Blue Bowl or Panning wheel? Options

[RichDColorado]

Which do you prefer for final cleanup and reasons for your preference if you please. There seems to be a love/hate relationship with both products. I have quite a few cons with good color classified to -30 and -100 and manual panning takes way too long. When you feed either a bowl or wheel does it make a difference if the material is wet or dry - does hydrophobicity become a problem with dry material? Same question would apply when running material through a sluice - do you run your raw material wet or dry? Could smaller fines ride the water right out of the sluice or cleanup device if put in dry?

I also have a cleanup sluice similar to the Tom and Perry Massie "white gutter" style, but have noticed that many of the small/tiny pieces don't get trapped in the riffles, so not sure if that style of cleanup sluice is not efficient with very fine gold or maybe I'm doing something wrong in using it.

Lastly, has anyone made a homemade blue bowl? There are some plans on the 'net and some videos on youtube. Maybe it's just me, but the sellers like Keene seem to be pretty proud of those things - $70 or so for a bowl which is probably worth about $10 at most, IMO (I know - the gold recovery will pay for itself in no time). There has to be a way to build a better (and cheaper) goldtrap -

Thanks - Rich