anyone with a nugget bucket here in Las Vegas?

[zemetrius]

like to make contact with anyone here in las vegas area who has a nugget bucket. i am a member of the GSSN, i go to a claim west of las vegas, would like to test out the nugget bucket on the material i bring back from the claim before i throw down $109 for one of my own, hate to get it and have it not work for me, they would probably do a refund if i plead my case to them, but a test before i buy might save me grief.

just for the record, i am on the west side of the valley, almost in the summerlin area.

hope to hear from someone.

zemetrius

 

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[Goldwasher]

wouldn't a drywasher be more productive?

 

[placertogo]

If you want $100 worth of great gold getter, get a Gold Hog Flow Pan.

 

[zemetrius]

my interest in the nugget bucket is because of at the claim i go to, there is some really small super fine color gold mixed in with a lot of back sand. the nugget bucket is basically a concentrator, i already have a 24 inch sluice, the gold hog flow pan, like my sluice would not be helpful in recovering that really small tiny stuff, but a concentrator is more like what i need. once i remove the black sand, this will better my chances of concentrating the really small stuff.

 

[zemetrius]

ok, so i pulled the trigger and got a nugget bucket, should be here in a few days, end of the week at the latest hopefully.will spend the rest of the week classifying my materials from the claim, some will have black sand removed, some will have it still mixed in, see which works best on the NB. really hoping this works on the small color stuff, not sure what else to do if it doesn't. but i will burn that bridge when i get to it.

 

[N-Lionberger]

I don't really see the point of a nugget bucket. I have lots of black sand to deal with I screen it all out, dry it and use a spin it off magnet to get the magnetic sand out. When its magnetic sand free and all screened to similar size processing it is a lot easier. Have you tried a drywasher?

 

[arizau]

my interest in the nugget bucket is because of at the claim i go to, there is some really small super fine color gold mixed in with a lot of back sand. the nugget bucket is basically a concentrator, i already have a 24 inch sluice, the gold hog flow pan, like my sluice would not be helpful in recovering that really small tiny stuff, but a concentrator is more like what i need. once i remove the black sand, this will better my chances of concentrating the really small stuff.

First, for full disclosure, I own one but don't use it. I usually use my drywasher here in the desert since I work in locations remote from my truck...Can't carry water, etc. to it.

It was given to me as a gift but after testing at home, I determined that it will work best (I haven't field tested it) as a primary recovery system/concentrator.* The first thing you have to realize is that it's main purpose, besides being a non-motorized, water saving recirc system for us desert rats, is to concentrate and save black sand and gold (heavies) from paydirt. It does a fine job of doing that for raw feed material that has some black sand but mostly consists of ordinary sand and gravel, etc. As to your problem (separating fine gold from black sand concentrates) I think you will find this series of videos helpful to actually eliminate black sand from your concentrates to make tiny/fine gold recovery relatively easy. https://goldcube.net/gold-cube-university/. Be sure to watch the "classify and magnetics" videos as they address two issues that some people are not aware of or just don't do.

Good luck.

*One test was with about a gallon of all minus 100 mesh BS concentrate containing gold. It did eliminate most of the BS but panning those tails revealed that it lost about as much fine gold as was saved. I suspect that larger mesh sizes will have better results but after removal of the magnetics as shown above, that panning is much easier too. Just saying.

 

[zemetrius]

much appreciated thanks.

 

[medusa]

We live in Gold Basin and also belong to gssn and other clubs in our area.
We use a Keene drywasher, and catch down to about 200 minus.
Lots of black sand. We either classify and pan, or if we have several buckets of cons, we run cons through a custom made sluice that my husband created.
If you run your dry washer properly, it can get super fine gold. It's quite amazing actually. I've learned over the years to pan pretty clean down to 200 minus, but its painstaking work...literally a half teaspoon at a time with a finishing pan...I keep those cons for fun when I can't get out digging! But it's all caught with the drywasher! 100 minus gold is very abundant here so it has been worth the effort.

 

[zemetrius]

i am quite intrigued when you say you pan down to 200 mesh. i cannot figure out how to separate the small stuff i have found from the dirt its in, let alone pan anything that small. any suggestions or tips, even for starting out towards panning the small stuff are welcomed.

 

[arizau]

i am quite intrigued when you say you pan down to 200 mesh. i cannot figure out how to separate the small stuff i have found from the dirt its in, let alone pan anything that small. any suggestions or tips, even for starting out towards panning the small stuff are welcomed.

Screen the material (your concentrates) through 30, 50, 100 and 150 mesh classifier screens and pan each batch size separately. The 200 mesh and smaller will be what passes the 150 screen. As she stated it is a tedious process and requires panning in small amounts of about a tablespoon or less for the smallest sized material. Remove the magnetics to make it easier/reduce the total volume of original and make a superconcentrate. When gold is panned in closely classified batches that consist of more or less equal sized material it is easier to pan since it is about three or more times heavier than the other individual particles. Bear in mind that a 50 mesh opening is twice the area of 100 mesh, etc., etc.

 

[zemetrius]

tedious.....yes, yes i can relate to the use of that word. i have gotten pretty good at removing the magnetic sand, i just picked up a 100 and 200 mesh classifier on amazon, the 100 may come in handy, the 200 is the wishful thinking part of the plan.

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

Must be a labor of love using all those screens and processes!
Once you get past the mind set that every single speck of gold must be recovered, it gets a lot easier.
When you get into some decent gold it will easily settle into a nice solid string of gold at the bottom of your pan that you can suck up with a snuffer bottle.

The remaining concentrates can go into a 55 gal drum and maybe ran across a table some day.

 

[PickAxeCA]

Try tapping the front of your pan to get a line of gold at the front you can suck up with a snuffer bottle.

Also if you stratify properly when panning and just let the lighter material peel off (rather than pouring out material when panning) you should be able to recover most of your fine flour gold.

Good panning technique is still highly underrated in my view.

-Xplore