Gold Screw Trommel

[HMiller]

Decided to get the gold screw trommel out and run my 20 buckets through it that I brought back from my claim. The neighbor kid came over and gave me a hand. At 12 he's really into it. Good kid too. He shoveled it all and I kept things up and running. We set it up as a recirculating system in the back yard. Had a problem with roots and sticks getting sucked into the pump so had to stop once in a while and flush the pump out. i did put a screen on the suction hose but they still found there way into the pump eventually. A smaller mesh screen would have helped. This isn't something I am going to do again but we wanted to blow the cobwebs out of the gold screw as it hasn't been run in many years. Will probably take it to the river one of these days where the water is clean. I did find gold in the tailings so it isn't 100% efficient but that could have been due to the water flow choking at times. I'll re-run those talings when my gold cube trommel arrives. We had a good time anyway and found some gold. I sent him home with plenty of gold to show off.

 

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[johnedoe]

you might want to check these out.....
fossickers.com

 

[HMiller]

That would do the trick. Thanks.

 

[johnedoe]

Your welcome......

 

[kcm]

That's a nice looking machine. Does it live up to its claims and run 2 cu. yrds. per hour?

 

[HMiller]

We couldn't keep up with it so I would say so.

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

The blue swamp cooler mats work well for filtering too.
It will flow fine but keep floating stuff out of the pump.

Just get a square section and set the pump in the middle and tie it up at the top with a zip tie.

 

[Reed Lukens]

I see the trommel but where's the Gold Screw? All I see is the tailings and not the recovery section. You could run the outfeed into your Gold Cube Trommel if everything was raised up. It looks like a good set up but I'm just wondering why you didn't show the recovery area
Original Gold Screw Trommel

 

[HMiller]

It's running into the red tub. The gold screw classifies down to 1/8 and is supposed to run into a spiral wheel. I have all the parts to do that but trust the gold cube more. Thought about running it directly into the gold cube but getting the right flow into the cube could be a problem, this thing dumps a lot of water. Here's a video of it running. Yes I know the spray bars were clogged at that time.

https://youtu.be/CLbeNSUe1wY

 

[Reed Lukens]

Here's Mike's instructions for checking the correct water flow for the Cube. It looks like you will be a close but you could always run everything directly from the Gold Screw Wheel, straight into a Gold Cube placed behind the Wheel outfeed and let the Cube use its own water supply. Basically you would be using the wheel itself as a simple dewatering tool.

Mike Pung says:
February 14, 2016 at 11:03 pm
The fast water that is in the Gold Cube and the forces that it creates, (centrifugal and vortex) are what is necessary to retain the finer gold. But don’t use too much water either or you flush out gold. The 1100 GPH at full flow is what will give you the best results across the board. If you use a different pump or water source, use this method to make sure you are not over watering the system.

1. cut a 5/8″ dowel rod to 10 inches.
2. roll the dowel down the water tray slick plate and it will jamb and dam up the water all but an inch on either side.
3. With the water on, you will see the water getting deep above the dowel.
4. Watch the scooped out section of the plastic that forms the Cube side openings, the water should not overflow out those sides. If it stays contained, you are good, if it overflows, you need to dial back the water.

With your pump, you will have to run at idle and use a valve to slow down water to the Cube. But with adjustment, you should be just fine.

Hope this helps, let me know if there are any other questions. Mike

Then here's a good video that shows the flow from the fines recovery area, It does look close -

 

[Hoser John]

I sold many a Gold Screw back in the 80-90s. Miss Ivan as a fantastic fellow to mine with and worked many shows at the same time. I liked the auger that removed the tailings and moved them out of the containment vessel. RUN that screw to recover all the gold AND black sands, then rerun to get only the gold-do it with ANY/ALL units thusly you have classified first by size, then by specific gravity for a really great recovery rate. Thanx for pix as reminder of how things used to be....John

 

[Goodyguy]

Love it