Keene RC1 and Flower Gold

After about 6 weeks on order my rotary rock smasher arrived. It is a good looking machine. No instructions came with it, so I will call Keene next week and see if there are any. I would be more interested in tips for operation because I already have it up and running. I did have to make two quick modifications with a few more planned for today.

The loading tray had to be cut down on the left side vertical side by a 1/2" to fit the unit and engine. They must have change in engines style. When the machine is in operation a lot of "sand" come out of the seam where the lower 2 halves go together. Here I covered it with 2" duct tape. The machine does produce a LOT OF DUST and "sand" that comes out of the loading tray area. I will hook up my shop vac the top part of the 5 gallon catch bucket. In the desert I will use my gas vac. The unit is vary stable during operation sitting on a concert slab. It just wants to rotate slightly. On uneven ground I think it could have a tendency to fall over so I will connect a 1 1/2' X 1 1/2' plywood to the bottom like I have on my gas vac. It works good that way on rough base rock, both are top heavy.

As I said in some of my past posts I brought back a few ore samples to work on here in Key West. In the past month I made a rain gutter micro sluice to work the concentrates from the crusher and rework the black sand I also brought back with me from dry washing. The first sample I ran was only about 5 pounds. This I broke into 3/4" pieces and ran them through the crusher. I fed them thru 8 times and all I had was dust and fine "sand". Then I ran all the material thru the sluice, twice. This yielded about 4 tablespoons of black sand. I worked it in my small pan. I saw only a few specks of gold and a lot of shinny material. Also a 1/2 dozen "pellets" and a few flat pieces like #6 bird shot. A light gray in color, maybe silver. This I put in a small bottle to look at latter. My screens of different sizes down to 200 mesh are in Ca., so I did not screen any of the grindings.

Yesterday, I ran 20 pounds of ore thru the machine 5 times, what a dust cloud! I have only run the material once thru the sluice because I was getting tired and it was getting late. I had about the same result, except I have about one cup of black sand on the first run. This black sand I again put in my small finishing pan and worked it for a few minutes. This material is much, much finer than I get out of my dry washer and it is next to impossible to separate. As I taped on the edge of the pan repeatedly very, very fine gold started to appear at the edge of the pan. I rotated the pan 180 degrees and did the same tapping. Again a lot of very fine gold came to the edge. You can not see it until it come together, it is so fine. My gold wheel is in Ca. There seems to be a lot of flower gold in this sample, and maybe the last sample so the ore I found is good. There is about 20 tons of ore at this site in one pile. I need to find best way to sperate it from the very, very fine black sand that comes out of the equipment. Panning or micro sluice will not do or at least until I learn the work it better.

I still have a 20 pound sample from a different site to work....Richard

• Re: Keene RC1 and Flower Gold Greg Ferris in Central Texas 20:47:40 7/04/98 (0)
• Re: Observe, hand-sort, then crush.... ROB(AZ) 09:54:24 7/04/98 (1)
  • Re: glory pile or pride pile Richard ( Key West, Fl ) 11:14:45 7/04/98 (0)
• Re: Keene RC1 and Flower Gold wayne from granger, wa 08:56:24 7/04/98 (0)