Do Bazookas really catch fine gold?

[bakergeol]

Yep I figure that I will get A LOT of posts that say YES. I really can not comment
too harshly as I have never owned one or have done an extensive tailing test on one.
Kind of hard to imagine with the high water flow that it does a good job with super fines.
So let me play the devil's advocate here

Here is an interesting post by Ebuyc from another forum who I regard as quite knowledgeable.

"The Bazooka Prospector uses a LOT of water and will not work in small streams with out a custom manifold and pumped water.
Further the Bazooka requires NO classification - I personally love that.
What they will capture...
The GC(Gold Cube) will capture gold around 100 mesh quite easily (but I still see some losses no matter how slow I feed the unit).
The Bazooka will be hard pressed to capture much gold smaller then 50 mesh, in can be done - but with the water flow rates it is a challenge.

So if you want to capture super fine gold then a dedicated HB is the obvious choice. I personally recommend the G2 HB for the $$.

You can also build a Bazooka HB conversion and then you would be more likely to capture smaller then 50 mesh gold.

My two bits...

BTW I build and sell Bazooka Prospector frames and custom G2 HBs... I rarely use my GC anymore!"



Yep I know I will receive some responses that say hey I recover all gold down to 100 mesh. Here are the photos of gold from the bazooka and yes you can see 100 mesh gold particles. Yes but where is the rest of them?
I have seen a heck of a lot of photos from our Colorado bazooka posters and every time I ask the same question. Where is the rest of the gold- the super fines? Are they not posting the super fines or not recovering any?
Sluicing in Colorado for over 30 years one is used to seeing hundreds of specks of super fine gold after clean up which I don't see in the photos.

My 2 bits

 

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[fowledup]

I say yes, and would also like to rephrase the quoted posters' comments to reflect my observations. The Bazooka needs a lot of water if you want to run it flat, feed it fast, and shovel directly into it. IMHO the slower the water the more you should classify the material to have it run properly. I would also say not to be afraid to add some pretty steep angle to it in slower water (clean it out more often when doing so) and just like a conventional slice adjust your feed rate. It is a weird piece of equipment to develop trust in as you can't see what it's doing. I have checked it a zillion times and it is hard to blow gold out of it in any size. Our waters out here are at record lows and I'm still running mine just fine, I am however having to do a lot of wing damming. In higher flows I can always "throttle it back" by adjusting the sluice placement in the river.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Here's my gold from last Saturday. -50 in one pile, +50 in the other...all-20 btw, no bigger flakes. Bazooka Prospector, 36" model running at full blast so baseball sized rocks cleared on their own!

When you can run 6 full 5 gallon buckets in less than 30 minutes (dig, carry, sluice, repeat) you get more gold than other sluices even if you are losing a speck here and there. Which my testing showed I wasn't.

 

[KevinInColorado]

...from other recent days. Can you say fly poop gold? Sure, I knew you could! LoL!

 

[Asmbandits]

I agree that it is very hard to gain trust in this device, as I've ran mine now all summer and have formed the opinion that it works good for sure but at the same time I can't believe that I'm catching everything for some reason.. I've ran it all day, 2 clean outs, all day with 5+ clean outs, ran where most buildup in the trap was concentrated on the sides as there was higher pressure, and ran it where the bed was completely full of material.. All results vary so much it's hard to tell what's really working or if your prospect isn't as good as you thought.. I do know that no matter how I run it, the size of the smallest black sand I'm left with is very uniform with very little to no "dust" size particles. I do get some very fine gold sometimes but it's only a few specs compared to the 100+ mesh gold I end up with. I've panned a bit of fine gold from some of the holes I'm testing to run and I see the super fine gold/sand then but not as much as when I clean out the bazooka. I still can't stop using the bazooka.. You have to look at it like this, there's always going to be some degree of loss running a sluice or trap. The trap let's you run much much more material so in a way your giving up some of that super fine in order to double or triple the rest of the gold production. It's like watching someone spend 20 min panning each pan full all day long, while another pans at about 2 min per pan. Both are good panners yet I'm sure the faster miner ends up with more gold for the most part. Just my 2 cents..

 

[425jesse]

This photo is of my -50 from a two hour run, notice there are hundreds of -100s sitting in the bottom of my blue bowl....

