Gold dry washer, dry blower

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Hey guys just had a browse and couldn't find any thing on the subject I'm thinking of building one as I have a good spot to use it and wanted to know has any one got a home built one I could get some ideas off?
I would like to build a small compact hand or foot operated one .
 
It would be pretty easy to make one like the little Keene blowers. Any garden leaf blower from bunnings about $100-150, the static cloth from the keenes cost about $15 from Reeds prospecting, attach that to some backward facing riffles and put it in a box. I bought mine and love it, but it looks pretty easy to make one.
Heres a few pics.

7d60f580.jpg


96067e9e.jpg

This one shows the fan where the air comes in under the riffle tray, it has a little counter weight that makes the unit vibrate as it turns.

52b7006a.jpg

The riffle tray with the static cloth attached, remember the riffles are backwards compared to a highbanker.

1bb2e2ce.jpg


Going to use mine today actually on a dry gully I have been testing here in Vic, got some nice bits from my test pans.

DD
 
Yeah this is all the stuff I'm looking at most of the nuggets I find with the GMT are under .1 but as you dig the ground up it unearths a lot of little ones I think maybe a dry washer might be more productive than detect+dig 20 tiny bits a day
Thank you too everyone so far keep them coming !
 
Diggerdude said:
It would be pretty easy to make one like the little Keene blowers. Any garden leaf blower from bunnings about $100-150, the static cloth from the keenes cost about $15 from Reeds prospecting, attach that to some backward facing riffles and put it in a box. I bought mine and love it, but it looks pretty easy to make one.
Heres a few pics.

Going to use mine today actually on a dry gully I have been testing here in Vic, got some nice bits from my test pans.

DD
Click to expand...

i saw an article recently about a couple of Keene Blowers being bought from the states and shipped to Mongolia

Now there is thousands of them . ( copies of course )

a New Zealand company sent one of their skid mounted gold trommels to Mongolia too , i think they sold only one

wonder how many copies are being made ?

thanks for your pic's DD , gotta watch a few youtube videos on them being used coz i have never played with one but there are plenty of areas here in Oz with fine gold but no water
 
Hey Diggerdude ... is that the Keene 140? I'd really like to take the 151 to WA ... but I'm going to have to find enough gold first, to pay for the petrol/trip!! :lol:
 
G'day Kate, yeah that's my 140, I'm using it in Victoria at the moment. No need to go all the way to WA, plenty of good spots over the east coast to use them.

DD
 
Hi Kate

Yeah we have a 151 and it always produces good results, mainly we take it west and central Aust. Good investment, light weight and reliable.
 
HeadsUp said:
Nightjar said:
Built this one years ago Zuke, driven by a 3.5hp Briggs & Stratton.
Click to expand...

are all those reduction pulleys driving a shaker shaft on the top screen

and what drives the actual blower ?

thanks mate :)
Click to expand...

Sorry only just found your question.
Yes the top shaker screen motion is reduced by the pulleys.
If you look closely at bottom LH of first pic you will see the length of RHS that rotates on a cam from the top shaft and that operates the bellows.

Cheers
 
Redfin said:
The yanks use mainly wood for their dry blowers.
Have a gander at Linda's page, scroll down for pics and links.
http://www.billandlindaprospecting.com/
Click to expand...

This is an old thread :cool:

The yanks also use the term (Blower) for the type of drywasher that blows air through a hose to create a vacuuming effect. Whilst the aussies use the same word to describe both the blower type (with a vacuum motor/engine) and the bellow/puffer type which has a bellow made of cloth/leather (old timers used leather :lol: )

It's a bit confusing to someone who is not familiar with such naming conventions !
At the end what's important is they both get the gold and they are specifically designed to work the dry areas where there is a shortage on water.
 
I have a couple little American books on 'Dry washing'. They are good books but are unanimous in calling them Dry Washers, regardless if they are puffer(Bellows) or constant air. Us aussies call them Dry blowers and we are in fact pioneers in the area of large scale dry blowers being fed by front end loaders.

