This Is A Real Shame

That looks pretty good Jones. Will you post a pic of the separator when it is complete?

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		Quote:			Posted by salvor6
	That looks pretty good Jones. Will you post a pic of the separator when it is complete?

You can Google "poop tube" there are lots of plans floating around. One that does not include a recirculating pump installs a water valve into a bucket that sits above the pipe. It allows you to recirculate the water without hauling a battery to your site.

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		Quote:			Posted by Idaho Jones
	Gotta love sound investments, go gold go! Just hoping no one gets a bright idea to lock it down again. Platinum was really high a few months back, thinking it was over 1900 at one point iirc I hope to be out there in the woods all next summer so it's preparation this fall and winter I built a seperator this year from a 4 foot chunk of non perforated drain tile pipe 8$, some scrap plywood, and a 20$ pond pump. I use a 5 gallon bucket and recirculate the water. Since its a closed system I can keep cycling to recover a higher percentage of fines I also got some of those garrett pans with the aggressive gravity trap, those are pretty sweet. While the shoulder does get sore still, I can run a lot more concentrates faster but with the same effort. One of my other projects for extreme backcountry stream extraction is a hydraulic shovel. Basically a big syringe. About 20$ worth of parts from the home improvement store. Also have a 12v vibration drywasher in the works since here in summer a lot of the streams are dry.

Looks like a yabbee pump! (ask GoldDigger1950, what a yabbee is,) a few years ago, you could get them just about anywhere. Pumps that is, not yabbees. A yabbee is like a crawdad. (Crayfish!) 

Yummmm!

I have a couple of fold-up Photo-voltaics, that look like a large, thin, plastic brief case. Each developes about 18 volts and close to 1 amp.  US price, I have noted, is about $90 each, and I got them for about $40 Can. I have 3, which will give about 3 amps total. I have never combined them yet, as I need  some Schottky, 1 or 5 amp, diodes, to prevent leakage back through any that is slightly shaded.  One, in bright sunlight will just barely run a Desert Fox water pump. 

The best way, to use these, is with a small (acid type) battery, like a lawn tractor battery.... the battery supplies peak current, while the panel charges the battery, during low use times. I was playing with this, 2 yrs ago, and tore a muscle, in my left shoulder, lifting the battery. OW! So lift intelligently (I did not.)   

I bought a trap pan, 2 yrs ago... it is Hell, trying to get the fine gold out of the trap, so I decided a small squirt bottle, like the the gold snifters, would work. Never tried it yet because last summer I bought a plastic, NON-trap pan! 

I re-designed my Desert Fox to take a small pail, right in the box that carries the works, plus a plastic piece to carry away waste, I have not tried it yet, because it is semi-winter, now. Now I want to design a light, tubing rack, to hold 3 of the brief-case voltaics, so I have some power, out on the gravel bar. I have designed it to recirculate, but excess water will go to a 5 gal. pail, which will also hold the concentrates. the whole thing, less PV panels and battery, weighs less than 10kg/22lbs.

Another idea, that I have been kicking around is a floating paddle wheel, running an auto type alternator, not complicated, with the right control, it can be made to go out IN the stream, where the best flow is. I have a little oil patch engineers book, that has all kinds of data and formulas, so in it is a formula for paddle wheel power! The formula uses square feet area, of paddle and water speed. Handy book.

The good thing about PV or paddle wheels (or wind) is the quiet! No-one will know you are there and you can hear THEM coming!

Yabbee pump? I made one from a simple, sink plunger pump, by adding a tube, to suck up the sand and small gravel. Drywasher? Can not work, here.... too wet, in this semi-arid region.

goldigger

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		Quote:			Posted by Idaho Jones
	goldigger I had the same issue with the gravity pans at first. Then this year I bought a kit from Garrett for my son which had three sizes of pans. If you work them in series using the agrressive trap to do the heavy work, then flush the concentrate into the medium pan and when all you have left is black sand drop to the small pan to finish they work great. I would suggest using a generator instead of an alternator on the water wheel. Alternators have to reach a certain rpm before supplying power which might be hard to reach unless you have a big setup. I have often thought about a water wheel but here even those are forbidden as a fish might get in one. At least for the common folk, hydroelectric dams are all the rage here so go figure.... I saw a unit some Japanese scientists were working on that generated from wave motion. Always thought that might be a good source too. Solar power is awsome except for the cost of setup. Been a lot of new technology changes that should bring the cost down and efficiency up. Anything I need a battery for I let my truck carry it  I live on the edge of the high plains desert and forested mountains so its drywasher for the desert and sluice for the forest

Aggressive trap! That is about right. What I have done, in the past is pan until I see garnets and/or black sand starting to show, then I flush it into a 5 gallon pail (25 liter,) which I sit on, the rest of the time. When this gets stagger-full, I lug it off to camp and may even concentrate more, later. This concentrate, I take home to process down to pure gold. I almost never wash it down to the gold, on the bar, unless I want to see what is there.

It is almost never dry enough to use a drywasher, here, even though we only have about 25 inches of precip/year. Most of it falls in the summer. One winter, I kept track of snowfall, and it managed to reach about 9 feet total, from October to April, even though it was never more than 20 in. deep at any one time. 9 feet of snow does not make much water.

An alternator can operate down to about 400 to 450 RPM, same with a generator... How about an under-water (thereby invisible,) caged prop? IF you can get the torque, you can increase speed with pulley ratios. The old style regulators (or a home-made,) can set the output volts to compensate for the low speed.

How about a small wind generator? Surely that is not verboten?

Has anyone on the forum had piggy flu yet?? I have (hack, hack.) I had it in 1949, as a kid, I had it in 1979, and just had it again, very mildly. Can one catch it from email?

In 1918, my grandma toasted the mail, in the oven.... I do not think it would work for email.

The wave power generator would be fine for a semi-permanent camp, say for the summer, and if you can access tidal water, you could rig a float and generator  that works on the same principal as the weight in a Grandfather clock! Rewind 2 times per day!

One thing.... photovoltaics have no moving parts!

goldigger

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