Bazooka prospector 36" with regular grizzlies. this is from 16 three gallon buckets unclassified. There was a pretty good amount of +50 as well.

 

[Goldwasher]

I used keene, proline, And various drop riffles for years. I live where bazookas are born and as I started to see more fellow prospectors using them I noticed that they were able to move more material and capture the same fine gold any traditional sluice caught. They have relatively the same flow requirements as a standard box. All boxes have their pros and cons. Quantifying recovery by a comparison of sample pan vs. the sluice take for the day is a very unreliable gauge of recovery in general. Unless you go ahead and rerun your tailings in totality. It is very convenient to blame your lack of success in recovery on a piece of equipment. Going on that theory is just going to hold you back. It is actually very difficult to make a stream sluice drop below 90% recovery due to the nature of their design and their limited capacity to run material. As long as you stay within those inherent properties you will recover the bulk of all gold introduced into your box. The main cause of loss in a short stream sluice is the fact that the gold in the introduced material never gets a chance to stratify and settle into whichever recovery trap it is going to pass. Chances are if you are digging and not finding much gold it is because you are digging where there isn't much gold to find.

 

[triple d]

With the Bazooka Gold Trap in two days. I had 62 micro specks of gold. On the scale they didn"t register a weight. If thats not fine gold then I don"t know what is. Thats all I find is super fine gold. And with the 36" BGT Prospecter. Its better then sliced bread.

 

[Aufisher]

YES

 

[Asmbandits]

Say what you need to say to make yourself feel better or whatever, I may not have as many posts but that does not mean what I'm saying isn't valid mabey you miss read.. next time out do a sample pan and see how much flour size material you end up with, then compare the results to the amount of flour particles the trap catches.. All the gold everyone has shown while being small isn't flour gold and this is what I'm talking about.. There is a reason the guy making them says it catches down to 100 mesh I'm not making this crap up.. I'm not saying this to bash the bazooka I love mine and will continue to use it, I'm just being realistic..

Also never a lack of success buddy we all have days that are better than others that's mining... Is success based on where I'm digging? Most likely, like I said... but equipment is and can be a factor as well there are many many variables..But, to some I guess, ingnorance is bliss!

 

[arizau]

Ok. I will stir the pot a little.
Scientific studies show that hydraulic equivalence has everything to do with gold capture in sluices and other gravity methods including cyclones, etc. Here is one study and I have seen at least one other which was done by another government sponsored agency in Alaska. http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/0594f/report.pdf Doc at Goldhog has a good and instructive video on this subject too. This sorting and subsequent concentration is what a bazooka and other sluices do while ejecting lighter and less hydraulic equivalent material including gold. This principle is also demonstrated in the blue bowl and a miller table and is why many struggle to tune them to work right.

Because of this I think there is some or a lot of validity on what Asmbandits has observed comparing sample pan finds thus expectations vs. actual bazooka gold recovery quantities and overall particle sizing and that it could and probably does translate, unknowingly, to other bazooka miners.

Kevinincolorado. How do your pictured Colorado fines on this thread compare to fines recovered on your ocean beach black sand gold that you recovered in your testing and do you think you would recover the beach gold if that black sand was mixed with your Colorado feed? Since what you found is probably only worth a few cents, care to do a field test? I think it would be instructive for all bazooka users as to just how efficient a bazooka is in capturing really, really fine gold. I only have a homemade bazooka but if I can find some suitable running water around Tucson I may try a test of my own with my Oregon beach concentrates.

 

[Asmbandits]

Ok. I will stir the pot a little.
Scientific studies show that hydraulic equivalence has everything to do with gold capture in sluices and other gravity methods including cyclones, etc. Here is one study and I have seen at least one other which was done by another government sponsored agency in Alaska. http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/0594f/report.pdf Doc at Goldhog has a good and instructive video on this subject too. This sorting and subsequent concentration is what a bazooka and other sluices do while ejecting lighter and less hydraulic equivalent material including gold. This principle is also demonstrated in the blue bowl and a miller table.
Because of this I think there is some or a lot of validity on what Asmbandits has observed comparing sample pan finds thus expectations vs. actual bazooka recovery quantities and that it could and probably does translate, unknowingly, to other bazooka miners.

