Hi everyone! I just recently got into gold prospecting and have been having a lot of fun just going out and playing with my pan. I recently built a bowl kind of like the blue bowl gold recovery but I was disappointed in the way it worked.
So my next project is going to be a miller table for my fines that I have recovered. I have researched them on google and other places and have seen many different ideas. Can anybody offer me some insight on the best materials to use? I have seen people have success with Easy Liner shelf liner as the bed, I have seen honed slate used as a bed and then I have seen the chalkboard painted on wood as a bed. Do any of these materials out perform the other or is it just trial and error?
I was going to try to use the backside of a piece of LVT as the base because it has a little bit of texture on it but the more I research the miller table I have seen beds that almost completely flat. Any ideas and suggestions would be great as I am a newbie and just trying to find something useful and make gold recovery even funner.
Replies
Well I have tried my miller table and I am not happy with the chalkboard paint. I have taken it apart and am going to try the hobbies mat like Larry used. I have also looked into building a jig. Does anyone have any ideas? I saw one on YouTube called the scavenger jig and it is a pretty neat jig.
Hi John, If you don't mind my asking, what was it that you were having trouble with. Perhaps I can help. There is a bit of a learning curve to these and once you get them dialed in they will recover anything you can see.
I have a new mini sluice for the very fine and micron gold that totally strips all gold and black sand out of anything that I run through it and mostly because I am to lazy to drag out the Hobbico table I have been using one of my mini chalkboard tables to recover the gold out of the cons and it has been allowing me to recover gold that I can only see with my 10x watch repair glasses. I love my Hobbico table better but I have found that the chalkboard paint tables are still capable of recovering gold you can't see with the naked eye.
If I can help or answer any questions just let me know.
I also built tables following the videos that Larry included in his reply. They work well, but I found that the melamine shelving warped after a few times of using it. My current table uses a plastic cutting board. http://www.lionsdeal.com/wi-cbgr-1218.html?utm_source=googlepla&...
I used some 3M spray adhesive to secure a Hobbico mat. You could just use the surface of the cutting board but I found the texture to be just a bit much for the very fine black sands, and they would get trapped in the textured finish and not flow down the table.
Yippers, I ran into that problem as well. Sorry, I learned that there are hairline seams on the melamine covering that the water can seep into. I now give all my melamine boards about 3 or 4 coats of paint to seal them now. I have been using the 4 I have now just about once a week and they have been going for about a year now. So I recommend painting the melamine board. The cutting board works as well.
I just recently built one using the design that Larry suggested on youtube. Great design by the way Larry. :) I did not use the Hobbico mat like Larry did in his video but used a rubber antistatic matt used for eliminating ESD when working on computers. The mat has a high static resistant blue side and a black rubber side. I chose to use the black side and it works very well but like others members have suggested, the proper pitch and water flow are the key to recovering all of the fines.
Welcome to the wonderful and very addictive world of prospecting John.
Nice videos Larry. Very nice miller table.
Hi John, welcome to the disease.
Miller Tables are my favorite and most used tool. I have built many of them and tried dozens of surfaces and materials to see what works the best. I am still currently building and experimenting with them and today I'm just finishing up another one. I have looked at all the tables I can find home made and commercial for the past 3 years and have taken the features I like the most and incorporated them into the one I like the most. This one is cheap and easy to build and has a solid flat bed which is critical. It's a piece of cheap plastic coated shelving you can find in any big box store and it works very well. It's a very simple basic design and you can make any changes you want to adapt it to your way of doing things. It's all modular so you don't have to scrap the table and build a new one to make changes to it. You can try different surfaces to the table like Chalkboard paint shelf liner, spray on truck bed liner, etc and just apply them over the top of the old one without having to build a new table to do it. I have been able to use a great many materials for tables but some work better than others.
Most people make them way too long and ungainly. If you adjust the water flow and angle correctly all the gold will be caught in the top 3 - 6 inches and a 12" long table will be more than plenty long. I have made one only 6 inches long just for fun and it worked very well. If you want a bigger table it's best to go wider because you will spread your sand across the wide part and not up and down. If everything is adjusted right the gold will stay where it's dropped. If the gold is moving down the table then you have the water and angle improperly adjusted.
I find that the slate is nice but expensive, heavy and hard to cut, mount side and back boards to and is generally overrated. I think it's popularity in the early days mainly was because it was waterproof, fairly flat and didn't warp. Chalkboard paint is a good one and I use it to water proof my boards. I also like it because if you want to glue a mat to it the glue will bond well to it. You can even pull the mats out of an aluminum sluice box and paint it on the bottom. I currently have 4 Chalkboard paint tables in various sizes. My favorite surface right now is the Hobbico self healing cutting mat. I have heard that not all brands work well. I don't know because I have only used the Hobbico but it works well and I have stayed with it. You can buy different sizes on Amazon for around $10 - $15. I recommend the 12" x 18" if you want a large table and the 9" x 12" for a smaller one. I usually make the table the same size as the mat. I have both sizes.
I find that classifying my materials and adjusting the angle and water flow for each classification works the best for the maximum recovery. These tables will recover down to -200 mesh if you adjust your table properly.
The 200 GPH and 264 GPH water pumps that Harbor Freight sells are perfect for the larger tables and you can put a cheap garden hose valve on at the pump if the water flow is too much for the small table.
All in all I think these are one of the best ways to go to recover your gold from cons. Certainly faster than a Blue Bowl.
If you wish to see one in action you can see it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC9fGe-UQLs
A quick simple how it was built here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVr_TrBjsBs
I am not a movie maker so please excuse the quality. I was recovering from open heart surgery when I made this so I sound like a zombie. I just made these movies in a hurry to show someone what they were like and didn't expect anyone else to be interested. I have another one going into more detail on how I build them that I will be putting up soon for some folks that asked for more detail.
Try one, you'll like it.
If I can answer any questions just let me know.
Awesome thank you for your tips and videos. I enjoyed watching them and your great ideas. Over this past weekend I made a miller table with chalkboard paint and today I will be trying it out. I will post some updates later today or tomorrow on how it it's working. Thank you.
you are right there many different surfaces that can be used chalkboard paint which is labor intencive to apply as it needs more than one coat and sanded between coats. an old chakboard is also a great surface but not the new chalkboards as they are really chalkboard paint on partical board which will swell up when wet. the one i made is olfa rotory cutting board which is used by crafters, you just have to make sure the edges are sealed water tight, other wise water get under it and causes a high spot. millers table work great when built right. It just depends on how much money and or time you want to put onto building one. you can but one for around a hundred dollars if that is what you want to do. the most important thing about a miller table is that you run it low and slow, low angle between 3 and 7 degrees and your water flow slow enough to push the black sand down the table but leave the gold behind. good luck i hope this helped you.