Best "Bellows Type" Drywasher

[jair]

I have always been fascinated by the puffer style drywashers. I have never owned one though. I've watched a lot of them operate in the field and I always had my doubts about how well they worked. Obviously with so many people swearing by them and using them they must work pretty good. My thoughts were that each time the bellows is taking air in, for that brief moment the dirt is no longer suspended on air currents so the pay dirt is still being fed with no air going through it until the bellows pumps the next blast of air up. Something about the constant air flow AND vibration from gas blowers just seems like it would be so much more effective than the bellows. I have a friend who makes bellows models that are really nice, I've worked several times with him using the bellows he made. It is a hand crank and has a nice wide tray so the dirt can really spread out when it hits the screen, I think that makes for much better recovery. You can pour about two buckets in the hopper and then adjust your feed rate, and just start cranking. The crank is on a (flywheel?) so it is a nice smooth crank and doesn't wear you out, although it is a good workout if you do it for hours. It caught gold very nicely, but I still had some very small doubts about what we were losing just because I'm kind of skeptic of the bellows style. He calls his the "zephyr" and they are really nice. If I ever get one it will be a zephyr without a doubt. I will try to get some pics of one up sometime. Last time I spoke with him he had been in his shop for a few weeks putting some new ones together so there may be some on the market now.

I was at fist skeptical . But after using them for several trips and test panning the tailings I have come to trust that I am not loosing gold . I'm sure all machines need to be worked with and tested by each operator in order to trust them .

 

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[Hard Prospector]

I like my 2 gas blower drywashers and Thompson bellows puffer, it just depends on the geology, terrain and the prospecting program for the trip (kind of how I justified to my wife why I needed more than one detector)