Gold cube

There were many doubters in nome last year on the gold cube. We ran all our material through our for stack cubes and all I can say its the best $500.00 dollars spent and the doubters they are gold cube lovers

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I started using the cube a few weeks ago and so far no complaints. It seemed to do pretty good recovering extra fine beach gold out of very heavy black sand. Only thing I noticed is really thin flat gold seems to travel on the mat some. I'm using the four stack and found a picker on the top part of the last tray. When I looked at it close, the gold was really thin, so if thats the kind of stuff you might be running, make sure you get a four stack and check the bottom tray occasionally to make sure you aren't losing any flat stuff. Other than that I love it! Cuts my work to nearly nothing. Wish I would have bought it sooner.

After I run beach sand through the cube I still like to run it's cons on my Black Magic since it's a royal pain trying to pan that super fine stuff out. Great investments! Time is money, and those two together save me tons of it! A little pricey, but I look at it as an investment, one I'm glad I made.
 

My friend ran the spoils (10 buckets) on his M-7 shaker table and found only three small flecks that is impressive in itself.

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I loved seeing the gold cubes on both Bering Sea Gold and on the teaser for next week tonight...congrats Mike and Red!
 

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hoh much material could 100 gallons of water run in the desert ?
That is a difficult question. In a totally worst case scenario, about 20 buckets. Best case scenario will be 50 buckets. Lets say you are running old drywash tailing piles and you are bringing water with you because it has recently rained and screwed it up for dry washing for a week or 3. This is the best case. One, the fine clay has been blown off when it was processed by the drywasher, and two, everything is already wet at least a little. Worst case is you are in the dry material and you have to get everything wet as it flows through the Cube. Your tailing catch pan gets full and when you empty it, you will be pulling out water with it. Even when you drain it as good as you can, the soil is still damp and holding some of your water. You will have to replentish water more often in the system and the water will use up faster. Also you will be soaking down all that fine dust too. It will gum up the water pretty fast. Use more than one tub so it acts as a settling pond and use a flocculating agent to allow the particulates to drop faster, like clay-gone. Use less than it calls for, too much will roll things up in little balls. Hope this helps, ask away if there are more questions. If you have a drywasher and the ground is bone dry, use it and clean out more often so you do not migrate gold, take all those cons and run them through the Cube. Those many buckets will be pretty clean and will be able to run with minimal water loss. All those clean-ups will now be 1-1/2 cups of easy panning.
Mike Pung
 

And don't push recirc too far as water with a lot of sediment in it is thicker (higher viscosity) and will carry gold better so you will lose gold into your tailings fairly significantly. Go back a couple episodes of Gold Rush to see the Dakota Boys make that mistake!
 

Very good pointers Mike! a couple of years back,at a club outting, i was suprised that nobody was useing anything in their panning water! no jet dry or clay-b-gone. one guy came up to me while i was panning some material and asked how i kept my water so clean. i showed him and added a little into his tub. then everyone got word of it and i added it to all of their tubs.man were they suprised.
 

Has anyone used the gold cube? Any comments on this. I was debating either to get a gold cube or a dredge and highbanker combo. Which would be better? Thanks.


Highbanker/dredge combos are not the best highbanker or dredge to have.
The sluice is usually built as a compromise between the two that leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion.

When you are highbanking classification is the key to fine gold recovery. Fine gold is the bread and butter of the small scale miner. Nuggets are getting more rare every day. Dredging needs a whole different sluice configuration than highbanking due to the limited amount of classification available.

Not saying that you cant successfully adapt the sluice for the two methods if you have a working knowledge of exactly what it is that you are trying to achieve, be prepared to adapt the sluice or you wont get the best recovery for your time spent running material.

*ADDED: Just now realized this was an old thread I had answered before reading the above posts.

Congrats on getting the Cube!
I prospect in Indiana too, The Cube was a wise purchase for capturing the fine glacial gold the state is known for.
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GG~
 

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