blue bowl concentrator

I was wondering if anyone here has used a blue bowl concentrator.

I would like to know the pros and cons and recovery rate, as they look pretty easy to use on youtube.

cheers

koeh

ive never used one but going to make one in the coming weeks. I know i could buy one but making one seems so much more fun, lol.

Im sure Murachu will know

cheers

The blue bowl concentrator yep they work ok, a bit slow and struggle at processing stream tin and corundum sands. cheers

James 101 wrote:The blue bowl concentrator yep they work ok, a bit slow and struggle at processing stream tin and corundum sands. cheers

Yes James i will agree with you on that -- I did have one of the originals, bought back in late 70s i think and it was very good for cleaning up concentrates provided you had NO tin or heavy black sands .I gave mine to Fireman Den a few yrs ago -- also i had a bucket concentrator !! man what a load of #### again dont put one any where near clay!!! If you practice panning and get good at it you can get gold quicker than either of these to toys if the conditions are wrong

Just got my blue bowl today.

Works a treat, the only issue is that I need a smaller sieve to get some of the little rocks out which the blue bowl cannot handle but with the black sands it cleans it all out in a couple of minutes.

I wish I still worked in the assay lab I would have to 20+kg's of dirt crushed, milled and dried in a few hours and melted into a few buttons, guess I will have to put up with the dolly pot.

koeh

I think the blue bowl has more cons than pro's.

I used one for a short time and found it uses an incredable amount of water because you have to classify the material down to extreme sizes.
The blue bowl won't work on anything larger than 30+ size material.

It does work well on 50+ to 30- material.

I did recover quite an amount of gold from my concentrates, but you spend hours doing it.

I recently bought a mini highbanker and find i can throw raw material straight into this. Can process about 20L of material in about 10 minutes and recover about the same material as my blue bowl did.

G'day all

I have owned one, and for it's time it did what many needed it to do.

I don't have it now because I don't have to own one. You see, I can pan out small Gold down to 50 mesh rather easily, and the S-1 Concentrator with it's Auto Feeder handles the non-magnetic sub 50 concentrates rather easily all the way down to 350 mesh.

There is a gentleman in Nome who uses his B Bowl during the winters on beach concentrates. He has learned that by putting the input water at the 6:00 position, tilting the bowl 12:00 as a little high and slowly inputing material before the inputed water he was able to slowly (very key word) input the concentrates which would allow the lighter material to climb the upslope while just the Gold would 'die' in place on the upslope. Sucker bottle out the Gold and keep on going.

I like my way better for now, with the S-1.

I have used bowl type concentrators for years, and providing they are set up level, the water supply is constant, and the feed is constant, they will work fine. It is really important to screen down to a fairly fine size. I screen to 1mm. Any thing else is recoverable by panning. The other very good use is the recovery of micro fine particles of mercury. If you use mercury to clean up your cons. you will know it is impossible to recover every small prill of mercury. This unit will do it for you.
Good Luck,
Harry.

G'day Harry,
Good point on the Mercury prills, a very important consideration in "Mercury country".