Hello. I have owned three of these machines over the years. I purchased a new one in 1985, sold it several years later. I purchased a nice used one for $1800 in 2012. I refurbished and painted it then sold it for $3800. I currently have one that I completely rebuilt better than new, but then it was halfway destroyed in a wildland fire. I am currently repairing it. I learned much about them. Depending on how quickly you run it there is quite a bit of loss of water in the tailings coming from the sand screw. However, unlike a normal sluice/trommel, you can run a fair amount of material continuously with just a supplemental flow from a garden hose running about 2 gallons or so per minute, or perhaps less. These are good machines, but have a few shortcomings. They don't run as much material as claimed by manufacturer. With a steady consistent feed (like from a conveyor or other feeder), you can run about 3 yards per hour. These machines don't work well with stubborn clay, however, I bolted lifters into the trommel and added 1.5 inch self drilling screws in between many of the trommel screen holes to lift and break material. The main tank silts-up rather quickly and starts to clog the spraybar. On the lip between the screw tank and main tank I made a filter from plastic swamp cooler filter material about 2 inches tall that keeps more of the silt in the screw tank where it can be ejected. If I really wanted to get fancy I would lift the whole machine higher above the trailer frame and change the tank from flat-bottomed to angled with angles pointing to a 4 inch drain plug. This would act as a silt sump, and make cleaning tank easier. The silt can pack tight in the flat bottom making silt removal a chore.
@@michaelanthony8780 Hello Michael. Thanks for all the great information. We have been doing some small scale mining in northern California but having water issues. We were permitted to use a small pond as a water source & recirculate in a holding pond. The larger trommels require too much water to sustain more than a few wks of run time before the water supply dries up. Last year we ran a borrowed Gold Claimer Pioneer 30 which we loved but the water requirements were too much for the pond. Frustrating as we have good gold. You can see our operation on our Facebook page Gopher Hill Gold Mines. Thanks again.
