Mytimetoshine

[GoldpannerDave]

On the laminar flow table, you need to classify first. Then you play with water flow and angle. You want smooth water across the table; making it flow through Scotch Brite pads (scrubbies) will do that for you. You want just enough smooth water to move the black sands. You can adjust the angle also if your set up allows you to do so.

And yes, using a brush to help the black sands stay about 1 grain thick helps. If they pile up, they take longer to move. You can also use the brush to move gold back up the table or to the side, etc. Some folks have had trouble with the brush creating bubbles which you don't want! Work with it till you get it where it works for you on your table.

To dial it in, I sometimes just play with it instead of trying to just get to separating my gold. When I ignore getting it set up right for my classified cons, it just takes me longer overall.

That is also why I sometime save all my +40 material to run at once, so I don't have to readjust it to then run the +60 stuff, etc. Of course, the downside is that I don't get all the gold from a particular outing separated in a timely manner. Worse, it can mean if I don't keep separate plastic tubs (coffee cans, cottage cheese containers, etc.) marked with size AND which outing, I can lose valuable information about how much of each "cut" I got from a particular outing.

I would encourage you to keep at it with the table. In the end, it is well worth it.

May the top of your table be golden!

 

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[mytimetoshine]

Thanks GPD. I was surprised as it works so well on sluice cons compared to just pure black sand. I'm sure I was putting way to much on a one time but man, it was taking too long! My model has the scotch bright pads already. I did end up turning the pump down a bit once I was sure gold was going over the edge but it didn't make much difference. The piece that wanted to stay, no matter how small stayed while others, even larger flakes just zipped right on down.

At least I didn't loose it back in the river!

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Yeah, very flat flakes can move! Doc on the Gold Hog Washer Mat video showed a sizable flake that made it through about 36" of Washer Mat and was then caught on the Gold Cube (where "tailings" were directly dumped). It was about 1/3 to 1/2 the way down the top mat.

If you are watching the table, then you see those type flakes and can brush them back up towards the top. In fact, because they are big but flat, they do not get on my table with the small typical gold I get from Colorado. That is why classifying is important. (Doc was doing minimal classifying, only to 1/4 or 1/8). The Washer Mat is not working the same as the laminar flow (Miller) table. But still, the illustration helps to make the point that with a table, you need minimum water, minimum angle AND classification.

Some folks have an automatic feeder (Goodyguy, Russau) for their table. That also helps because you can while you are doing something else, so it doesn't take so much "eyes on" attention. I haven't built one yet, but am planning to do so. Many auto feeders seem to drop new material on the table all at one point; I want to have it drop across the top of my Miller table (which is 10" wide), so I'd like to make it drop a thin line across about 7-8 inches of that total 10".

 

[Jeff95531]

I'd like to offer this up as it fixed all the problems I had with my Miller Table:

Try less drop on the table. Then less flow at the valve if needed. When I get the flow dialed in, I leave the valve alone and turn off the flow by unplugging the battery charger.

You MUST classify down to 20 minimum. Do a tablespoon one at a time. Last thing...make sure what you're losing is really gold. Me being a new guy and all, I thought my equipment was failing me when it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do...dump all non gold bearing material. Hope that helps some.

 

[bobw53]

I'd like to offer this up as it fixed all the problems I had with my Miller Table:

Try less drop on the table. Then less flow at the valve if needed. When I get the flow dialed in, I leave the valve alone and turn off the flow by unplugging the battery charger.

You MUST classify down to 20 minimum. Do a tablespoon one at a time. Last thing...make sure what you're losing is really gold. Me being a new guy and all, I thought my equipment was failing me when it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do...dump all non gold bearing material. Hope that helps some.

I'm not much off of newb status myself... But I believe you are mostly wrong... I've been wrong a lot, and I've proved myself wrong a lot.

Physical gold recovery relies on 2 main things... Weight and density.. There is also the "hydraulic equivalency" thing which makes it all even worse... The gold hog man has a few
fairly long videos on "hydraulic equivalency"... But for now lets just think about weight and density.

But first "mesh" size... Absolutely re-tarded(mentally challenged) way to describe what you are actually separating out. Probably fine and dandy if you are talking about seperating
the 8inch rocks from the 4 inch rocks from the 2 inch rocks, from the 1 inch rocks.... But for gold recovery... Meh... down through a 4. 1/4" that works...
Nothing spectacular happening down through an 8 and a 16. Start getting smaller and things get really wonky and haywire..

