My new mini High Banker

My mini highbanker arrived today so i put it straight into action.

First off. i purchased it off ebay from the US for about $315 delivered. I did look around to buy it locally in australia but i was looking at about $400 before postage for the same thing.

I had a 20L bucket of dirt from a local gold field sitting in the garage for 3 weeks to put through this little HB. The bucket had dirt from 2 different locations in a creek.

The first run saw me putting about a 1/4 of the material through the HB as shown in pics.







The above pic shows a small flek of gold caught in the riffles in the top part of the HB.
The bottom pic shows a closer shot of small specs of gold caught in the same riffles. I'm not sure if you are going to be able to see the specs of gold in these reduced image sizes.

This final pic shows the amount of gold i retrieved from the dirt i ran. I've never seen this much gold in my pan before. I was quite excited.




The rest of the dirt i ran wasn't as productive as this... But that didn't suprise me as the dirt i ran first up was from bedrock and about 1ft into the creek wall.

Hi GB

Very nice looking gear mate and very good value to.
It seems to trap the smallest of gold too, bet your gonna give that set up
a floggin ay.

Did the HB come as is or did it have a 12v bilge pump too.

Pete in WA

came with an 800gph bilge pump, allegator connections, large durable plastic scoup, gold magazine, setup & operating instructional DVD, 4ft hose + connection to HB connection... HB connection has a water flow valve inbuilt to adjust water speed.

unit runs well. quality is preety good. just need to make a trough and spray bar for increased performance and for clay i reckon. but still runs well straight out of the box.

might run upto the gold field tomorrow morning... should be some water up there. so i'll give it a good go with high quality material and see what happens.... just gotta find a car battery

Great stuff Goldbait, thats a fantastic setup. I've been thinking of getting something similar too. Lets us know how your trip to the gold fields go, good luck.

This is an excellent little unit, recently I got one like that as well. My first test run was half a wheelbarrow full with remains of crushed rocks I brought from the fields. The ones which give you a signal, you take home and than process them later with the hammer. Initially I thought I did a good job panning and re-panning the material. Well - I wasn't good at all - after putting the material through the Highbanker I got another half gram of Gold after only one run. There was even a little .1 gr piece. Sub-sequent runs did not produce any more colour. So far I think this little Highbanker will pay for itself in no time - if I get the time to use it.

Out4Fun

Good afternoon Goldbait,
Do I sense a certain amount of enthusiasm after that show or am I imagining it? Is that carpet that you have placed in the unit or a material provided with the equipment?

Yours tropically, Harry

Goldbait wrote:came with an 800gph bilge pump, allegator connections, large durable plastic scoup, gold magazine, setup & operating instructional DVD, 4ft hose + connection to HB connection... HB connection has a water flow valve inbuilt to adjust water speed.

unit runs well. quality is preety good. just need to make a trough and spray bar for increased performance and for clay i reckon. but still runs well straight out of the box.

might run upto the gold field tomorrow morning... should be some water up there. so i'll give it a good go with high quality material and see what happens.... just gotta find a car battery

Good stuff Gold bait........instead of a car battery you might want to consider a small deep cycle batt as they will outperform the normal car batt...I use one, just a 30 amp deep cyle, I use the same for many applications including running the elec outboard on the tinnie, it should last you more than a days running...if you want to you can connect a small solar panel to it and you will never run out of power as it will stay charged all the time...sunshine is still free and we have plenty of it !
cheers SS

Secret Squirrel... I'm one step ahead of you... I pulled the battery out of my boat and charged that up.. like your thinking.... Deep cycle battery's are made to last a lot longer on continuous power than a car battery.

I tried to get out today, but i didn't get out of bed till 10:30. .. I finish at midnight tonight. so fingers crossed i wake up early enough to hit the gold fields before starting work tomorow at 4p.

The carpet is provided with the sluice. It's a very soft ribbed fabric. After i finished running all the dirt i rinsed the carpet into my pan again and still managed some super fine gold.

I have included a high res image (1mb) of the close up shot of the top ribbed screening. You can really see the gold it caught before the dirt even made it to the sluice part of the HB.

For ease of viewing i have linked this as a thumbnail to this post. click on the image to enlarge which takes you to another screen, then click on image again to enlarge image to full screen.

Goldbait wrote:Secret Squirrel... I'm one step ahead of you... I pulled the battery out of my boat and charged that up.. like your thinking.... Deep cycle battery's are made to last a lot longer on continuous power than a car battery.

