gold miner spiral pan help

[rick.ther]

just bought a gold miner spiral, set it up to run some concentrates and I get alot of black sand in cup.
Questions that come to mind, vertical set, can i go more? water flow enough? water conditioner?
this is a gently used by private owner so no help there.
thanks
rick

 

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[bakergeol]

When I used my spiral wheel I had to watch it all the time. When using recirculated water something would always clog up one of the water vent holes- sand, organic matter. I used a dental pick to quickly unclog the hole. Once a water vent hole is clogged up black sand quickly races up to the outlet. You just have to watch it and make sure all the vent holes are open.

In addition you should classify your material before you run your concentrates. The more the better. The more even size of your concentrates the better it works.

It is just a matter of trial and error. Adjust the angle until you have an acceptable amount of black sand in your container.


George

 

[rick.ther]

thanks for the reply,
water vent hole? Is this in the pan itself?
sorry to sound dumb but this is new tech to me. The spiral pan that is.

 

[flagold]

He's talking about the little holes on the spraybar clogging. The suggestion about screening the material is a good one. If you can force yourself to screen to at least 20 mesh, you'll do yourself a big favor, and an even bigger one at 30 mesh. Above that, toss the material in a pan and you can pan it out readilly. The wheel will get very fine gold if you screen down. If you don't screen, you'll get this result: which is what you describe. I purposefully did not screen (to 30 mesh) so the viewers could see large gold climbing the wheel.

Good luck!

 

[Nashoba]

feed the thing very slowly and do try to get it down to 30 mesh before you attempt recovery of fines. Once you see a good amount of gold toward the hole, tip the bowl and dump the gold in a pan or suck it up with a snifter.

I love those spiral panners but I feel they are best for just getting the flower gold from the black sand.

Good luck
~Nash~

 

[warsawdaddy]

First thing you need to do is get a lady's nylon knee stocking and put it over the pump.This will keep the pump and the spraybar from clogging.You want the wheel at an angle so that the black sand stops climbing about 1" from the hole.You feed the wheel with a tablespoon at about the 4 o'clock position.Water flow is just enough to knock the material other than the blk sand and gold,off by the time it reaches a third of the way up.Goodluck.

 

[warsawdaddy]

In addition,if you are going to use the spiral pan more,this is what I did.I took a flat piece of steel about 3" square and drilled a hole in all four corners,painted it and then put 1/4 x 1" bolts in and put a nut on them tight so that I had four legs.I put the nylon sock over that and the pump and I've never had to clean my pump or spray tube.The 'leg' bolts hold the pump up out of the returns.Make sure your water is above the pump by a good bit.

 

[Hoser John]

All spirals work best by scalping the black sands and the gold,then rerun for the gold and mercury treat for leftovers(NOTHING IS 100%) in the remaining black sands. Classification increases your results due to size differences and running pure black sand,this is specific gravity classification. Ifn' it ain't got a hole thru the middle,it ain't worth a diddle-John