Breaking up clay

[Hunting the yellow]

like these not mine http://aussielapidaryforum.com/forum/index.php?action=media;sa=item;in=886 and this http://aussielapidaryforum.com/forum/index.php?action=media;sa=item;in=586

 

[Gold miner]

Hey Gm, do get down to the bedrock on your operation or just river wash?
Just thought if bedrock do you clean out the crevices manually as a lot of au would be down where the Excav cant dig.
Cheers
Brad...

Yeah, down to bed rock. Yup you are right, the excavator cant get it all. I run over the ground with the detector, and if I get anything, I scrape deeper!
The cut we just finished, we came up against a huge rock bar, so there's heaps of payable dirt that the machine couldnt get.

 

[sluice_goose]

Soak the clay in a bucket as long as you can. Should break up pretty good after a while.

Maybe add a little soap to stop it sticking together.

 

[backcreek]

Had a quick look online & found one the same as mine.

http://imgc.classistatic.com/cps/blnc/130417/823r1/140389a_20.jpeg

Hay Ag,
I have one exactly the same as this which I fitted a 1/4 hp electric motor to. Saves a lot of work.

Cheers
Mick

 

[aushunter]

GM you need a great big hard bristle rotary brush about 1.5 dia to brush out those crevices :lol:
Just a thought as I am in the mining/excavation design side of things, worked for Jaws bkt and attachment for 13yrs designing a great range of attachments for the smaller excav's, now working for Bradken designing there new Mining range of bkts for the big stuff EX3600, RH340's which is a little different to the construction stuff.
I reckon a brush type attachment on a quickhitch config would work a treat..
Cheers
Brad...

 

[Ditherer and Son]

I would have thought any powered tool used to excavate or process material for the purposes of prospecting e.g. a cement mixer, would be illegal without a mining or exploration licence. The hand powered cement mixer would theoretically be acceptable though.

 

[Beer Pig]

I soak the stuff for sometime weeks and it is still difficult to break down. still I seem to find SFA for all that effort ----- I think a lot of people think clay and deeper is better as old timers may think --- but it has proved me wrong over and over again. best bet is the compacted gravel wash so unlike me washing dirt after weeks still find no speck - even though the clay area looked great. if you process more-you may likely get more

just my thought

 

[Ag Man]

True beer pig.
I've never been desperate enough to take clay home to process over days or weeks but I just wanting a faster way to process it & any other material (grass roots etc. )at the creek if that's possible. Will try the cement mixer method & see how that goes.

 

[Ag Man]

I would have thought any powered tool used to excavate or process material for the purposes of prospecting e.g. a cement mixer, would be illegal without a mining or exploration licence. The hand powered cement mixer would theoretically be acceptable though.

In Vic, as long as you excavate by hand(shovel, buckets, spoons etc.) then you can pretty well process it how ever you wish - trommel, sluice, highbanker etc.

 

[axeman]

I was told this but not sure if it would work, with the cement mixer, cut the paddles out, smooth the drum, chuck in the clay with a couple of bricks?. There was one you could buy back in the earlier 80's just before they banned machinery, they done a test on it in GGT, now only if I could find the mag it was in, worked good if I remember rightly. Mick

 

[joe]

Hi Axeman,

There is such a machine

[video=480,360]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nniPooa-eLY[/video]

 

[TenOunce Tone]

I have an old dryer sitting in my garage, I think the drum might meet my drill soon...

I wonder how this would go with wet sticky clay, it is doing a great job on the dry stuff. I think if you wanted to get real fine clay busted up you could put in a half inch screen then, around that put a quater or 3/8 with a gap or a few inches, you will still get the concreting effect if you dont have enough water flow through it.

It kinda looks like a trommel I saw at someones house...

Just my two bobs for what its worth.

 

[G0lddigg@]

cement mixer! or in small volumes i use a drill and some water in a bucket

 

[Golden Tiger]

So people just to clarify, if your from Victoria there is no quick way to break up clay without the good old elbow grease ? (While at the creek)

 

[backcreek]

Where there's no bedrock, gold usually settles only as deep as hard clay. Now, trying get gold out of this top layer of clay is tricky - even getting some of the softer clays to break up can test you.

What are some methods you use for breaking up larger volumes of clay?

A couple of mates & me been thinking of making a trommel.

 

[TenOunce Tone]

Elbow grease is the answer to clay!

Correct Golden Tiger

Cheers, Tone

 

[Bushranger]

Old fashioned answer
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Vintag...542?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2331702946

 

[HeadsUp]

i just lay down the top of my highbanker until its almost flat , throw a shovel full in to it and break it up with my fingers , it is probably 4 times slower than processing gravel but the spray bars wash it down to nothing

depends how gluggy your clay is though

failing that , try a battery drill with a paint stirrer and do half a bucket of clay with half a bucket of water ?

as long as you dig it by hand with a shovel to get it in that bucket then i think a cordless drill - stirrer is perfectly legal

 

[BrisJoe]

Just use a bit of Gypsum if bringing the material home to process. 44Gal drum and blast some water into it and stir the gypsum into it.

If it is rock hard dry clay, then would a rock crusher work?

 

[trashmagnet]

hello
a cement mixer works well, it still takes awhile to break down all the clay.
I put steel panel beater dolly's in there as an added crusher.
running water slowly into the mixer allowing the really light crap come out as it's mixing also allows you to concentrate a lot of clay down to a much smaller amount of material to process.
I also put some gypsem in there but it made no difference as it did not have enough time to work
regards trashmagnet