Kevinincolorado. How do your pictured fines on this thread compare to fines recovered on your ocean beach black sand gold that you recovered in your testing and do you think you would recover the gold if that black sand was mixed with your Colorado feed?

Thanks for your insight, for me I get a little worked up on the topic as this was the very first thing that I noticed when I started using the bazooka. I first noticed that the black sand particles left we much larger grains than black sand cleaned out from a conventional sluice or panning. There is still some very fine black sand but very little compared to quantity of the majority larger grain black sand. If this is the case then gold being heavier would also be affected but not too the same degree, yet it is affected.. If I could figure this out after one trip out I guess I just don't see how others don't as well. I save all my black sand and I will take a picture of black sand saved from the bazooka and sand I have saved slucing and you can make the comparison for yourself.

 

[ChrisinCO]

Specific gravity plays a significant part in the grand scheme of things also. With gold being 3-4 times heavier than black sands depending on content and purity. You will catch gold 3-4 times smaller in size than the black sands you catch do to the fact that it now weighs the same. I will post pics of my first Bazooka catch after the weekend. Got my 48" Prospector last night and am looking foward to shoveling and shoveling and shoveling. All the gold where I am currently prospecting is super fine.

 

[Asmbandits]

I would also like to add that I was at the shop when they were finishing my bazooka and spoke to Todd the owner for a few hours on this topic, he even showed me a vial of the fines that he produced and it was all around 50-100 mesh with mabey 10% very fine flour gold. Everything that I am relaying to you is my opinion yet also pretty much what Todd said would be the case.

Yes black sand and gold have different gravity yet if the sand that is caught is not super fine it shows that there is a window of loss to a certain degree of particles under that specific weight/gravity. Yes gold is affected differently yet it is still affected to a certain degree, I don't quite understand why everyone wont accept this its common knowledge and has been proven over many years, not just my assumption. The bazooka is new yet the concept remains the same.

 

[arizau]

Specific gravity plays a significant part in the grand scheme of things also. With gold being 3-4 times heavier than black sands depending on content and purity. You will catch gold 3-4 times smaller in size than the black sands you catch do to the fact that it now weighs the same. I will post pics of my first Bazooka catch after the weekend. Got my 48" Prospector last night and am looking foward to shoveling and shoveling and shoveling. All the gold where I am currently prospecting is super fine.

Yep. Forgot to mention SG. In the smallest of size fractions it plays a lesser role though due to slower and slower settling velocities determined by size, shape and weight.
Good luck with your 48!

 

[ChrisinCO]

I entirely agree that the Bazooka will lose a percentage of gold albeit a small one. As all prospecting styles and equipment are prone to losees the bazooka is no different. I will take the small losses in exchange for the much higher production.

 

[Aufisher]

Some small Bazooka gold found with Hangtowndiggins .

 

[Goldwasher]

Say what you need to say to make yourself feel better or whatever, I may not have as many posts but that does not mean what I'm saying isn't valid mabey you miss read.. next time out do a sample pan and see how much flour size material you end up with, then compare the results to the amount of flour particles the trap catches.. All the gold everyone has shown while being small isn't flour gold and this is what I'm talking about.. There is a reason the guy making them says it catches down to 100 mesh I'm not making this crap up.. I'm not saying this to bash the bazooka I love mine and will continue to use it, I'm just being

Also never a lack of success buddy we all have days that are better than others that's mining... Is success based on where I'm digging? Most likely, like I said... but equipment is and can be a factor as well there are many many variables..But, to some I guess, ingnorance is bliss!

.The o.p. asked a question and I answered with my opinion based on my experience. I didn't think it was a rhetorical question. Fact is you are not "losing" gold you are failing to capture it. The bazooka is likely to not catch the same fine gold as any sluice. Its superiority is its ability to run more material. To say it would be hard pressed to capture -50 mesh gold is a false uninformed observation. I also know Todd and he knows his box very well. I gaurantee he will not even waste his time running anything but, a Bazooka as a stream sluice because he knows he can run more material. If you run more material you recover more gold period....and guess what with any sluice that has a loss percentage you will also lose more gold when you run more dirt.If anyone running a sluice tries to blame lack of recovery of any grade of gold on their equipment without checking their tailings very well they are making a mistake by blaming their gear. Why would you take notice of such a thing and not fix it? I have concentrates from my bazooka that contain significant micro gold. I bought a 100 mesh classifier due to the increase of sub 100 mesh gold I was having to re run during finishing. I must not be using the thing right or something. Ignorance is bliss?? I know way to much about the subject to be ignorant.

