Hi Lookin and welcome to the Net.I have been using the blue bowl for years now and love it. The first thing you want to make sure is while at the creek be sure to wash as much of the clay nout of your cons before you leave. It makes the rest of the procedure much easier.
This is what I do, and I do this right away when I get home. I will spread my cons out on some flat tray like a large cookie sheet, you may need to sneak it out of the kitchen, and let them dry a day or two. Then I run a magnet through it several times to get as much of the magnetite I can out. I then store all the cons in buckets until I have about 5 gallons.
I then will classify the cons starting with 1/4", 1/8",-20.-30,-50, and finally -100 mesh. These are all stacked on a 5 gal. bucket with the progression stated above -100 on the bottom. put cons in the top classifier 1/4" and using a garden hose wash the material through removing each classifier as it is washed putting the contents of each into a separate bucket marked with what the classification is it contains.
Pan the cons that are 1/4 and 1/8. If you don't have a miro sluice the also pan the -20.
Now I am ready to blue bowl the rest. I use clay gone mixed in the water to help with the clay that maybe still in the materisl. On the inside of the blue bowl, with aperminant marker, 1/4" down mark a line and lable it -50, then another 1/4" another line ,arked -100. These are the levels you will want the water at when doing those mesh sizes. -30 is run at the very top.
Run the material wet. the -30 can be fed one cup at a time. I use an old flour scoup which holds about a cup. the other sizes feed a table spoon at a time. You can continuously feed the material with out shutting off the water. Just let it clear out before adding. Do only one size at a time and clean out after each size. Once I finish each size I will shut off the water, take a turkey baster and blow all the material left in the bowl to the outside edge and restart the water. It will pull the lighter black sand out of the bowl leaving the gold on the outside. Use a snuffer bottle to remove the gold. Then put your clean gold into a vial.
This is the method I devised and it work very well for me. Hope this helps.
Good Luck!
BH Prospector
, putting some saved up material in it to gauge flow/classification size. Its fairly methodical just watching the thing go. If anyone has any experience/tips I'm all ears. Already checked out the youtube vids etc. Just wondering how it has worked for others...
