Blue bowl vs Fine Gold Recovery Mini Sluice Box GPAA Modified Recirculating

[Alanae]

My husband and I are new to this and used his new high banker this weekend. Of course now we have all the concentrates to get through. We have two boys ages 12 and 14 and they love finding gold but hate panning. To be honest I’m not overly fond of it myself. So we were looking for something that would get them involved with the cleanups without having to pan.

After some research we’ve been looking at either the blue bowl or the Fine Gold Recovery Mini Sluice Box GPAA Modified Recirculating. I wanted to get some thoughts from people with more experience before we made a final decision. Thoughts? Pros and cons? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

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[RTR]

Sluice w/ recirculating water flow will probably be the most productive & fun. Easy enough to build one.

 

[Alanae]

How does it do with fines like flour gold? I’m in NC and it’s not uncommon to find itty bitty stuff that would float away without jet dry.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Learn to pan.

If you can't pan you can't sample.

If you don't sample you might as well run the dirt in your backyard. Digging holes and running material on the hopes you've eyeballed a good spot is the first and biggest mistake for newbies.

Find the gold by sampling and then dig and process. You will get much better results, work less and work smarter!

More gold for less work. hmmmmm

You can practice panning at home sitting in a chair. It's the first and most essential skill of prospecting. Watch some videos and have a *fun* panning competition in your backyard. Use bits of lead and offer the kids a prize for the best panner.

Prospecting without panning is like driving without a steering wheel. You will get somewhere eventually but your destination will be random and a bit whimsical until you run over your neighbors dog.

Learn to pan.

Welcome to the forum.

Heavy Pans

 

[RTR]

Your pan is your best tool .Just takes practice

 

[Bodfish Mike]

Set up a comfortable panning station in good sunlight at home. Do just a little bit of your cons at a time
It all comes down to the pan in the end.
Welcome -- good luck
Mike

 

[Hefty1]

My husband and I are new to this and used his new high banker this weekend. Of course now we have all the concentrates to get through. We have two boys ages 12 and 14 and they love finding gold but hate panning. To be honest I’m not overly fond of it myself. So we were looking for something that would get them involved with the cleanups without having to pan.

After some research we’ve been looking at either the blue bowl or the Fine Gold Recovery Mini Sluice Box GPAA Modified Recirculating. I wanted to get some thoughts from people with more experience before we made a final decision. Thoughts? Pros and cons? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Pan then Blue Bowl.

 

[Underburden]

Your only alternative to hand panning is to carry a Gold Wheel automatic panning machine and a 40 pound 12 volt battery.
Learning to pan doesn't sound too bad now does it?

 

[Alanae]

I guess I should have mentioned that we bring our concentrates back home. So we were looking for something easy for the boys who want to help clean the concentrates but have no patience for panning. So we were looking for an alternative just for home use. Because no... we already haul enough stuff and don’t want to haul something else to do concentrates in the field.

 

[Underburden]

That's cool. Set up a gold wheel at home and put your boys to work

 

[Goldwasher]

for finishing devices

Blue bowl is cheaper . easier to use and more efficient per run than a wheel

But, if your not hi banking or dredging you shouldn't have enough cons to warrant a finishing device beyond a pan

For the kids to participate maybe make a small gutter sluice. Probly the cheapest route.

Vmayt in a section of gutter and a bilge pump to recirculate.

 

[Alanae]

Thanks so much for all your help. Getting started is hard and seems to bring with it a lot of questions. Atm we have our cons from hi banking to go through as well as pay dirt my husband bought. Needless to say everyone is interested in seeing what we got in gold. It’s just quite a bit to go through

 

[arizau]

Thanks so much for all your help. Getting started is hard and seems to bring with it a lot of questions. Atm we have our cons from hi banking to go through as well as pay dirt my husband bought. Needless to say everyone is interested in seeing what we got in gold. It’s just quite a bit to go through

Panning is made much easier by classifying your concentrates to like sized material. In other words get a set of classifier screens. 30, 50 and 100 mesh should do the job for you* and there you have 4 different batches of material to pan...what stays on top of the various screens and what goes through the 100 mesh one. Common terminology for these batches is; plus 30, minus 30 plus 50, minus 50 plus 100 then down to minus 100 mesh. Don't overload the screens. The key to panning is that gold is heavy and when gold is about the same size as everything else in the pan it is over 3 times as heavy as the non gold so that makes panning easier.

Good luck and welcome to the forum.

*Gold that is greater than 30 mesh is pretty easy to pan. It is hard to find most places though.

PS Panning in about tablespoon quantities is recommended for the smaller concentrate sizes if you are determined to get the last tiny specks.
PPS If you do end up with a blue bowl that effort will be made easier to control if you screen them as described above.

 

[DizzyDigger]

So we were looking for something easy for the boys who want
to help clean the concentrates but have no patience for panning. So we were looking for
an alternative just for home use. Because no...

Using a gold pan is one of the most basic and effective methods of gold
recovery.

Respectfully, I believe you need to teach your boys to have some patience.
They want the gold "right now!", but prospecting for gold just doesn't
work that way. It takes patience, hard work and perseverance.

 

[gold tramp]

That's cool. Set up a gold wheel at home and put your boys to work

Luv my wheel, use it just about as much as my table. Great for drywash cons, Hg cleanup. Hard rock sampling.
Good tool miner approved.
Gt....
Just used it a few days back.

 

[Johnnybravo300]

There's nothing easy about changing a woman's mind. Sounds like it's already made up to me.

 

[treasuresalvor]

That's not the stage in which to use a blue bowl. It's not a super concentrator, it's a final cleanup tool.

 

[Gold4Mike]

I've been using a Miller table to finish my cons after classifying them, but even that takes a while if I have a lot to run. I bought some ribbed floor matting, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DCR5MAA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and turned my highbanker into a recirculating finishing sluice and run the smaller classifieds through it, saves a lot of time and reduces the amount to pan to about 1/4 cup.

 

[Alanae]

We have a lot of heavy black sand after using the hi banker and then the bag of Paydirt which is blonde and black sand. I know my husband has been watching a ton of YouTube videos and I’m just hoping he figures this all out. It’s a much more complicated hobby then I originally assumed that’s for sure lol

 

[johnedoe]

We have a lot of heavy black sand after using the hi banker and then the bag of Paydirt which is blonde and black sand. I know my husband has been watching a ton of YouTube videos and I’m just hoping he figures this all out. It’s a much more complicated hobby then I originally assumed that’s for sure lol

Get a goldcube and cover the slick plate with deep V mat.......
This is a cleanup of about 2 1/2 gallons of cons from the beach.
Or you can get a 3' x 12" section of deep V mat and make a small clean up sluice.
Sluice would be 12" wide by 3 feet long... Run a 900 GPH bilge pump for your water supply and sluice angle should be about 15 degrees.
That is the same amount of water we were running on the cube for the cleanup, and the cube angle is 15 degrees but the slick plate is 12"'x12"
Of course if your gold is bigger than 30 mesh you will need to add some slightly larger riffles along the way. Most of our beach gold is -100 mesh.