After that, we are really looking at wire size and hole size. A 4 mesh, one fourth of an inch is going to be a bit smaller than a quarter inch... Close enough for government purposes.

An 8 mesh, unless you are using I-beams for your screen, the holes will be a bit smaller than 1/8 of an inch.... I don't believe we have reached the point of significant error.

20 mesh... Is your wire size .005" or .020". Thats the difference between a .030 hole and a .045 hole... 50% size difference, no big deal... Gold is 3 times heavier than black sand,
it'll seperate out fine... BUT... the weight of a particle is not defined by a linear distance, it is VOLUME, the distance cubed. Do the math.... You can have black sand that
went through a 20 mesh with .005 wire that is heavier than GOLD that went through a 20 mesh with .020 wire.....

Now we go from Mesh to Mesh to Mesh to Mesh... And if we don't know the actual SIZE of the holes in the mesh... Everything can fall apart and we are tossing gold down the
drain... Get down into the smaller size, big mesh #'s and things compound... 400 mesh, is the wire .0015 or .0005? Thats a .001 hole or a .002 hole... Volume wise, and weight
wise, an 8X difference.. That's HUGE, and something we need to know about... Why I think "mesh" size is an outdated POS measuring system that we really shouldn't think
about when we are trying to recover gold (mechanically).

Back to your miller table, and classifying to -20... You might grab some smaller stuff here and there, but in general.. You are going to lose stuff -30 and especially
-40 and smaller. Even if the larger black sands or even blondes doesn't knock your smaller gold out... The water flow will. If the water can move a 20 mesh piece
of black sand, it will move a 60 or 50 mesh piece of gold, and you will never even know it was there. And here I am talking mesh... Should be talking size, but
I think you get my drift.

Gold recovery is easy... If you pay attention to weight and density. Once you seperate everything by size, which you have to do for a miller table, or blue bowl, or spiral wheel,
its so easy to pan, there is no point in buying the toy.

The golden rule "If everything in your pan is the same size, Gold Rules"... From the gold cube man... And he's not kidding... No joke, it works.

 

[mytimetoshine]

[/QUOTE]The golden rule "If everything in your pan is the same size, Gold Rules"... From the gold cube man... And he's not kidding... No joke, it works.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the clinic on mesh size! Lol my head hurts reading that except for this part. I'm going to pan all these black sands down 1-2 teaspoons at a time to see what percentage was lost, since i have a good idea of how much material I ran and how much gold I recovered. I'm thinking it may not be as bad as first thought. For some reason the first spoon full had two larger flakes but since then it's just been tiny stuff. About 2-3 specks per teaspoon. It's gonna take forever but I'll just keep it as a little project. To help me dial in the table.

I'll eventually get a full set of classifiers and get a rod mill setup. Should be getting almost everything once that's all dialed in.

 

[Jeff95531]

I'm not much off of newb status myself... But I believe you are mostly wrong... I've been wrong a lot, and I've proved myself wrong a lot.

Physical gold recovery relies on 2 main things... Weight and density.. There is also the "hydraulic equivalency" thing which makes it all even worse... The gold hog man has a few
fairly long videos on "hydraulic equivalency"... But for now lets just think about weight and density.

But first "mesh" size... Absolutely re-tarded(mentally challenged) way to describe what you are actually separating out. Probably fine and dandy if you are talking about seperating
the 8inch rocks from the 4 inch rocks from the 2 inch rocks, from the 1 inch rocks.... But for gold recovery... Meh... down through a 4. 1/4" that works...
Nothing spectacular happening down through an 8 and a 16. Start getting smaller and things get really wonky and haywire..

After that, we are really looking at wire size and hole size. A 4 mesh, one fourth of an inch is going to be a bit smaller than a quarter inch... Close enough for government purposes.

An 8 mesh, unless you are using I-beams for your screen, the holes will be a bit smaller than 1/8 of an inch.... I don't believe we have reached the point of significant error.

20 mesh... Is your wire size .005" or .020". Thats the difference between a .030 hole and a .045 hole... 50% size difference, no big deal... Gold is 3 times heavier than black sand,
it'll seperate out fine... BUT... the weight of a particle is not defined by a linear distance, it is VOLUME, the distance cubed. Do the math.... You can have black sand that
went through a 20 mesh with .005 wire that is heavier than GOLD that went through a 20 mesh with .020 wire.....

