Clean up!

[Johnedoe]

With the knowledge and equipment available today there really is no need for the forbidden element.
My mining is pretty much restricted to beach mining anymore... when I can.... and I routinely capture extremely fine gold with very little loss.
I can recover gold down to -300 mesh.... Probably even finer but who can see that?
And yes I am a ..... dare I say it.... A hobby miner and only get out occasionally. But I get the gold I am after.

[Micropedes1]

I must be getting lazy in my old age. I used to fight for every golden grain. Not so any more. If a table does not catch it, it goes to leach pad. Not usually enough in a single clean up to get excited about anyway.

[Geowizard]

The Red Devil Mine;

The Red Devil mine is located on the Kuskokwim River. The mine was once the largest producer of Cinnabar.

The second largest River in Alaska flows through it. The River has flown through it for over 30 million years.

Now, the Donlin mine is facing a headwind because of it.

The reality is that in nature, it is often found in proximity with GOLD.

- Geowizard

[Geowizard]

Finishing;

Having the (almost) final pan of GOLD from the cleanup - in a GOLD pan...

The remaining magnetic black sand can be pulled out with a magnet. (watching for GOLD attached to magnetic black sand)

Careful panning with a drop of Dawn dish soap added to keep fine gold from floating and it's ready to dry and weigh!

- Geowizard

[Geowizard]

Listen to the experts;

This thread provides a good review without rehashing the details. For GOLD recovery, a good reference is an actual operating GOLD mine in Alaska, the Pogo Mine. Page 4 of the following is a good place to begin.

https://www.nsrltd.com/wp-content/uploa ... r-2019.pdf

Modern GOLD miners need to focus on the finer points of recovering GOLD down to "microns".

Much GOLD remains to be recovered that was "too small" for early miners. Pilot sized recovery systems can be incorporated into a small mining operation that can recover micron GOLD.

For typical placer mining, most of the work has been done by mother nature. For the curious placer GOLD miner, get a microscope and peer in to the realm of microscopic GOLD. I use a 7 to 32 power adjustable microscope. They aren't expensive and give a new perspective on fine GOLD.

I use Blue Bowls for cleanup;

Blue Bowls do a good job down to 20 mesh. Smaller GOLD gets blown out into the reject bucket. Without further screening there's a bunch of minus 20 that doesn't get recovered.

If you are working with 100 mesh and smaller to begin with, gravity concentration becomes more technical. As having been discussed earlier, SCREENING is an absolute necessity. If you want to recover 100 mesh minus, you have to screen down to 100 mesh.

Stick around, there's more!

- Geowizard

[Geowizard]

A 300 minus table;

Mt. Baker Mining and Metals (MBMM) has a shaker table that illustrates very fine GOLD recovery;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiWNTzLLTTc

Yes, shaker tables can be expensive. Look around and you can find them at mining operation auction sites!

Stick around, there's more.

- Geowizard

[Geowizard]

Cleanup; (copied here from another thread for reference)

I have experience watching a miner that used a 36" Gold Wheel at Ophir.

His wife was in charge of the cleanup department. Cleanup is a full time job! The weakest link in GOLD mining is recovery and the final process of cleanup. Often times it is hurried, unorganized and haphazard. It requires a full-time operator with skill and attention to the purpose and the "process". It's a place where patience is a true virtue! Success as I view it depends more on the person at the wheel. Not the wheel!

I ran three Blue Bowls in parallel. They run on 12V water pumps. Each Blue Bowl sets on a level 5 gallon bucket in a 30 gallon tub with soapy suds. I used a 12V battery charger connected to the 12V battery to keep the voltage stable. The speed of the pumps and velocity of the water flow into the Blue Bowls is critical. Too high of flow and you blow off fine GOLD. The system is "tuned" to 20 mesh. Look up the US Patent 4,428,830 on www.uspto.gov to learn "the rest of the story" on what you need to know about Blue Bowl tuning.

The process is a strict routine with quality control embedded in the process. Unfortunately, nobody wants to be "bothered" with "being deliberate, taking your time and being precise" in a mining operation.

I spent 5 days running the wash plant and 2 days on cleanup. As I mentioned, I recovered GOLD to 20 mesh. When you set up to recover 20 mesh, everything smaller blows off into the bucket. In practice, it takes four levels of screening to get down to 20 mesh. You run 20 mesh cons with 20 mesh GOLD to recover 20 mesh GOLD.

