Gold to the tub.

[SC75]

I have old reports from the mid 1800s and im just curious as what they mean when they say gold to the tub or tab. Im assuming it a tub but not sure? its a very faint print, so im not sure what is says for example, the gully here flows into German gully.
The alluvial gold obtained here was rich, in some places it yielded 5 oz and 5 three quarter oz to the tub.
What sort of tub was it and how big was a tub, i've read a few cases on gold to the tub/tab but it doesn't say how big was the tub?

 

[AtomRat]

Gday SC75, this question was brought up last year but I'm struggling to find which thread had the answers your after. Tub was generally around half a wine barrel in size by memory, and gold per tub usally meant a full tub of clay puddled down. Hopefully someone can link it cause I can't search with my phone

 

[SC75]

Cool thanks AtomRat. I didn't think it would be that big but thanks mate.

 

[cairnspom]

Could it just be a mis-spelling, and should be ton? or a common shipping size barrel was a tun, perhaps also used as a measure

 

[SC75]

Yeah not sure mate but a ton does seem a bit to much for 5 to 6 oz of rich alluvial gold.

 

[spikegold]

I think it was covered by "parks" now banned.
I think it was basically what had been dug up and sluiced down to concentrates and kept until the end of the day when it was then panned off, giving 5 oz to the tub. Nugget stealing was known of so it was left till end of day so all blokes on team could see panning and witness results.

 

[silver]

I'd recon a tub would be like the old galvanised wash tub size, woulda been ideal to have something like that in the old days ,.. and would be able to hold about 1/2 a barrel of good quality port(imagine that).

 

[RedDirtDigger]

Through a few years of going through the newspaper articles on the Trove database I have noticed that when reference is made to breaking up specimens or cleaning up gold in a "tub" it usually means a wooden tub and they were sometimes mentioned as being square. I took it to mean rough made wooden tubs that were commonly made on the goldfields for washing/breaking up gold.
RDD

 

[Treadsoftly]

The fellas used a standard to determine how rich a 'lead' or a new goldfield's potential could be so they started to use the amount of gold recovered from the amount of wash dirt dug.
-
A bucket of wash-dirt.
A tub held 4 to 6 buckets of wash-dirt.
A load held 30 buckets of wash-dirt.

I can't post a link yet but if you search for gold SBS you can see a print that goldfields artist S.T.Gill painted of a gold digger using a tub to 'wash' his wash-dirt.