Will a drywasher work to remove the gold from crushed ore?

[robert2b]

I am working in an area that has no water for a number of miles either way. I used to do placer mining and still have my drywasher, so I was wondering since it worked to separate the gold from the dirt it should do the same for crushed ore. I know it is not as efficient as using water, but I could always run the material a few times. Let me know what you think.

 

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[Clay Diggins]

It depends on several things whether you will get reasonable recovery. It will not be as effective as a recirculator so you might want to just consider moving either water or your milled material.

If the material is absolutely dry, the gold is unattached and the gold is not fly specs it might be worth your while to give it a try. You could check to see how effective it would be by dry panning a few samples. If you can't recover gold when dry panning it's unlikely it would be worthwhile to drywash your milled ore.

 

[jair]

I'm building a crusher right now and plan on dry washing to see if it works . But will use the dry washer only to classify some off . Keeping at least a 1/4 to quick pan to remove the very light material then either putting through my spiral wheel or mini high banker for final clean up . If really fine maybe my blue bowl .

 

[jewelerdave]

A lot of the fine gold that can be liberated from an impact or hammer mill will be so fine I would worry that it would pass though the screen in the dry washer. Best to move the rock to water so you can table it.