Now we go from Mesh to Mesh to Mesh to Mesh... And if we don't know the actual SIZE of the holes in the mesh... Everything can fall apart and we are tossing gold down the
drain... Get down into the smaller size, big mesh #'s and things compound... 400 mesh, is the wire .0015 or .0005? Thats a .001 hole or a .002 hole... Volume wise, and weight
wise, an 8X difference.. That's HUGE, and something we need to know about... Why I think "mesh" size is an outdated POS measuring system that we really shouldn't think
about when we are trying to recover gold (mechanically).

Back to your miller table, and classifying to -20... You might grab some smaller stuff here and there, but in general.. You are going to lose stuff -30 and especially
-40 and smaller. Even if the larger black sands or even blondes doesn't knock your smaller gold out... The water flow will. If the water can move a 20 mesh piece
of black sand, it will move a 60 or 50 mesh piece of gold, and you will never even know it was there. And here I am talking mesh... Should be talking size, but
I think you get my drift.

Gold recovery is easy... If you pay attention to weight and density. Once you seperate everything by size, which you have to do for a miller table, or blue bowl, or spiral wheel,
its so easy to pan, there is no point in buying the toy.

The golden rule "If everything in your pan is the same size, Gold Rules"... From the gold cube man... And he's not kidding... No joke, it works.

Interesting points and thoughts. All I can do is offer up personal experience...both good and bad.

Anything +20 gets panned...up to an 1/8. + 1/8" is classified at/by the sluice/LeTrap. Wire size varies, mesh varies and I agree it sucks but I figured out how to use what we have and save a lot of time and effort using them. Not a big fan of panning unless I'm sampling. This is a proven system (for me) that I won't be changing anytime soon.

The Miller Table is grabbing gold that I cannot see. I find it all in the first half of the table, using 1.5 reading glasses and an 8X power magnifying glass. As I've stated before, I'm not concerned with anything smaller than that but at the same time, I don't toss the cons as it gives me something to do/experiment with during the rainy season.

 

[Jeff95531]

Oh and YES! I don't know why I keep forgetting to mention...put a stable pan under the vial while removing it. Gold in mine gets hung up too. Had to snuffer it out.

 

[mytimetoshine]

I haven't gotten out for 2 weeks. I'm going crazy! Today was the last day I have my daughter for summer break. Now it's just back to every other weekend. I should be getting out more often now weather permitting.

During the break I have been slowly working these black sands one teaspoon at a time. It took HOURS!... I ended up recovering .14 out of it. So I orginally got 1.10g out of the sands on my laminate table. Obviously it needs tweaking, the loss rate ended up being 13% off the table. I'll get that dialed in a bit better. Still more efficient than trying to clean each pan at the river...

I saw this little copper pan on Ebay and had to have it. Gold doesn't show well on copper though..

 

[mytimetoshine]

Been jones ing to use my Bazooka prospector lately so I took it out after work Tuesday. The reason I don't use it much is the setup locations and or packing it in make your choices limited. But I took it to a place I knew I could set up in 5 min because of the low water. I just dug a random hole right next to the sluice. I brought a full size shovel this time hoping I could actually use it..negative. just to many rocks. So I went the old stand by, digging with my hands and small pick. Got about 2 1/2 feet down and just endless gravels. Got very little gold for the 10 5g buckets of material. Probably .03-.05g not picture worthy although I did find a lead sinker and a large paper clip!

Went back out Wednesday for another maybe 1hr and half and packed light. Gold pan, classifier and pick, crevice tool. The water was low and some nice bedrock was showing. I started to dig behind some and it was just filled with light stuff... I kept sampling in the area cause it looked so good but got nothing. Moved 30ft upstream and dug near a large Boulder and bam,color. Ended up digging pay for about an hour. I decided to pan it thus time instead of the table. I might run the material over the table to see if it catches what the pan didn't and then compare...anyways here the gold from we'd and a shot of the lead. Which was plentiful.

 

[mytimetoshine]

Oops

 

[Jeff95531]

Looks good! So far this month, I was gifted .11 (had to recover it out of a half gallon)...then found a .01 on my own out of a quart and later ran two gallons of samples found by a friend. Gawd, he sulks like I do...little to nothing found. His likely came from a hole previously discovered by someone else as all that came was dust and black sand...even the miller table couldn't separate all of it. I told him he should crush it but he's like me...too small so f*** it. I so know the feeling but at least he got color. Right? I LIKE color.

