Gold:Au
Jr. Member
- #1
Thread Owner
Anybody have experience with gold jigs?
After18 months of studying gold processing and recovery systems in preparation for getting our new sluice designed up, I settled upon the simple shaker table/sluice with the sluice set up for both the nuggets and the fine gold found in our area. (1/2" screen shaker table feeding into steel mesh over open backed nomad matting with slick plates and a hungarian riffled nugget trap at the exit.)
At a meeting with my partners a week ago cemented our goals of 50+ cubic yards/hr so I started crunching the numbers and that's when I realised we just don't have the water to handle anywhere near that.
So that idea is shelved until we work our a compromise, and I decided to re-watch Season 5 of "Parker's Trail", where he travels around New Zealand looking at washplant setups to see if I could get some inspiration, and I did. The gold jig.
They used to be a thing, and now they're not. Why? Well, I assume it's because a sluice is a lot cheaper and far more reliable. So why am I considering one? They are supposed to require far less water, and capture *far* smaller gold.
I am kinda familiar with how gold jigs work, a background project is a desktop clean-up gold jig. Yeah, there's a couple already out there but they are just a gimmicky fluid bed classifier with extra bits and not a true jig, so I thought I'd see if modern materials and technology could make them useful to the small guy.
I'd love to hear from anybody who has experience with using one and tell me why I shouldn't use one as a primary concentrator. (It'll be the cost I bet.)
After18 months of studying gold processing and recovery systems in preparation for getting our new sluice designed up, I settled upon the simple shaker table/sluice with the sluice set up for both the nuggets and the fine gold found in our area. (1/2" screen shaker table feeding into steel mesh over open backed nomad matting with slick plates and a hungarian riffled nugget trap at the exit.)
At a meeting with my partners a week ago cemented our goals of 50+ cubic yards/hr so I started crunching the numbers and that's when I realised we just don't have the water to handle anywhere near that.
So that idea is shelved until we work our a compromise, and I decided to re-watch Season 5 of "Parker's Trail", where he travels around New Zealand looking at washplant setups to see if I could get some inspiration, and I did. The gold jig.
They used to be a thing, and now they're not. Why? Well, I assume it's because a sluice is a lot cheaper and far more reliable. So why am I considering one? They are supposed to require far less water, and capture *far* smaller gold.
I am kinda familiar with how gold jigs work, a background project is a desktop clean-up gold jig. Yeah, there's a couple already out there but they are just a gimmicky fluid bed classifier with extra bits and not a true jig, so I thought I'd see if modern materials and technology could make them useful to the small guy.
I'd love to hear from anybody who has experience with using one and tell me why I shouldn't use one as a primary concentrator. (It'll be the cost I bet.)
