The Fossicker was one of the dealers who was demonstrating and/or selling their prospecting equipment and supplies at the GPAA Gold and Treasure Show in Mesa, AZ this past weekend. Along with his, familiar to most, pyramid pro pan and maverick finishing pan, he also had his cleangold products/ sluices on display. He demonstrated with a handheld cleangold item ($45) and the results were impressive in it's ability to quickly test "pan" for gold larger than about 50 mesh prior to production runs as the gold was clearly visible
on top of the black sand remaining on the device at the end of the demonstration. However, one would probably have to conventionally pan the concentrates captured by the device to see if there is gold smaller than about 50 mesh since I'm not sure anything that small or smaller was visible in the demonstration. Maybe just a result of my vision?
Of course this same testing can, and usually is, done by conventional panning so I'm not sure the device has a real advantage for testing but it does have potential for a quick method to really super concentrate magnetic black sands particularly those of a size smaller than about 50 to 70 mesh. Here is the patent to give you the theory of how cleangold devices work.
http://www.google.com/patents/US5927508
There was no demonstration of the pump powered sluices or the stream sluice. If you go to his site there are videos of them in action but none for the handheld device. The concentrates collected from the sluices can then be quickly further concentrated using the handheld device mentioned above. By looking at the devices, I guesstimate that the resulting concentrate reduction of black sand to be about 4 to 8 times in volume depending on what size cleangold sluice the concentrates were collected by. There would be no real loss in gold in the re-concentration as, in most cases, the reject concentrates are tested and rerun anyway if one detects gold in them no matter the recovery method. Thus the use of this device could be a real time saver by reducing the volume of material one runs in the final cleanup efforts. In my, and many others opinion, the less material one has to pan, miller table or blue bowl for final gold recovery the better. The Fossicker said that there is an ingenious secret method to extract most of the gold from those concentrates in about two minutes time!?!? He also said the inventor (who he called a prodigal, I think he meant prodigy) made him promise not to disclose the "secret method" to others, prior to contracting him to sell the patented product. The "secret method" is shared only with purchasers of the cleangold devices. He alluded to other wondrous things about cleangold but would not divulge them since they were part of the secret. Who knows what they are.
I have no doubt that the cleangold sluices capture gold pretty well BUT I have no idea how well they actually compare to other types of sluices/devices including the gold cube as far as overall capture efficiency goes. I have not seen anywhere comparisons of cleangold vs. ... If you get a chance to see the Fossicker demonstrate his equipment in person take the time to do it. He is pretty entertaining but obviously proud and opinionated about his products. After his demonstration(s) you can form your own conclusions.
The above is just a report and is what I observed, heard and have since thought a lot about.
