Blue bowl

[Dirk Pitt]

I have been prospecting for about six months now and have bit of a problem. In the area I go to, there isn't much gold, and what there is isn't very big, mostly 20 mesh or smaller. I built a miller table but it doesn't work all that well, so, been thinking about buying a blue bowl. Anyone have any advice on this before I buy one?

 

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[419GottaMinute]

If you do get one, classify, classify, classify! They lose gold and take forever to process if you dont classify and run like-sized material through it. That being said, they work well and are quiet enough to watch tv while you run it.

 

[jmoller99]

I can't agree more about classification. I have 4 classifiers stacked on top of each other. On the bottom is 100 mesh, next is 70 mesh, next is 50 mesh and on the top is 30 mesh. I dump my concentrates on the top one and wash (with water) the concentrates thru. I run what shows up at each level by itself in the Blue Bowl - each will have its water set differenty. I also put in a brass water valve (from the hardware store) to adjust it in place of the plastic valve the Blue Bowl comes with.

 

[Color-blind]

I had the same question. Built a miller table a month or so back and with the help of this site and some good info got it fine tuned to where it has worked pretty well. I took the processed cons. left over to a friend who runs all his classified cons. through a blue bowl and had him run mine, I was very impressed. It was pulling out "Dust" and a good majority of it too. He said it took him a while to figure out what level to run the water, with this fine gold we have when he followed the provided dirrections it would just blow it all out the top. We ran all my cons. in about 10 min. and a couple min. with a sucker bottle and I was sold. He will run his cons. through and then classify it down and run it again doing this 3 or 4 times, each time classifying them down further and pulling out new gold each time. I tried to build one once, lets just say I'll be buying one here shortly. Thanks for the thread! CB

 

[Oakview2]

How to Process Gold Concentrate

As all have said, classification is the key to using the specific gravity in any type of gold separation, no matter what type of separator you use, you must get all the particles you run to roughly the same size...

 

[Dirk Pitt]

Thanks for the advice, I usually classify to 30 mesh, but the gold is more like 50 or even smaller! I will classify smaller first and see what happens

 

[B H Prospector]

Hi Dirk and welcome. I save all my cons through the year and run them through my blue bowl in the fall and winter. As said above classification is very important. I classify -20, -30, -50, -100. I run the -30 through -100 in the bowl. feed rat for the -30 is about one cup of material at a time. A table spoon at a time for the smaller. Water is run as follows: -30 run the water level with the top of the bowl rim, -50 run the water 1/4" below the rim, -100 run the water 1/2" below rim. Basically you want to drop the water 1/4" for every screen size. I have never lost any gold and I don't think it is all that time consuming, but then when it comes to making sure I get all the gold I have the patients of a grandparent. Oh yeah I am a grandparent. Hope this helps.

Good Luck!

B H Prospector

 

[Leonard F.]

Does the Blue Bowl need to be cleaned/roughed up the same as a regular gold pan before using?

 

[B H Prospector]

I wouldn't hurt to wash it with some good strong deturgent. I never did rough it up and I never lost any gold. I know because I ran the material twice.

 

[SGTDirk]

I know when I bought my blue bowl they said never rough it up, just wash it with soap and water.

 

[LP13]

I have used blue bowl and found it to lose a significant amount of fine gold. One of the things that prompted me to build my new style sluice. I had a guy come here yesterday with his dirt from a blue bowl after the gold had been removed. We put 1/2 gallon of dirt through my sluice that he brought and came up with about 1/2 gram of fine gold that was missed by his blue bowl. My sluice didn't miss it and reduced the dirt down to about 1/4 cup in about 3 minutes flat. He has twelve 5 gallon buckets of that dirt. I say he's got a lot of money coming when he re-cleans his dirt! Of course he bought the sluice too. No brainer. Nice thing about my sluice is that it takes just a few minutes to process a lot of dirt/concentrates. Doesn't take forever. Here is a link to a video one of my customers did. Unfortunately he didn't post the cleanup on it but he has promised to make me one soon.



My sluice is a bit more spendy than a blue bowl but then it's machined out of aluminum and not made of plastic either. My stuff is quality stuff. Not junk and isn't made in china.

 

[Prospecting P.]

After getting use to using the blue bowl i've been happy with it, fun too watch i must add makes a cool pattern with sands when running

 

[B H Prospector]

If you are loosing gold with the blue bowl you are not running it right. You are running it too fast for the light material. I have never lost any gold. I am rather paranoid about loosing gold and will run material two sometimes three times before I am satisfied. As I said never lost a fly poop spec.

 

[419GottaMinute]

Lp: looks like a highbanker to me. Can you explain how this separates gold from black sand?

 

[Prospecting P.]

i have set lines i run my blue bowl at and i screen to #30, #50 and #100 mesh. once i have a constant flow to the line i choose i know no gold that size will ever leave the bowl because there's not enough force to move the gold. most gold settles right after gently adding to water #30 or #50 while runnng, #100 ive been adding while off and on and havent seen anything but have been getting #50 mesh gold. Blue bowl should be cleaned with non sented soap becouse some contain oils, Never ruff up the bowl! (from the manual)

 

[Goodyguy]

For dust size gold the Blue Bowl is hard be beat!
Of course you have to know what you are doing

With that being said, it sure takes a huge amount of micron gold dust to add up to anything worthwhile.

GG~

 

[419GottaMinute]

And it takes FOREVER to sepperate dust from black sand. You have to run your water pretty slow.
I know others on this site are going to disagree, bu t I dont save gold smaller than a certain size. If you want a vial of fines, go on ebay. I have foind it to be a waste of time trying to manage very fine gold.

Guess im spoiled. ..;-)

 

[Dirk Pitt]

Unfortunately for me the size of gold near me is pretty small! For me, it's not about making money, I enjoy the challenge and it keeps me outdoors!

 

[LP13]

Lp: looks like a highbanker to me. Can you explain how this separates gold from black sand?

Gladly. It reduces the quantity of unwanted material in your concentrates to a very small amount. The capacity of the Gold Well is small. Less than a cup. So a lot of my customers use it for cleanup. Rather than the hours spent at a blue bowl, spiral wheel or panning, they process it through my sluice in a few minutes time, which yields all the gold (it really hates to let go of gold) in a quantity of black sands that is very managable. Supposing you do use a blue bowl or spiral wheel. Now instead of two gallons of concentrates to put through it you have 1/2 cup to a cup at most. With the same quantity of gold that you had in the original 2 gallons. A sluice, like any other device is not a gold separator, they are merely concentrators. Show me a device that gets ONLY the gold and nothing else. Then you have a gold separator. Otherwise, no matter how you slice it, any device you use is simply a concentrator. The Gold Well has a huge ratio of concentration. It works to process raw material or you can use it to process concentrates. It doesn't care. Plus, it works at pretty much any angle between a few degrees and 45 degrees with a wide variation in flow rates. Like one of my customers said, there's no screwing around with it. Just set it up and go.

In the configuration seen to the left it is used to process classified material 1/4 minus. Highbanker is an optional attachment.

 

[419GottaMinute]

Lp : good explanation! Thanks