wearing out the gold in processing?

[seafox]

I have been working on some vibrating and oscolating ideas to shake the gold down and let the lights get washed away ( like having a maching wo do the panning. a friend spoke of a nevada fellow who machined his "mating" out of aluminium and had a side to side reciplication of small movement but high frequency. my thought is a system where gravel and fines can feed into a colector and the movement lets the heaavys colect in either a removable cup or in rubber matting (all being done in water) my first test was some concentrates in a washed out peanut butter jar one pound size ( kroger roasted with honey spread I live on it) after hand shaking for a few minutes I could see gold pieces through the clear plastic bottom and the lower part was noticably thicker with black sand.

the question is will the gold be worn to smaller and smaller pieces by leaving it in too long between cleanouts? how often should cleanouts be to avoid this if a problem? and thought on speed and amount of movement of the container would be very welcome. also thoughts on vibration ( random shaking ) vers oscolating movement ( back and forth) or vertical movements?

harbor freight had two sizes of vibrating parts cleaners the rusty bolts screws ect being put in a rubber chamber on top. the quick and easy part of my brain says a sample could be put in a plastic container ( maybe even the pitcher part of a blender and vibrated for a while and the concentrated heavys removed by unscrewing the bottom)

thankyou for your help and best wishes for this winter
jef

 

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[winners58]

the high vibration oscillation of a "parts cleaner" creates a spatial pattern (Chladni) and would keep everything mixed up,
and wouldn't be good for separating by weight of the particles, might be good for separation by size with some screens.
thought of using a 12v sand & salt vibrator to build something like the old Pan'o'matic
like a screen deck on the top section dropping into a bottom sluice that is only allowed to shake side to side.

 

[arizau]

To answer your first question...You are not going to wear the gold out but fragile particles may break apart....That is likely very rare since Ma Nature has worked on doing that for a lot of years. By the way gold is malleable so more likely to bend rather than erode.

Here is a video for you for a method along the lines of what you are thinking...or not. http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/442847-two-bucket-method.html. Figure out something along those lines on a larger scale and that is one solution.

Good luck.

 

[Buckshotnc]

Am I wrong, sounds like you're talking about a small version of a shaker table and ditto to what arizau said.