Disclaimer.. My gold is generally pretty close to the source and only the bigger stuff is pounded flat....
I don't re-run the tails at all... I did at one point, and there was nothing there.. I don't even clean the bottom trays, I just save it...
Here is a cleanup from just the top tray from a month or so ago...
And right after that I did a clean up of the bottom trays from the last 6 months or so... It wasn't too good as far as gold qty goes,
but it was really good that not much is getting down there... and it was all floaty odd shaped stuff.
As to eliminating the slick plate... I have mixed feelings on that. On one hand, in the gold cube, I don't think it will effect your recovery
at all... What it will do is double the concentrates that you will have to worry about... Anything that makes it past the top tray will
then go through the underflow hoodickey and land right at the top of the second tray..
Also a slick plate is a separation device in and of itself.. As the materials are traveling along the slick plate, they are sorting themselves,
heavies to the bottom, and lights to the top.
Another thought... Did you break the mat in? Run a whole bunch of garbage through it to take the "shine" off... Kind of like
seasoning your pan. Doc from Gold Hog had a video about that somewhere along the line.
Also, if you are just playing with a single tray at this point, you aren't getting the benefit of the underflow hoodickey between the trays,
that's really the secret to the whole thing.. A lot of times you'll find gold sitting on the lip before it even gets to the 1st mat, and some
stays down in the bottom of the underflow thing. Your recovery should go to close to 100% once you get it split and stacked.