 

[delnorter]

Nice gold Mytimetoshine. Keep at it Jeff, there's pretty good gold on both side of the river where you went last. Did you ever get your phone figured out to send and receive pictures?

I'm going to be out of town the next couple weeks (archery hunting for deer and prospecting for gold during the heat of the day). I'll try to lash up with you after I get back to find a little gold in the gorge.

Mike

 

[Jeff95531]

Hey Mike...it's not me, it's my dumb phone. I quit my "smart" phone cuz it cost too much and often made ME look dumb. Screw that! (It does text but won't accept photos.)

 

[mytimetoshine]

Met up with Schoolofhardknocks today and went to one of my spots. Spot is starting to play out I think so the take was modest. Very nice guy to dig with. I had a great time. Hopefully he did better then I did as I was panning and he was slucing. It was hot as sh!t out, that slowed us down a bit. 103?..

 

[KevinInColorado]

Nice gold and with a Tnet buddy, I like it! Was there enough water to sit down in it to cool off? That's my favorite move

 

[mytimetoshine]

Nice gold and with. Tnet buddy, I like it! Was there enough water to sit down in it to cool off? That's my favorite move

Oh yea plenty of water. There is a bit of current at this location so I didn't swim although wading in is not a problem off the large sand bar. The hike out was the worst cause there is very little shade.

 

[mytimetoshine]

I was able to get out Tuesday and Wednesday after work for a bit. I picked a place that is about 8 miles from my house. I decided to look at some holes really not far in at all maybe 10 min hike. This stretch and side of the river is heavily hit. Most think there is no good gold left unless you hike further up river and on the other side. Poked around d a bit Tuesday and quickly found color. Got about 1-1 1/2 hours of actual digging in Tuesday and about 2hrs Wednesday. Same hole with my pan, classifier and trusty hand pick(my favorite piece of equipment)

It was on the downstream side of a larger boulder. About 1ft -2ft down was bedrock. Cleaned almost all of it out but had to leave some as I just ran out of light.

The sun was dropping fast and for some reason I started getting careless and in a hurry, even though I had a short hike and plenty of time. Lost my balance and went down hard. Banged up my knee, elbow and hand... nothing serious. So funny, I'm falling and it's like slow motion.. your surrounded by rocks so you know you going down hard and all I can think about is my little 2 gal bucket with my loot in it. Sacraficed the body but didn't spill a drop out of my bucket! Priorities, lmao...


Got a dozen pieces of lead shot and a my first piece of wire gold! Looks cool under the loupe. To bad I don't have that usb microscope camera yet to show you guys. It has a bit of mercury on it with a bubble.

 

[mytimetoshine]

Some more after work shine, Tue and We'd for about 3hrs total.Went to clear out the pocket I found before and there wasn't much left but I scraped it out good and tested nearby but didn't find much. I guess I gotta go sampling again to find some more!

 

[mytimetoshine]

Sunday was a great day. I met up with Goldenmojo and Samplepandan at about 7am. Let me tell you, 2 really nice guys. So far everyone ive met from this site has been awesome! That says a lot about this forum and gold miners in general. Not only nice people but being miners we tend to think alike, have a lot in common and similar personalties.

We went to a fairly easy spot on the river. Chatted it up for a few minutes and then started digging. Gdm and Spd got into the water to work around a huge boulder and some bedrock. I sampled some random dirt higher up the bank surrounded by some smaller boulders. Got a little color so I decided to set up. We were all within eyesite and earshot but just doing our own things. The material had some gravel mixed with sand on top about 2-3 inches then sand underneath. The top gravel material is better than the sandy stuff but the sandy stuff still has gold and it's just so darn easier to dig and pan I just kept going. About a foot down I started running into the steeply angled bedrock that's in this area. Looks fantastic but this is all flood material not virgin so it's not a bonanza. Top 2 inches and bottom 2 inches are best though.

I used my hand pick,(samplepandan has the exact same tool!) 2 stage classifier and pan. I use a 1/4 inch and a #20 because it allows me to search through the classifier for pickers more easily. Its much easier to search when everything is the same size. It does take a little more work and time though thats the down side. I've been collecting the most "interesting" rocks for fun.

So we were probably on the dig from about 745-1245. I don't remeber how many pans I ran but it was a lot! Another miner that Spd knew came hiking through. Seemed like a nice enough guy. We talked for a while but we were getting ready to call it a day already. Made it back to the trucks and Samplepandan treated us to cold Coronas!

Great day.