Hey guys sorry I haven't updated you much since my recent purchase of the classifiers. I have used them and like I mentioned I got a 30, 50, 70 and 100. Really time consuming to classify by each size, I like doing it but it takes tons of time. Results have varied greatly, to my surprise I have had most of my gold in the -30to +50 mesh range and also the -100 range but not much in the 50 mesh or 70 mesh buckets, thinking I may start skipping a couple sizes. Right now my process has been using my pro pan at the river, classifying to -12 at the river then bringing everything home for the time consuming crap. One day I tried classifying right down to -30 at the the river but it ended up being too time consuming plus I was afraid I was going to ruin the screen with the larger rocks I was dropping on it.
After tweaking my process a bit I do have a question. When classifying into a 5 gallon bucket when the bucket gets full of water so there is standing water on your screen is it o.k. to dump material in and work it with your hands through the screen? I have been doing that more now and it seems to work o.k. but I hope I am not losing any material that may just be sitting on top of the screen. I would think any of the material small enough to fit through would still go through without the force of dumping water on it.
On a good note yesterday I found two decent little pieces of gold, felt good because I have been going through a bit of a drought, always trying new spots, even driving around a little but still haven't found a spot I feel comfortable driving to and processing a ton of dirt because of past success. Gold seems to be really hit or miss here. You can go to a spot one day and do o.k. then go to the same spot the next day and barely find anything within 1 inch of where you were digging the day before.....really getting annoying! I just want ONE decent spot to rely on!
