Setting the Correct Angle of Your Banjo.

Setting the Correct Angle of Your Banjo.

In days of old the most asked question of me was where can I dig or where do I dig, but those days are long gone, never to return. Now a more sensible question is been put forward and that is,
"At what angle should I set my Banjo?" and that is a question I hear more and more these days. It’s a very observant question and understanding its answer can result in excellent, rather than just fair, results.
Unlike High-bankers, which operate in a slightly different manner, the Banjo is forgivingly designed to allow running at even a little off-angle for the larger Gold, but the real beauty of its design is the recovery of the fine Gold.
In the lower section of the Banjo, the washed and sized gravel starts its way along, belting through the unit. This headlong rush must be slowed, and the Banjo’s design does that.
Why would slowing the wash dirt be important? Well, the best way to explain that is to ask the question “How did the fine Gold get to be where you found it in that old stream bed?” In addition, “Why didn’t that fine Gold get trapped behind & around all the other obstacles on its way to that open bench you are working?” The answer is quite simply water velocity. That velocity is that what pushed the fine Gold along to where it did finally rest. That sized Gold just never had a chance to settle beforehand. The Banjo’s riffles are used as barriers to progressively slow down the wash dirt. The slowing of the material gives the fine Gold time to settle and be captured behind the riffles in their ‘dead zones’ created there by design.
To see if the lower part of the Banjo is angled and working correctly, place a few shovels full of wash dirt though the unit and see what it does. If everything is blowing out the back of the Banjo, it is running too fast and you must fine tune your Banjo to get an even run of wash all the way to that last riffle. Now the last riffle has a very important job to perform and that is to retain any gold that has not settled. You must make sure the slurry velocity does not over ride the vortex of the riffle. If the Banjo is running too fast, the best way to get an even run of fluid wash to the last riffle is to lift the outlet end of the bottom hopper.
You must also have a section with no matting between the gold tray and riffle section which allows gold segregation in the slurry.
　
Cheers

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© JB 2011

Thanks James top post.
Easy to read and to understand, and like a lot of the aspects of this great hobby, using the good old "KISS" method.
Its gold

Thanks Billy yep the old "KISS" method is indeed the best way. cheers mate

Bump.