January 24, 2011

We’ve had a lot of calls and emails about the latest episode of Gold Rush Alaska where our Wave Table was depicted as not working. Many of the calls were from customers saying, “I can’t understand it, your table works great”; “they don’t know what they’re doing”; “what are they doing wrong?”

First, let’s clarify that Action Mining is in no way associated with the miners from Sandy Oregon except for coincidentally 1) being from the same town, and 2) being the supplier of the Wave Table. We did not know these men before they purchased the table from us and they asked for no help in setting it up. We did not know they were going to be doing a series for Discovery Channel until later. Mike happened to be up there at John Schnabel’s (he will have his table running next spring after he gets his magnetic separator in line and has offered to have them film at his place!) so the two of them went over to the Hoffman’s site. Mike adjusted the table, ran a sample that Dorsey had, and got a gold line. It was filmed and will hopefully be shown on the next episode.

Okay, here’s our answers to what they did wrong…..

1. They destabilized the table by taking the slab out of the ground and loading it onto a floor jack. The table motion was being transferred to the ground instead of to the table top. Similar to the screen deck incident – not securing the screen down caused it to move. All the raising and lowering of the table was wrong. Once the material is screened properly, you find the correct height adjustment and leave it there. Dorsey almost had it running, and then it was sabotaged.

2. No classification – large flakes should have never even been on the table (according to Dorsey’s blog www.goldminingrealityshow.com, it probably was not even on the table). They should have been screening. A ¼” rock will always weigh more than an 1/8” piece of gold. The sample taken showing gold at the bottom riffle of the table was because larger rocks pushed it there. The table wasn’t losing gold, it was pushed there.

3. The wave table does not make gold, it recovers gold. They’ve done no proper sampling (or assaying) or processing of material with known gold. It’s like Jack threw down his hat and decided to dig there. From the onset, their desperation (and script acting) caused mistake after mistake. No professional miner would work this way. There’s definitely gold on this property, but 30 buckets of cons and only 2½ oz of gold total! Wrong area to work……there was hardly enough gold to show up on the table.

Some tips on improving gold recovery because the Wave Table is a good device for recovering gold from either “hard rock” or “alluvial” (placer) deposits.

Re. Hard Rock gold deposits

If gold is in hard rock, the ore has to be crushed and sufficiently milled fine, in other words ground down. You need to do this in order to free up the small gold particles. Consequently, it is important for small miners and prospectors to be able to crush and grind down their gold bearing ore, before they put over the Wave Table (WT). Otherwise the WT will not work at its optimum performance level.

So it’s a good idea if miners adopt the practice of using a jaw crusher and then a hammer mill (or ball mill etc) that will reduce the ore down to 100% passing 2mm or even 100% passing 1mm in size. This latter size is perfect for running on a WT.

Re. Alluvial/Placer deposits

Again I cannot stress enough the need to get your WT feed size down to 100% passing 2mm and even 1mm (for very fine gold areas). Any coarse gold can be collected with sluice boxes or gold traps which are very easy to set up. It is the fine gold that is difficult to recover — and that is where the WT comes in to play. BUT the feed to the wave table has to be screened (classified) down to a smaller and more manageable-size fraction.

So it is useful to consider the idea of rotating wet screens (we call them trommels), otherwise the wavetable will not operate effectively. Or you could use a wet vibrating screen.

Hope this helps.

Again, contact Ian with your questions – either by entering them in the comments section below, or hitting the Contact button near the top of the screen.

For the non-trader or even the neophyte trader, the word “gold” brings about two mental images. One is of course, jewelry, everything from the understated but well meant engagement ring to the ropes of thick, spine damaging chains of the aging Lothario. The other image of course is of the gold bars- rooms of large golden pyramids with workers moving them about in wheelbarrows. Cursed cartoons, right? But when you are talking about gold with your fellow investors, the correct idea would be trading gold stocks and in most cases even more correctly, gold futures. Gold can be a strong investment performer, but its successes are always tied to world supply and demand that waxes and wanes. There are always some areas in the world where gold will perform fairly well, but unless you are a hardcore trader, you will be more concerned with the market performance of your stock, no matter what it is, in your own home country.

Trading gold stocks will entail a quick education in the many uses of the precious metal, most importantly in the realm of jewelry since that counts for just about three-fourths of gold demand worldwide. Watching some jewelry trends can give the trader clues to whether trading gold stocks is about to run hot or cool off. There is an exception to this indicator, however. In India, trading gold stocks and gold futures is not tied to jewelry fashion trends but rather to cultural and religious tradition.

When looking into trading gold stocks as another investment for your portfolio, keep in mind that much of its trading is done in the over the counter market so it is not as easily tracked and measured as say, stocks in a computer company. It might also be wise to split gold stock investments between several of the gold forms to provide more flexibility and to provide a cushion against the fluctuations of the market. Trading gold stocks can be an experiment in trial and error as gold prices may fall rapidly while futures remain steady or vice versa.

Gold, the precious metal is not limited to use in jewelry, so investing in gold and gold stock is not solely tied to what is fashionable at the time. There are many other uses for gold, including industrial and dental demands that account for slightly over ten percent of all gold demand worldwide. It is used in electrical components and new uses are being discovered in the fields of fuel cells, chemical processing and in pollution control. The gold futures market may be seeing a boom, as these new uses become more public knowledge. One of the most exciting uses for gold may be in the treatment of cancer.

An lastly, it is possible to buy gold coins and bullion. Storage could be a hurdle to cross since you need a safe place to keep your gold. There are several places that are not recommended such as digging a hole in your backyard or storing it in your underwear drawer. Some people use safe deposit boxes although it is recommended to check with your bank. There are several gold bullion vendors who will store the gold for you. Regardless of where you store your gold make sure it is protected and yet accessible.

This incredible gold separation/recovery device comes in 3 models covering all scales of operation and works on gold, any heavy mineral, also cleans grit from stripped carbon.

The portable 12 volt powered model M5 has just been released and is great for test work in the bush or lab.

The M8 is perfect for bulk sample testing and for full scale production.

The mighty M10 can process up to 10 TPH and has low water and power usage.

Action Mining, who manufacture the Gold Wave Table, also supplies a complete range of assay equipment, prospecting gear and technical books.

Products:
•Chemicals & Chemical Handling
•Exploration
•Minerals Processing
•Publications
•Testing / Sampling / Monitoring

Any questions can either be directed to Ian Freeland via the contact details in the column to your right, or posted here at GoldWaveTable.com.

The Daily Reckoning newsletter says….

“–The banks want a deal that keeps them in business. They want the Paulson deal. But the U.S. taxpayers don’t want the Paulson deal. They’ve said so all week. So where does that leave us?

–It leaves us exactly where we’ve always had to be: the continued de-leveraging of the global financial system. That means more asset-write downs, more bank failures, and sooner or later, a run on a few banks as depositors begin to realise that the frozen credit markets are going to lead to the death of some over-leveraged banks unable to fund their operations or roll over their debts.

–We may get Paulson Two, of course. Congress will cook up some other version of the plan that addresses things like equity warrants or taxpayer protection. But none of that solves the problem at the heart of the financial system: a tremendous amount of borrowed money has been invested in assets that are falling in value. The inevitable result is a credit deflation. There is no way of improving the quality of the assets.

–The Fed is not waiting to see what Congress does to respond. It’s about to grow its balance sheet in a monstrous way. It will take on new liabilities and create new money to do so if it must. That’s why the only exception to yesterday’s commodity sell-off was gold. We’ll have more on this latest phase of the crisis in a special mid-week edition. Until then…”

….Ian