Bucket fluid bed in dry areas

[mu50stang]

I was wondering if anyone has tried making a fluid bed out of the bottom half of a 5 gallon bucket and used it in a recirculation system. I am planning a trip to an area that has no water and was wondering what issues I might deal with using this type of system. My plan was to use 2 25 gallon tubs, one the fluid bed would sit in and another the pump would draw water from. They would be both connected with a pvc pipe. Would 1/2 classified material work ok in it or would I have to go smaller?

 

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[johnedoe]

I think you would just be better off adapting to the conditions rather than trying to change the conditions....... Go with a dry washer, separate your cons and deal with those in better conditions when you have plenty of water.... Your gonna find out that a re-circulator actually uses a lot of water.
Maybe try something like this guy is doing....... http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/479695-new-dry-jig-video.html

 

[arizau]

Along with other issues you will soon have extremely dirty water and eventually sludge. That could clog your pump if nothing else. For a day trip it might be worth a try but accept the fact that you will probably have a limited run.

Good luck.

 

[goldenIrishman]

You CAN do a re-circ system in the desert but it's not as easy as you'd think. It took me over a year to gt all the kinks worked out of my system. I'm having a hard time picturing what you describe in my head so I'm not going to make comment on it. The main problem with doing wet processing in the desert is that you have to haul in your own water 99.9% of the time. DO NOT use water out of a water trough for cattle!!! It's against the law and if you get caught..... Nuff said.

I've run "Long Toms", "High Bankers" and "Drop Riffle" boxes as re-circ setups out here and all have worked pretty well depending on the make up of the materials I'm running. The main problem is logistics for the water. When I'm going out for a 2 week stretch, I bring 165 gallons in eleven 15 gallon barrels. (Easier for my old back to handle the 15s than 55 gallon barrels) That's roughly 1320 Lbs of weight in water alone. Add to that the rest of the system, food, tent, drinking water (I'm NOT drinking out of those barrels!) and all my buckets and digging tools and I'm pretty much maxed out on weight.

If the area you're going to be heading out to has a lot of black sands, you may want to consider a drop riffle box instead of something with riffles and carpet/moss. I found that in many areas you might get a half bucket run before the carpet/moss is packed up with black sand. After that you're flat boarding and loosing gold. A drop riffle box will catch the gold but allow a lot of the excess black sand to rinse out.

 

[Bonaro]

Unless the gold you are after is nothing but fine, the fluid bed is overkill. A fluid bed wont work right if the water is starting to get thick and soupy.
If you have coarse, flakey or small pickers you can recirc a mini highbanker which is far less pickey about mud in the water.

 

[jcazgoldchaser]

Bucket highbanker with hydraulic/fluidized bed riffles

 

[mu50stang]

Thanks for all the cool info. I do have a drywasher but there are times when the dirt is damp and need another method to process it.

 

[russau]

Phil Hontz of Albq. New Mexico told me to place a black tarp out or a piece of corragated tin out out and shovel your next days run onto it to dry it out. I tried this fortwo years in a row in December in New Mexico and it worked fine as long as you had enough tin!

 

[coolfinie]

I like russau's suggestion to dry the material first. It uses conditions which are present rather than fighting them.

The conservation of water in mini wash plants revolves around adding washing action which is not fluid based - and of course it's been done already.
It's all about the efficiency of a washing machine, and rotary motion with regular reversal of direction of the rotary direction is the way we do it in the kitchen.
Basically the more physical motion inserted into the wash plant unit, the less liquid is required to accomplish a washing effect.
If you think in terms of a recirculating rocker box rather than say a fluidised sluice, then the water requirement for the process is significantly reduced.

This might suggest such an approach could be incorporated into your activities. At 2:00 note the DIY solution to lack of water for sluicing.



And here is the "cameraman" from the above video making his own a week or two later based upon what he observed:


Another using aluminium parts of other mining equipment (but not recirculating the water). The manual pump would be resistant to damage from dirt abrasives in the water. :


No recirculation and with an electric water pump - this rocker-sluice hybrid is more sluice than rocker - but since it incorporates motion as well as liquid it's still good for provoking good ideas:

 

[coolfinie]

An earlier thread with content related to this one:
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/drywashing/317410-drywasher-vs-recirculating-rocker-box.html

 

[mu50stang]

Phil Hontz of Albq. New Mexico told me to place a black tarp out or a piece of corragated tin out out and shovel your next days run onto it to dry it out. I tried this fortwo years in a row in December in New Mexico and it worked fine as long as you had enough tin!

We tried this one year and we seemed to run out of room to dump the material on to let it dry. Our trip is going to be only about 5 days long at our claims and we were trying to make the most of it.