. it can be done!!

 

[ProspectorPete]

Great info thanks guys, I've just recently adjusted my panning technique a couple of weeks ago when sorting out black sands and flour gold from Hoddles Creek and realized how much I'd been letting out the pan, luckily I was double panning at the time.
I'll clean up the water today and it'll be nice to see what's happening there, I've got about a good handful of blue clay balls full of grit which I'll puddle down before running.
I'd put a small amount of detergent in but will throw some Supreme Rinse Aid in and get some hot water mixed in when ready to go.

Dug, I had the sluice made by Gold Rat Highbankers in Ballarat, it's a great sluice and only takes 2mins to convert back if I head out to a creek.
I think it's 1.5mm flare and 2mm body or 2mm flare and 3mm body, can't recall but she's solid, well build and light weight.

Got some things to keep me busy now before it's running again but I can feel a fun day coming on, I'm on call for work and just got back from a 5am call out so hopefully the rest of the day is quiet and I can get the material run properly.
I've now got a renewed enthusiasm to get each sample bucket crushed and run it straight through the sluice a couple of times.
As far as getting the angles and flow ratio correct, can I assume that if I've run all this bucket through and found gold (which I know is in there), remove it and re-run the cons again, if I find no further gold then flow/angles are good, or am I wanting the gold to be sitting in the top half of v matt for optimum use??

Appreciate all the feedback, comments and ideas guys.

 

[dwt]

I have heard to put a couple of drops of dishwasher rinse aid to release the water tension, seeing you are recirculating this should work ok. I wouldn't be using dish washing liquid as it may sud up too much, hence the rinse aid ?

Best of luck can't wait to see the result.

Spot on there Westaus, when using clean up sluice you should always use some type of detergent, it really helps it breaking the surface tension of the water allowing small fine particles of gold to sink, if you Sud up the water to much you will see fine black sands and other heavies sitting on top of your soap suds, this is the basic principal in larger scale mining when they mill they're ore down to a fine powder and use flotation for recovery

 

[ProspectorPete]

Righto second run is better, scotch brite pads have made a difference and so has flushing the silt out first, may have overdone it with the rinse aid but after 10mins the bubbles settled.
I ended up just flushing all the material together including the last 1/4 that hadn't been run yet, sands are dancing around nicely with the bulk up the top and bits n pieces further down, I couldn't see anything in the matting after the run but I hadn't scrubbed the mat from last night so slit had dried in most of the grooves, regardless, after the clean up the results were great.
[video=480,360]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wujOsTrf1II[/video]
...........and here's the results..........

.................small but at least it's getting caught, anything smaller getting through has earn't the right to spend it's days in my garden :lol:

I decided to quickly run some 1/8" classified material from an earlier sample that was sitting in a 10" pan (about 1/2 full) through the compact crusher then de-silted the fines and ended up with about 3 cups of fines to run, the result was 6 tiny specs, again chunky under the loupe and I could actually see 3 pieces in the mat (only 1 pictured).

I don't recall finding colour when I panned the initial crushing of this sample so this is definitely the way to go for me, dolly, compact crush, de-silt, sluice.
My vial doesn't look any fuller yet but at least I know I'm catching the small stuff now.
It's turned out a great weekend and I feel I'm finally getting on the right track with this rock sampling, was beginning to wonder if it was worth crushing at all but at least now I can get a true indication of what colours are at a particular site I've sampled from.......happy days and thanks for all the advice and tips guys

 

[Hiluxlou]

Good stuff Pete

 

[20x]

awsome mate...well done

 

[Dug]

Good onya P Pete great attitude to it .

 

[G0lddigg@]

Awesome effort Pete gotta be happy with that

 

[ProspectorPete]

Thanks guys, happy to be finally getting somewhere with it..........and start clearing some tubs and buckets.

 

[Goldtarget]

You never know mate you might go from prospector Pete to Miner Pete!

 

[Guest]

Hey Pete,

Awesome. With regards to another thread, this is how you earn respect by sharing your wins and losses with photos or videos.

Persistence eventually pays off.

Congrats mate.

RS