Thought I’d add something, being a bit bored. There doesn’t seem to be much on the site on the Miller Table so…
I decided to try using a Miller Table as a final step in clean ups recently.
I use a Le Trap to reduce my concentrates from the dredge. Works very well. But typically I get left with a pretty decent amount of gold and heavies. Was spending maybe two hours panning each clean up out. I love my panning but was starting to wear thin, so decided to try a cheapy miller table. I have to say I am quite happy with it.
Pros…
Super lazy/easy to clean up - can drink a coffee while spooning in heavies, a lot easier than panning heavies for a coupla hours
Faster also than panning the heavies (and I am a panning fool)
Surprisingly good recovery
Only costs a coupla grams of gold to buy one
Cons…
Doesn’t catch round gold - so doesn’t catch fine flour gold, so prob not for people recovering gold from black sand beaches etc.
Which means I prob need another step after this to run the tailings through to get the fines once a year or something. Always need another piece of equipment it seems, hmmm that mercury seems temptingly dangerous
So yeah Miller Table - pretty cool piece of kit def recommend!
Might make some of you OGs laugh, I know the OGs used magnets in plastic bags under water etc. etc. but I have always been unhappy with gold getting caught up in the magnetite doing that, prob not doing it right tho OGs are always right
i found that to. fine gold goes over it but mine is home made so werent expecting it to be as good as a commercially made one. a bit of dish washing liquid in the water can help to a degree. also got a homemade blue bowl which catches fine gold but still lose the odd bit. i think for really fine flour you cant beat panning. thats purely my opinion though. others may disagree.
Greetings
I use a GoldCube(3 levels) but have put a smaller bilge pump on and a longer feed hose which slows the water feed down considerably. This allows me to catch all the smaller gold in the first matted layer.
After lifting the dredge mats i put cons through a res-power-sluice then classify out with two sieves separating the gold into 3 sizes.
Then i cube the smallest of the three cons as mentioned above and clear iron from all three end pans with the ol trusty magnet
Everything pans out from there!
Clean ups were taking 2 hours, now just over an hour.
Should i be taking my sluiced cons ‘home’ then i have a homemade two tiered banker system where the lower run is overkill long. The water feed is alkathene pipe(25mm) which covers the width of the top run, has the perfect amount of holes and plugs into the garden hose. Spray and walk away, then after a serious and lengthy chat with the fridge i return to find only the finest aged cheddar riffle resting and not much else.
This last scenario is rare. My home is with the sandflies, Judge Dredge and my totally ridiculous fever.
