"Blue Bowl" Issues With Sand / Help

Oakstrails

Jr. Member
May 30, 2012
74
26
Southern California
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Just Me
For the time being
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
I am working with very fine gold and have tried everything to get rid of the heavy sands left in the "Blue Bowl". Even vibration as explained by "Gold Lab" on "Ysoutube". I am getting gold but when I snuff it up, it is mixed with the heavy sand (blonde and non-magnetic black) I am about to take my heavy metal brick and crush all the heavy sand along with the fine gold and then run it through the Blue Bowl again. Is this wise? Any ideas on how I can approach this would be very much appreciated!
 

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how small are you screening this material? if your sceening this enough and have the bowl running correctly you shouldnt have any blond sands at all. these "blond sands" might not be sand at all.they maybe PGM material.you ought to check them out.
 

Throw away instruction-plenty of topics completely covering this specific topic-just hit search and you'll have enough blue/dam bowl info to turn blue-John
 

Hi Oakstrails,
You need to screen material down to -100 and then run nothing larger than -30 through the blue bowl. I have a blue bowl and use it exclusively for very fine gold and have no trouble with any sands. Go to the prospectingchannel.com and go to the programs tab. Scroll down until you see the video on using the blue bowl. Should be helpful.

Good Luck,

B H Prospector
 

Thanks for all your posts. I'm new at this so it's great to have a place to find support. I don't know the exact screen mesh size but it's about window screen size. I have been a bit sloppy on concentrating so might be getting a few larger sands getting by me. I prob. need a smaller screen size as well. What mesh size is window screen?
Thanks Again Ya All
 

Thanks for all your posts. I'm new at this so it's great to have a place to find support. I don't know the exact screen mesh size but it's about window screen size. I have been a bit sloppy on concentrating so might be getting a few larger sands getting by me. I prob. need a smaller screen size as well. What mesh size is window screen?
Thanks Again Ya All

Window mesh screen is about 18 or 20 mesh. The most important part of running the bowl is classifying and you should pan anything over 30 mesh. The bowl works best when you have your water speed and material size dialed in. Slower water speed for finer concentrates. Like others have said, there is a lot of info here and on other sites about the bowl... Good luck!
 

If you don't classify all of the big stuff out, you will never have any luck with a blue bowl. I use a 30, 50, 70 and 100 mesh classifier (any good prospecting tools website will have them for around $25 each), and run batches of all the same size material.
 

thanks for the great info guys here is my setup
i need to get more screens too
DSCN0960.JPG
 

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