The early American designs actually used petrol motors to run the puffer style and one enlightened chap re-used a blower from a clothes drier to make the first constant air dry washer. Earlier designs were usually hand cranked bellows type and although captured gold, they were also pretty good at leaving it behind too. With modern design and access to better equipment and materials the constant air dry blower with hot air blowing through the fabric and a nylon screen creates an electro magnetic charge which apparently holds on to the fine gold and makes it stick to the fabric like a magnet. The constant air machine can also handle more m3 per hour but the debate over which is better remains to be solved. I think they are all great. I will make a bellows one day and compare it next the my Constant air blower and see whats best....first though I have to finish making the 3 Dry blowers I'm working on at the moment.
 
MJB said:
I have a couple little American books on 'Dry washing'. They are good books but are unanimous in calling them Dry Washers, regardless if they are puffer(Bellows) or constant air. Us aussies call them Dry blowers and we are in fact pioneers in the area of large scale dry blowers being fed by front end loaders.

The early American designs actually used petrol motors to run the puffer style and one enlightened chap re-used a blower from a clothes drier to make the first constant air dry washer. Earlier designs were usually hand cranked bellows type and although captured gold, they were also pretty good at leaving it behind too. With modern design and access to better equipment and materials the constant air dry blower with hot air blowing through the fabric and a nylon screen creates an electro magnetic charge which apparently holds on to the fine gold and makes it stick to the fabric like a magnet. The constant air machine can also handle more m3 per hour but the debate over which is better remains to be solved. I think they are all great. I will make a bellows one day and compare it next the my Constant air blower and see whats best....first though I have to finish making the 3 Dry blowers I'm working on at the moment.
Click to expand...

Good info and glad to have you chime in into this thread :D
Dry washers fed by front end loader is the buzz word here in Sudan these days, as I said this before , the easy big gold is already gone, with few found now and then. The small miners turned to dry washing because it suited the areas where they mine for gold (the Northern Sahara "Desert"). Probably triggered by someone who imported an American made dry washer (blower type e.g "constant air") and the others copied the design. I 've never seen any (Puffer/bellows) type of dry washer here in Sudan. Also they make the bigger ones, that is being fed by front end loaders.
This is the local version of the American dry washer:

1435143911_drywashersd.jpg
 
The big dry washer I posted pic of averages (40-50) grams per day, smaller ones between 3 and 5 grams per day, depending of course of the gold concentration and the type of material being processed . Most of Northern Sudan is desert , dry as bone :lol:
So a bellows and a blower type dry washer don't have difficulty running the material.

Here's another one, notice the many motors to provide constant air to the blower, also there is a little electric lamp to work in the night where temps of desert becomes much less hot than during the day :D

1435146423_blower_dry_washer.jpg
 
Thats a great little unit Zuke_Lynzy...I reckon that would do a pretty good job, nice and quiet and with that long handle pretty easy work too.

Geo2, thats one serious dry washer mate. Perfect country over there being so dry. Even for the smaller units to recover up to 5 grams a day is good going. The big one there getting 40-50 grams per day is awesome and no doubt paying for the whole operation. Do you use this or is it just one you saw?

I love dry blowers and I reckon here in Australias east coast they are extremely underrated with not many people using them. Our summers are dry and hot and I have used mine in the Golden Triangle with great effect on old mullock heaps catching the fine gold the old timers either missed or did'nt want. I met up with DiggerDude (now banned) where we used his Keen 140 and in 20 mins had recovered more gold than I had got in 6 months panning. I knew then I had to have one and after seeing the high prices commanded for the bought ones I decided to build my own, this is what I ended up building....
1435178968_photo-0255.jpg

They are ripper little units and I reckon every prospector should have one in his arsenal for when the water dries up and the ground is dry.
 

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