Rocker Box?

[Duckshot]

Oh, found the price of a plastic Gold Grabber mini rocker - $329.

I know that with plastic you gotta recover the cost of the mould, but jeepers that's a lot of spare change for maybr $20 worth of resin and a $100 manual bilge pump!

I am in the wrong line of work. Heck, for $330 I could build one out of mahogany with a varnish finish!

 

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[utah mason]

Duckshot
Check out this video. This is his second rocker box he has built.
https://youtu.be/w_VNW2QVIFs

 

[Reed Lukens]

Unfortunately people don't really understand how a rocker works before they build them. They need a loose canvas apron that will form a pocket... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocker_box

 

[utah mason]

Unfortunately people don't really understand how a rocker works before they build them. They need a loose canvas apron that will form a pocket... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocker_box

? It says it the Wikipedia link that modern day rockers don't use the canvas. But instead use moss.

 

[kcm]

? It says it the Wikipedia link that modern day rockers don't use the canvas. But instead use moss.

Well, there it is then. It MUST be true - says so right there on the internet!

 

[Reed Lukens]

? It says it the Wikipedia link that modern day rockers don't use the canvas. But instead use moss.

Yup, in other words, Some of the modern day miners have no roots and don't understand how a rocker actually works. This includes wannabe manufactures mining the miners, by building something with a flat plate and miners moss that doesn't work at all like a rocker because they didn't take the time to comprehend and make it work because they saw the profits they could make from slapping $10 of parts together and selling it for $300 to fools willing to be taken with the "°°° NEW°°°" improved recovery they advertise... that just doesn't work... Mining the miners is an age old tradition for some people.

 

[arizau]

Granted....rocker boxes that incorporate miners moss, etc. are in use today and some are for sale. That does not make them better than the ones built by old timers and some knowledable modern miners that use a cloth apron designed to form a pocket to hold and concentrate the gold and other heavies. I think that the use of miners moss, etc. is because they may not understand how and why rocker boxes with aprons work (As said by Reed and by me since I was writing this before I saw his post!).

As a start and to explain, I think we all know how a gold pan works....Put pay dirt in a pan, add water, agitate allowing the gold and other heavies to settle while lights and bigger rocks are displaced higher up and then ejected over the lip of the pan when it is tilted and dipped into water. That is pretty much the same concept of a pocket in the apron of a rocker box since it is a container full of pay dirt that is agitated with water. To go further; some or most of us know that we don't have to pan to completion each and every time we fill a pan and pan it down. We can pan it down some or a lot and add more pay dirt and pan that down and repeat until the pan is almost full of black sand . At that point, we risk losing gold over the lip if we continue reducing the concentrates so we dump the concentrates (it is now actually super concentrate since it is the accumulation of several or many pans) and start all over again. That same type of concentration is pretty much what happens in a rocker box apron but the apron system is a bit different and probably advantaged. The low end of the apron section is vertical from the lip to the bottom of the pocket which is fairly deep so for gold to escape it must be displaced upward but, in some cases, flour gold can be riding on top of the load in the apron and wash over the edge along with the waste material. The reason a sluice section is used in a rocker box with an apron is to capture the stray gold that does not stay in the pocket and that gold is only a small fraction compared to what stays in the apron.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Oh, found the price of a plastic Gold Grabber mini rocker - $329.

I know that with plastic you gotta recover the cost of the mould, but jeepers that's a lot of spare change for maybr $20 worth of resin and a $100 manual bilge pump!

I am in the wrong line of work. Heck, for $330 I could build one out of mahogany with a varnish finish!

YIKES!
Never mind about that then!!

 

[utah mason]

Well, there it is then. It MUST be true - says so right there on the internet!

Pretty funny coming from a guy with no in field experience yet who post a ton of advice, all from what he read off the internet ; )

 

[deserdog]

I can tell you from experience that a flat tilted section in a rocker bx that has either carpet or miners moss does not work near as well as an apron with a good pocket. When you have a good sag in your apron, and it take some trial and error to get it right, the movement of the rocker keeps the material in the pocket loose, allowing gold to get to the bottom of the pocket. If you try to process too much material at a time, then you can overload the apron. But there is still, at least on my rocker box, 2 more catch points for the gold.

When I tried a section with carpet, and then one with miners miss instead of a canvas apron, lots of gold got to the lower sections of the rocker box. I think what it is is that you need a more continous water flow over carpet or miners moss for it work well. But with a rocker, you have pulses of water when you are adding it.

 

[deserdog]

There is a great little book on rocker boxes. I am trying to find it now. "Gold Rocker Handbook" by Tron Miller. It is a great book on rockers.Lots of rockers use a simple pin to keep the rocker on its base. One of theideas in the book is to cut into the center of each rocker a slot, big enough for an 3/8" eye bolt(I used 6" bolts) to fit into, then drill a hole though the rocker and have a 3/8" bolt go through the eye bolt. Then on the base of the rocker, where the actual rockers ride, you drill a 1/2" hole. The long end of the eye bolt then goes into this hole. This keeps the rocker on its base, and allows you to rocker the rocker easily.

 

[deserdog]

Here is a link that shows my old rocker box:
My old rocker

 

[rodoconnor]

Karl Von Mueller published a little book on rockers. Interesting read. He showed how to link a bunch of them in parallel to work off a single energy source ; human or machine.

 

[tamrock]

This.

They are known for sucking at catching fine gold. If you have -50 gold, build a high banker instead. Or get a Gold Nugget Bucket...it has a fluid bed to catch fine gold and is about the same amount of work as a rocker box.

I just looked up a video of the gold bucket there Kevin. Looks pretty nifty. Have you worked with one before. I could take that on the road with me and hit some spots here and there.

 

[deserdog]

I just looked up that book on allbookstores.com. It is expensive now!! Gold Rocker Handbook by Tron Miller with introduction by Karl Von Mueller

 

[tamrock]

I didn't build this but, found it unfinished at a flea market. I did stained it and found some rubber riffle material up at the hardware store in Idaho Springs for it. Now that Kevin's brought the Gold Bucket to my attention, I just might invest in one of those instead of using this homemade rocker box?. I want something compact to use when I travel at my job.

 

[arizau]

I didn't build this but, found it unfinished at a flea market. I did stained it and found some rubber riffle material up at the hardware store in Idaho Springs for it. Now that Kevin's brought the Gold Bucket to my attention, I just might invest in one of those instead of using this homemade rocker box?. I want something compact to use when I travel at my job.

I got a Nugget Bucket as a gift a year or so ago. It works but it does involve a lot of water dipping, classifier cleaning* (there are two of them in the unit) and you have to be careful not to over feed it with fines that easily pass the classfiers since that can clog the funnel section. Still a good unit that works as advertised and great where there is not enough water to run a sluice. Add marble sized rocks to the cup to help catch small gold (that is a tip that the inventor gave me in response to an email). If you notice a buildup of black sand in the cup then empty and continue.

Good luck.

*The top classifier allows you to run any size feed but check for nuggets before abandoning the coarse material.

 

[deserdog]

I built a mini rocker years ago, just like that one, using the book by Verne H Ballantyne

 

[KevinInColorado]

I just looked up a video of the gold bucket there Kevin. Looks pretty nifty. Have you worked with one before. I could take that on the road with me and hit some spots here and there.

No, I haven't...ArizAU is your voice of experience.

 

[tamrock]

No, I haven't...ArizAU is your voice of experience.

10-4 -K, ...I've been eager to sample some known producing creeks that look promising along the way.