 

[Asmbandits]

.The o.p. asked a question and I answered with my opinion based on my experience. I didn't think it was a rhetorical question. Fact is you are not "losing" gold you are failing to capture it. The bazooka is likely to not catch the same fine gold as any sluice. Its superiority is its ability to run more material. To say it would be hard pressed to capture -50 mesh gold is a false uninformed observation. I also know Todd and he knows his box very well. I gaurantee he will not even waste his time running anything but, a Bazooka as a stream sluice because he knows he can run more material. If you run more material you recover more gold period....and guess what with any sluice that has a loss percentage you will also lose more gold when you run more dirt.If anyone running a sluice tries to blame lack of recovery of any grade of gold on their equipment without checking their tailings very well they are making a mistake by blaming their gear. Why would you take notice of such a thing and not fix it? I have concentrates from my bazooka that contain significant micro gold. I bought a 100 mesh classifier due to the increase of sub 100 mesh gold I was having to re run during finishing. I must not be using the thing right or something. Ignorance is bliss?? I know way to much about the subject to be ignorant.

Seems like in some ways your supporting what I'm saying but at the same time from what I put together your bashing my ability. Why would Todd have the 100 mesh discloser and have told me everything he did? Please again read what I am saying this isn't opinion this time this is fact, if it hurts to hear don't get mad at me get mad at yourself.. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOME DEGREE OF LOSS, whether you think your the all time top miner or not your just kidding yourself if you believe otherwise, a loss is a loss wether it be a penny weight or a single spec.. Each type of equipment has its ups and downs, yes you may have a lot of -50 good for you but you could be and probably are losing some as well.. Did I ever say that it wouldn't catch flour gold? NO! I said that it doesn't catch it as good as larger gold which is fact! I don't need your opinion to say I'm wrong the damn rivers will show you I'm right, why is it that color is more evenly dispersed than larger gold? CUZ IT'S EASIER TO MOVE SO IT DOES.. This isn't rocket science again I'm just being realistic.. Telling people that the bazooka will catch every single particle of gold at a 100% rate is false, knowing that larger gold is easier to catch is true.. That should settle it right?

By the way I have a good amount of -50 as well taken with the bazooka, only I didn't see it and assume that I had caught every piece of gold that made it through my box because I'm realistic, ability aside..

You can post as many pics as you want of small gold, it doesn't mean that your capturing all of it, and it doesn't mean, " yes the bazooka catches fine gold" all it means is that you were able to catch that amount of it and who knows what got by.. If you had a hard rock mine and were free milling very very fine gold would you use a bazooka to capture it or a shaker table?.....

 

[Prospector70]

Holy @#$% I'm Late!

Yes, yes they really do trap flour gold.

I've test panned and test panned and test panned until I felt like a fool for doing it. I've never blown out anything I could find, and as I've said before, I run mine like the fist of an angry god. No fear, fast as possible. Bazooka 48" HWHG. Trust your tool. You will get more gold, I've gotten a bunch of super fines I couldnt see with the naked eye (well a 40 year old naked eye anyway... lol)

I will agree that you need good water flow though, in lower water situations you may have to break out your old style riffle sluice. I, me, being a river sluicer this has never been an issue. I run mine fairly flat, but with water thundering through it. I never pay attention to the fluid bed until it's time to go or if I move the sluice to a different spot.

I think what some people are running into is overload.
you can overload a BGT with material on the top plate, causing it to skip over the fluid bed. I can demostrate this by dumping a full bucket in my 48 at once, instead of 1/3 at a time like normal. (Takes about a minute to a minute and a half to dump it in correctly), I imagine with the snipers and the smaller prospectors a big shovel with not so good water flow would overload. I don't overload and I don't blow anything out.


I love you,
Prospector70