Can agree bellows out perform constant air. AND more compact for easy transport.Hi Murphy81, I made one for that purpose - there are some photos in a thread titled bellows dry washer build. Woodeen, wing nutty to bolt it together and fits in a bucket. I use it a fair bit now (on a lease) and got tired of operating it by hand so have modified it to a constant air version by replacing the bellows with a box containing a passive fan that is unbalanced by a lead weight to provide vibration. The riffle tray assembly is now suspended under the hopper from wire hooks at the back and a spring at the front. The air supply is from a ryobi workshop blower. It is light, tiny, 3 settings and variable speed - speed 2 worked best for mine. A 1.3 aH battery will run about 10l of dirt. I tested it this season and it worked pretty well so will now get a 4.5 aH battery. I still think the gold recovery was better with the bellows, but it still catches gold and its quick.
As an aside the blower is now in my camping kit - it is really good for getting the fire going again when it is spluttering, and adjusting the heat of the 'coals' for cooking - better than a blow pipe I can tell you!
Some pictures would be awesome thanks mate. Got an ac/dc tig, so will probably be using aluminium as well.I built one out of aluminium with bellows, is hand operated, but did put a wiper motor on it for a while but got sick of toting the battery about works just fine by hand. I usually get a couple of 20ltr buckets of material from a creek or some sites across an area I wish to check, then bring them back to my camp and process when the urge takes me. It has lawn motor wheels on it and can be moved along as the spoils build up. I am down the coast at the moment but wil be back in the gold fields in a few days and will take some pics and post them here.
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