Hey all! I love this forum. You guys are great. Here are my ramblings on this topic...
I agree, I used a Brillo pad, dish soap and sand to season the pan. scrubbed the hell out if it.
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There are some reports if gold bearing streams here in ct and I wanted to make sure I had equipment that works.
I have been using dish soap in the water I'm panning with and in the sluice water. think I just got a not so good batch. but to be fair I still have 3 more pounds to do before I can make a true and accurate report.
Should I smooth out the bottom of my pan?? It has marks from where it was released from the mold (guessing), should those be shaved off carefully so its smooth on the seams
You have same motivation as me, I want to be sure I can pull the gold out, before spending a lot of time in any place doing the physical labor..
I bought some gel dish soap for dishwashers.. I dip my finger in it, and rub some into/on the pan before starting.. Like you would grease a pan before baking. I rinse it off too, and then use the pan, involved process, but it seems to show me lots of specs of gold I can't even catch except with snuffer. The real gold pieces don't float for me, but some flower does (actually pyrite/mica??). I think jetdry probably works better but I've never tried it. They didn't have any JetDry at the dollar store 8p
Which, by the way: I get lots of scoops, containers of various sizes and shape, coarse classifying hand screens, etc. etc. and other supplies from the dollar store. Gives me chance to try lot of different idea's.. Often ya break one or two trying to make something, but whatever, it was $5 of crap.. Low risk..
My biggest recommendation to all newb's would be to classify and re-classify to get out the weirdo big material that finds its way into fines..
Constant battle..
In fact, I just physically look over the biggest junk, no sense panning for nug when there won't be any in 99.9% of the paydirt I buy.. cheapo that I am..
Buy MANY 5-gallon buckets, a powerful pump (made to run dirty water), some good bucket classifiers, a few rubbermaids..couple big ones if ya can!
All these are must-have items. I'm planning a miller table soon, homebrew.. From a plate of marble I have.. 8) Need to ask a friend about that..
From my personal exp with bought paydirt is that it's salted with dust, mica, pyrite, silver/platinum/lead ??, wood, grass, and have found glass and even plastic bits before. Some purchased dirts are better than others; payout is at most 1:2 where higher is cost, as was said earlier.
When possible you want to buy material that is virgin, hasn't been run at all, obviously.
I've bought dirt from South Carolina, Nevada, and Arizona so far.
All fun to run. However, barely ANY gold so far recovered. I'm still a newb though, probably blowing it out! My lighting is akin to a candle, useless for this fine of material.. Got a light, but need a bulb, DOH! House full of CFL's is NOT going to work for what I'm doing!!
I've found that culvert sediment (while very hard to find) is fun, but very challenging to run. It is the stuff that let's water drain under dirt roads in remote places, the metal tubes get gunked up with silt sand, etc. People sell it in area's where there is known to be gold around. This batch I got recently (20 lbs!!) has TONS of black sand and v. v. v. fine materials. I've got most of mine off amazon. They ship in pre-paid US postal boxes for lowest shipping costs. We don't get silt in the rivers here like this (I live in Northern Utah), it looks like hard-rock powder almost.
I'm classifying/processing through the sizes of screens before seriously running any of it. Also, until recently, I've needed a few parts to slow my flow, which I have now, so I can run soon.
I do get stuff thru my 100 screen..when I use water..but classifying with water is a *****. At that point its hard to contain it, but it does collect in the bottom of the bucket. Is like cement almost, cant drive your fingers thru it, until you break through the surface.. I classify to 1/15th with a kitchen collandar, catching all the rocks..look them over..set aside..useless for the most part. Then onto the bucket classifiers: 1/20th (most fun to run!) 1/50th (hmmm soupy) & 1/100th (holy crap this is a mess!) for my screens..
The 100th clogs so fast, its painful to use, really. 1/8" of material on the bottom of the screen will hold up 4" of water, scrape your finger across, and it pulls a tiny bit more material out..shooot me please..no, not really, but it's tedious for sure. I would skip this finest screen if I had to buy them over, and get a more coarse size instead, two of the 1/30th or something else, that would be more useful.
Last, I save and re-run every bit of dirt I have so far, and re-collect it.
My run pattern: I first run the bigs, clean out, run mediums, cleanout, run fines (these clean out automatically), run ultra-cloudy ultrafines..
Alllll this through a bucket (cleanup) sluice. Into a rubbermaid for re-classification again.
I keep telling myself before I run that I should pull each size back out into a seperate bucket. Then I'm too lazy to do it.. wanna keep running material!! and Later.. I spend tons of time re-classifying..grr..
It's tedious, but it's practice! 8)
Have a full-size sluice box, but no header for it (to keep water going out the back..), need to homebrew that shiz too..
Begs some questions:
Why don't ALL classification screens have built-in water nozzle's, in the side? Just gotta agitate the material between them sometimes..not a big flow..1/4" ID tube would be ample.. A ball-bearing mounted in opposing sides of these (in the ring where they contact) would help em spin, which does wonders for the thru-rate if you don't care about a leak of water down the side..
Also, whats with the flimsy (there for strength) cross-members in my screens, I wouldn't mind them being made to last with thick material, even paddles that hang into the screen below..again, move junk around and more goes through the screen==winning.
At the end of it all, aside from trying to catch material smaller than 1/100th of an inch, it's fun as ----!! 8))
Good luck, and drop me back your wisdom, please?
