Gold Cube vs Blue Bowl, Which is better the Gold Cube or Blue Bowl and why? Options

[DavidJ]

Which do you think is better at recovering fine gold, the Gold Cube or Blue Bowl and why? I have owned and used the Blue Bowl for several years now, and can really appreciate how much fine gold it recovers. However, I don't like the fact you need to wash your concentrates first or else the water gets really cloudy, which makes it very hard to see what you are doing. This process can take a lot of time and water to accomplish. Unfortunately, I have only used the Gold Cube once, so I can't really voice a non-bias opinion other than to say it seemed really easy to use and you don't need to prep your concentrates other than to classify them. Of course you should do that with any recovery system you are using. Cleaning up the Gold Cube seemed a little awkward because of the individual stack size, but at the time I only had one gold pan to put everything in, not very much room to do the cleanup, and no running water. I had to use my sniffer bottle and splash water out of the pan to clean up the individual stacks. I also have a Desert Fox, which I also haven't used very much. Now I am thinking about buying a Gold Cube, so I would really appreciate hearing what fellow miners have to say on the subject. I appreciate your input.

[EMac]

They have different purposes, so I use both at home now in tandem. I collect sluice cons from the field to take home (count me in as an Angus fan). There I run them through the cube (pre-classified to 1/8", and setup as a recirc) to reduce the amount of blue bowl work I'll have, but I'd never expect to pull clean gold off it directly except for pickers. From there I classify at 30, 50 and 100, and it's onto the bowl. After blue bowling, the remaining cleaning should be minimal. Generally some final cleanup with a magnet for me, although initially I was shutting down the bowl too soon and leaving a bunch of crap in my gold.

I used to use the GC in the field with their highbanker attachment, but the unit is much better suited for cleaning up cons IMO. I couldn't imagine trying to use a blue bowl in the creek. I have seen at least one member using a gold wheel in the creek; seems he likes it, but I defer to Mike.

Why both? Well, I bought a cube previously since I wanted to process faster than the sluice, and I wasn't quite up to the highbanker/dredge level yet. I liked (and still like) that it forces all material underwater, significantly mitigating floating gold. With the recent addition of a dredge, and having buckets of cons to work through at home, I wanted/needed something that's faster than panning. That's when I got the blue bowl. I'm not yet convinced the BB is faster than panning, but it definitely takes less effort.

The GC takes longer to setup and level than it does to chew through a bucket of cons. I'm very happy with the recovery from it, but I still process the cons through the GC at least twice. Practically it's likely many more times than that since I throw away the lightest materials from this process; silt primarily that overflows into my larger, secondary recirc bin where I keep my pump. I dump the primary tailings from the smaller bin back into my panning trash can to be processed again later along with any panning tailings and blue bowl tailings. It will certainly get rid of the vast majority of the silt you're referring to clouding up your blue bowl.

Reading about your cleanup of the cube, my suspicion is you left a fair amount of material in the matting, or lost it trying to get it into a pan. The black concrete mixing bins at your local hardware store are well suited for the task. Cleaning out a GC tray is a fairly wet affair smacking it onto the water surface, shaking it around while submerged, splashing water on it, and rubbing the matting, yet I still see pebbles stuck in the matting.

Hope this helps!

[Crusty]

Found this interesting blue bowl/banjo pan combo. I've got both; may give it a try this winter!

[ChuckD]

Found this interesting blue bowl/banjo pan combo. I've got both; may give it a try this winter!


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Hey Crusty, do you collect a whole bunch of classified dirt (I don't know the correct term) in buckets during the summer, and then go thru the really fine stuff during the winter time? Are you able to find places during the winter to go get more potential gold-bearing dirt? ( forgive my lack of knowledge for the correct terminology- I'm sure it's not called "gold-bearing dirt")
I'm only asking because there's a chance I might still make it to Colorado this winter and I know that getting to actually do any real gold prospecting out in the field is probably out of the question, but I'd love to maybe meet up with you somewhere and just watch how you sort thru the fine stuff. I've seen it on YouTube, but I'd love to watch it "live" and in person!

[Crusty]

There are several of us who prospect year round. But in the winter that often means working nuts deep in ice. Gotta have insulated waders. But we do have some stretches of decent weather where it isn't too bad

[ChuckD]

There are several of us who prospect year round. But in the winter that often means working nuts deep in ice. Gotta have insulated waders. But we do have some stretches of decent weather where it isn't too bad

That sounds pretty hard-core!