I tried to get out today, but i didn't get out of bed till 10:30. .. I finish at midnight tonight. so fingers crossed i wake up early enough to hit the gold fields before starting work tomorow at 4p.

well done...good luck on your next outing mate...........should be plenty of new ground exposed and old stuff replenished with all the rain that has been about.....
cheers SS

Hi Jase

Wow mate that really is good at catching them tiny lil floaters,Dont forget the camera when
ya get a chance to go out with it cause i'm seriously thinking of getting one to use on the old dryblowing piles
out bush in WA cause they are chockers full of ultra fine stuff like that.

p.s Add 1 drop only of washing up liquid to your tub to break the surface tension of the water and your retention
rate will be even greater.

Pete in WA

Thank you for your reply Mr Goldbait.
I see you are at Yeppoon. Are you fossicking around that area? How far afield do you roam? I am in Townsville and hoping to make a trip down to Clermont when the weather gets a bit settled or out to Cloncurry when the weather gets cooler.
Yours tropically, Harry

Harry. I have several gold fields within a stones throw of Yeppoon. But like everywhere, the grass is too long to detect at the moment, and we kind of have to wait for some rain to fill up the areas in the bedrock that can hold water so we have a water supply in the creeks as they don't like holding water... The water in the creeks are the creeks that don't hold the gold.... kind of a catch 22.

Mini high banker in action. no dirt.

does it look like i'm getting enough water over the riffles. is the speed too fast/slow. any recommendations on increasing my gold catching abilities. or does it look like it's preety well set up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1HKqbgOGUI

I have never seen a bilge pump that has enough flow for a sluice box -- well if it was 50-70 mm maybe -- you need to have about 25mm over the riffles at all times

Goldbait wrote:Mini high banker in action. no dirt.

does it look like i'm getting enough water over the riffles. is the speed too fast/slow. any recommendations on increasing my gold catching abilities. or does it look like it's preety well set up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1HKqbgOGUI

nice looking setup and as you said your boat batt seem to drive the pump ok, looking at youtube I agree with the other comment, not sufficient output from the pump if you really want this thing to work for you big time and not use it like a toy. As you might know you have a certain amount of adjustment in the legs of this thing to get the angles correct, which is also important, you can control the flow a bit with this.....you should have about 1 foot head of water running in a sluice box to work efficiently..I have done tonnes of sluicing in the old days with a trusty 4 foot long box...they work a charm and make quick work as long as you have the water to run them....so you will need about an inch of water over your riffles to carry the wash over, the drop of the box should be around 1" per foot length...so a 3 foot box should have about 3 " fall from one end to the other when set up....that way you will have even larger rocks being kept clear in the box...in your case you only have to worry about the bottom section as the top section is only set up as a screening device and only your smaller stuff which is washed thru the mesh will actually mount up if you don't have the correct water flow or angle on it....hope this makes sense.....
A larger bilge pump would need to be around 1600gph, this will draw at least around 6-10 amp of power from your battery, keep that in mind....the cost of that size bilge pump is around 150 bucks from Whitworths.....also for that size pump you might have to modify the intake section as it will create havoc with water flow and will need to be difused different to achieve a regulated rate....
cheers SS

thanks guys for your comments... i was thinking about adding a hopper to the unit and a spray bar. i did get a build up of smaller rocks before the riffles which did change the flow of water over the riffles.

i may make a few modifications to the unit to increase water flow.

Yeah Goldbait I reckon spray bar attached may be the go. By the look of the the first bucket in the first post there could be a bit of clay in your paydirt. If you dont puddle the stuff you are going to lose gold thats stuck in the clay. Do you still have the waste from that bucket? If so puddle it and put it through again. I think you will be suprised. Spray bars will aid you in the break up of clay so I would do that too.
Keep us up to date with your modifications.
Cheers
Curley

How much difference does a spray bar make. Cost only about $10 to make and i already had the other pump.

Here are 3 video's of the unit running before and after running dirt.

I ran the same material i ran the other day and got some more gold. Extremely fine as it even floats on water... It may have been left over gold stuck in the carpet from my first run.

Enjoy the vids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGv-0NOB1Ug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wum7Q8B1oUo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoO9EugaBGU

mate cut your loses with the 12v stuff and get a small petrol pump!



this is what you need!