Processing serious flour size gold, working with super fine gold Options

[jackragusa]

I read a lot about folks working with a Blue Bowl on very fine gold, but I find it's much slower than just panning . Besides, the seriously fine golds also works it's way out of the blue bowl even under the slowest workable speeds. I have a large bucket of con.s I would love to go thru and I am sure the gold is there but the labor of just panning is just not worth the time. Other than a wave table or a shaker table which is obviously way too expensive to balance out, what choices do I have. Even if there was say an ounce to an ounce and a half of flour gold in the bucket, I would still be making only half of min. wage panning it and I do ok panning. But with panning this size gold, you have to go thru everything three times to insure you didnt miss anything. So please HELP....

[Caveman]

Well said, Chris! If you are only in for the monetary payback, you are going to be extremely frustrated, especially if you have my kind of luck! I have dropped a ton of cash this past year just getting into it, and have totalled out at .4 grams. However, the good people I have met, and the good times I've had more than break even as far as I'm concerned. The main idea is to have fun. My wife has even agreed to get out with me this year now and again.... when it warms up to the mid 80's! Yahoo!

As far as equipment - Pack in sluice (much modified), Gold hog Matting, 2" dredge, Gold Cube, Blue Bowl, and various pans and classifiers. I'm still learning, and this forum has been very helpful. I'm blue bowling my final concentrates next week, now that I have them all classified and pulled out the magnetics. Don't try to get all the flour gold - you can't. That being said, follow the techniques Chris has posted for the Blue Bowl, and you can reasonably expect to get decent results to at least -50, if not -100. (I'm still having major trubs with that - probably because I only have 1 good eye!). I pan the fine stuff ok, but I dump a lot over the edge too - I don't dare pan at the site! Anyhoo, there is a lot of fancy stuff out there that claims to help seperate out the fine stuff, all of it expensive, and most of it designed to seperate you from your money. I was fortunate to find this site before I bought into most of the gimmicks. I almost lost sight of the "have fun" aspect.... I just wanted to see a lot of color - and fast. Well, there is no fast. It's all time consuming, and trying to rush it is only going to lead to frustration. I'm trying to follow a friend's advice and only pan once, but......... well, I'm still learning to get the action right! I'm still having fun trying!

Take care and best of luck to ya!
Caveman