Arizau,
Thanks for sharing your well thought out comments. I followed the link to Fossicker's video on the clean gold sluice. I watched that video and a few of his others as well. I think the idea is fascinating!
The one thing that confuses me with this video, like so many other demonstrations is the focus on what they recover. Don't get me wrong it's interesting to see the recovery of fine gold and very flat gold, heck anything less than 100 mesh and you have my full attention. However, speaking for myself, I don't care if you catch a hundred colors or a hundred penny weight, I want to know what you lost!
You can sell me on your losses!
I know what losses I can live with and how to work that into what I'm doing. However when I watch a video that shows a clean up with some -150 mesh gold in it and the demonstrator says "see this new left handed suckarator recovers gold all the way down to -150". Never mind that there may have been 10,000 pieces that went out with the tailings. This leaves me scratching my head.
I'm not being cynical or negative, at some point you're always trading recovery percentage for volume. Especially at the upper percentages. For example I bet if you were determined to go from say 90% to 99% recovery that additional 10% could double your processing time/effort, likely much more and the last couple of percent might be unattainable as a small scale miner. Even if you recovered 100% but only run half as much material you go home with 40% less gold, for some that's a victory, great! Mission accomplished.
I would just like to see a demo where the seller ended with how they determined their losses and what they were.
The best example I have seen of this is the field tests shown by the folks at "Gold Hog".
Another example of good information comes from the fine folks at Bazooka Gold company, they warn about small flat rocks and how fine a gold their system is set up for. Because of this honesty you can have an informed conversation about ways to compensate for these things. I live in Western Washington and lots of my local opportunity is in creeks with the vast majority of the gold being -20 and more than half -50. Add to that lots of schist and a little sharp edged quartz for fun and you can challenge a simple guy like me to be sure. I received great advise from them and on here from a couple of members, most of it from Kevin in Colorado.
Here is some -20/-50 gold out of my Bazooka, very low drop, deep water on the deck, medium speed. I had to help clear +/-25% of the bigger rocks.
All the best,
John
Another option I have is Kenai beach in Alaska. I have a friend up there that said that I can mine all I want up there for free. Just wondering if the black sand beaches in Kenai are as rich as that of Nome...
