1st run with drywasher. Is 11 degrees about right for bottom tray?

[roadrunner]

My son and I went out to a wash and brought back some material to try out the newly acquired gold Buddy drywasher.
Throttle half open. Material mostly all dry. Sat in sun for an hour but came from a wash.
11 degrees on the bottom tray.
Can you tell by the video if it looks right.
Or, would I just add some different sizes of lead painted gold and see what angle is the best.
Seeing which angle collects most of my fake gold.
Not a very good video.
I have another one will post. Does it matter how fast the material runs down the tray and over the riffles. Lot of videos on drywashing but none that explain the specifics.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[Hard Prospector]

The video was pretty limited but the set up looked good. What stood out was the flow of material through the riffle box was steady and level AND this is key: you can clearly see riffle bar outlines under the flow of material. When the riffle bar outlines can't be seen, your either running material too fast or the dead space below the riffle bars is packed full of heavies and in need of cleaning out.

 

[roadrunner]

Thank you.
I did capture about 5 little pieces of lead that was nothing but shavings off of ricochets so I figured I was close.
Lots of black sand, and very small pieces or hematite or magnetite which stuck to a magnet. Actually jumped onto the magnet when it got close in the pan.

 

[Terry Soloman]

Try a 14-percent slant.

 

[roadrunner]

Thanks Terry.
Will try with some bird shot.
Thanks for posting the video.

 

[socalal99]

My 2 cents worth of advice. In the video on the first post, the riffle tray looks too steep and you might be running too much material. In general, I keep my riffle tray at a shallow slope, just enough to keep the material moving downward, and I try to run material at a rate where I can always see the tops of the riffles. It appears that flooding the tray such that the riffles are buried lets the material slide off the top, rather than be slowed by the riffles. You can always pan your tailings to see if you are loosing gold.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I just started back a little over a week ago. I used my old Gold Buddy Mini. I haven't a clue as to the angle of the riffle tray. I experimented with both the tray angle, and the amount of force of the blower.

I agree that you should not see a landslide effect. You want to see those riffle tops. I ran my blower almost all the way down. I suggest you just experiment to find the sweet spot. A lot does depend on the blower motor.

Just to let you know, with my experiments, I got a setup that allowed me to get small gold that I needed 5X magnification to see. I think they call that flour gold. I had to keep my black sand because there is that flour gold in it I have not figured out how to pan out. Don't throw your find concentrates away until you take a careful look.

This is all from a rookie miner with an old dry washer. Caley

 

[Hard Prospector]

Here's a trick to "tune" your drywasher set up: Count out several dozen BB gun BB's and mix them into your hopper material. After a typical run shut down and before the clean out, count the BB's and note their placement in the riffle tray (tweezers work well for this). If your catching BB's, your catching gold and its a real confidence builder.

 

[arizau]

I just stared back a little over a week ago. I used my old Gold Buddy Mini. I haven't a clue as to the angle of the riffle tray. I experimented with both the tray angle, and the amount of force of the blower.

I agree that you should not see a landslide effect. You want to see those riffle tops. I ran my blower almost all the way down. I suggest you just experiment to find the sweet spot. A lot does depend on the blower motor.

Just to let you know, with my experiments, I got a setup that allowed me to get small gold that I needed 5X magnification to see. I think they call that flour gold. I had to keep my black sand because there is that flour gold in it I have not figured out how to pan out. Don't throw your find concentrates away until you take a careful look.

This is all from a rookie miner with an old dry washer. Caley

To ease your panning efforts, classify your concentrates before panning. Since you are seeing fine gold I would suggest 30, 50 and 100 mesh sieves and pan each size (plus 30, plus 50 and plus and minus 100) separately. When gold is more or less equal in size to the other material it is relatively easy to pan. With these mesh sizes it is best to pan in small quantities...say about a tablespoon at a time.

Good luck.

 

[roadrunner]

Thanks to everyone responding to my thread.
I will try some bbs, and some small, thin flat pieces of lead from ricochets.
And slice some off also and see where they are in the riffles, then adjust so they are in the top 3.