Point of diminishing return;

The decision that has to be made is whether the remaining 20 MINUS GOLD is worth TWO MORE days of cleanup! This reinforces the point of having A DEDICATED CLEANUP DEPARTMENT. A wife, companion, helper, cook, etc. can be the needed, dedicated person that does the job. For 80 mesh - plan on screening down to 40, 60 and 80 mesh.

- Geowizard

[Geowizard]

Elutriation Update:

Thanks for sticking around!

In my recent quest for brain food related to cleanups, I came across an interesting "situation" I thought I might share.

During the time of development of this thread, there was competition in the cleanup market. The competition to which I refer is in the Elutriation space. Yep, there's a niche in the cleanup market we can call the Elutriation Space that was sought after by TWO players. Earlier in this thread and on the Remote Prospecting thread, we had discussion on the concept of elutriation and settling velocity.

I had actually performed a few interesting tests on elutriation.

Elutriation is partly based on settling velocity. In the world of placer mining and in the process of recovery and cleanup, we have learned the importance of the behavior of GOLD in contrast to other, lighter materials when subjected to gravity. Settling velocity plays an important role.

A good reference on settling velocity is MIRL Report No. 76.

It may be found here:

http:/www.alaska-gold.com/mirl_n76.pdf

Elutriation uses a combination of settling velocity and opposing (upward) vertical flow in water to separate more dense and less dense particles.

The Elutriation Space:

One of the players was a company called GoldHog. They had introduced a product called the "Gold Cyclone".

Here's a video and link:

Gold Hog - Gold Cyclone - Gold Super Concentrator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWq4vf7HSeA

Meanwhile;

Another company, Sluice Goose Industries had earlier introduced a "very similar" product. It was called the "Goldrop".

Here's a video and link:

Sluice Goose GOLDROP: Learn how to use this truely revolutionary Gold recovery invention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbU03kJvkC8

Moving right along;

I spent a week or so looking over the situation of what might be a question of who or whom has the patent rights to this method. We should be aware that we cannot get a patent on gravity or inertia. There is a subtle recognition of the method used in the two devices illustrated in the videos above. Although the devices have slightly different configurations, the methods use practically and fundamentally the same and are only slightly different.

As it turns out, I could not find the GoldHog Gold Cyclone for sale. I leave speculation on the question of "Why?" to the reader. The Goldrop is all over YouTube and has an official US Patent.

Please note: This is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not aa endorsement, referral or solicitation of or for any product or service!

Stick around! There's more!

- Geowizard

[Joe S (AK)]

Gold Hog dropped their 'Tower' product because a subsequently introduced product - the Multi-Sluice - was found to fully out preform that Improved Elutriation Tube product (The Gold Cyclone) in approximately the same % cleaning with the advantage of much higher volume of input capacity and processing levels.

A couple of months ago "The Boar Box" (a vertical concentrate reducer) was also introduced by Doc from Gold Hog which also has a very high run capacity before clean-out as well as also possessing a very high capture rate.

I own both units (no affiliation other than admiration of the company's products) and can say that, from past hands-on usage, the Multi-Sluice is a real winner . That praise is also shared by many, many users of that product, worldwide. After I return to Alaska in the spring I should also have a personal hands-on evaluation of the brand new Boar Box too.

I termed Gold Hog's Gold Tower an "Improved Elutriation Tube product" because a traditional, pure, E Tube is simply a vertical tube (a chamber) where upwards welling fluid (water in this case) separates material based on settling factors into distinct layers. Through slight flow adjustments those layers are able to be raised and sequentially drawn off.

The 'improvement' was a brisk cyclonic swirling within the tube - now with an installed Donut looking ring positioned inside the tube. The swirling fluid threw the heavier Gold to the outside of the tube while the 'Donut' retained that heaviest material, allowing the lighter material to exit through the center Donut Hole and be swept upward and out.

While an interesting concept the old conundrum of tight classification, slow operation and critical water pressure settings simply wasn't up for the task. Yes it worked for small, specimen, batches of tightly classified concentrates but the Multi-Sluice and (hopefully) The Boar Box work faster, easier, at greater capacity and with the same high % removal of dross.

[Slatco]

Looking forward to your real world review Joe. When I looked at the Boar Box it seemed top heavy and would be prone to tipping over.