Gold Miner Spiral vs Desert Fox Spiral

[mbcougartl]

I would like to know your opinion in this forum:

Gold Miner Spiral vs Desert Fox Spiral, Give me your best decision. Thank you!

[whats4supper]

I had a desert fox/little camel for years, but you should look for a sprial wheel that has a vibrator on it, and the better defined ridges on the spiral wheel.

While its use is dependent on classified material, say less than 1/4" to 3/8", the mainstay is to use it to recover fines than are too hard to handpick or tweeze out. The angle setting on the little camel is sort of mickey mouse (manual, trial and error), and the pump is best used with a pantyhose sock, along with flocculant for slimes, and some limonene (citrus oil) to help reduce grease and oils on the dirt and gold (natural oils from plants).

The process takes a while to run 5-gallons of material. scoop a little, sit and drink a beer, scoop in a little more, etc. The black sands should be able to climb up about 2/3 of the way to the center hole, but the last part should be clear of black sands, (adjustment of angle, water, is tedious, but once you get the right setup dialed in, make marks and notes, and then start putting in material that has values. run everything completely through at least 3 times. even with that, there will be escapees that won't climb to the cup (go figure).

accessories:

funnel, various vials, tweezers, really strong magnets, limonene detergent, flocculant, a few quart sized jars, and a plastic scoop. oh yeah, an ice chest to keep the beer cold, and a nice comforatable chair. you may want to set the tub on a table, and instead of using the tub setup that comes with the unit, instead use a large 10-gal galvanized tub, or larger, to get teh tailings.

While many guys and gals take the thing with them to drywashing or sluicing camp. I usually just run the raw material through either of those, collect teh concentrates in a 5-gal bucket or 5, and do all the finishing work at home, where water, battery charger, and all the conveniences are. Besides, if you are doing good, you'll know where to go back to, or on the other hand, which place to skip going to next time.

Besides all the stuff above, you may want to invest in a cargo trailer (AZ Carson has good enough ones, not too much money) to carry the camping stuff, wheelbarrow, drywasher or sluice equipment, motobike or , lanterns, gasoline, shovels and other implements of destruction (listen to Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie), and every other myriad tool you can fit in, along with flat fixer, jack, and a spare wheel/tire. Maybe a gun too when things don't work out no matter what and you decide to aerate the trailer or tools, or engine that won't start, or spiral wheel that isn't your gig afterall, or anything you can thinbk off to get the frustrations out. opps wife showed up, goota go!

[mbcougartl]

whats4supper...Thank you for your point about Fox. I appreciate it.

[nuggethunting]

Hello mbcourgar,

When I had a bunch of dredges back in the early 90's, I used the original Gold Screw on my dredge cons. This unit worked great and I could run a 5 gallon bucket within a few hours. You could also reverse the wires on the small motor if you wanted to run a large batch of cons with Mercury.

I've seen both of the units you asked about and I think they are both decent units. Keep in mind, it's recommended to classify the material you're running down pretty small before running it in the spiral wheels.

Hope this helps a bit,

Rob Allison

[Mark Humble]

I've got the desert fox and it works well. Like whats4supper said, it takes a while to get it set up right.

What I do is to set it so there is still a small amount of black sand making it through with the gold. This way I don't need to run the cons a second time as there isn't enough gold left to bother with. I then use a pan to remove the rest of the sand from the gold. Is it worth the money? When you're faced with a 5 gal. bucket of cons after a long hard day of dredging, yes! Cool shady spot, chair, beer in one hand and a spoon in the other, priceless.

Riverman

[mbcougartl]

Hey Rob and Riverman...You explained much helpful to me. I might consider to choose a desert fox pretty soon until this forum is done. It probably saves my money to buy. I always watch every forums carefully to determine my right decision especially my club members.

[whats4supper]

there's really only slight differences. the desert fox has a vibrator and folds up into a rubbermaid box. at least that is the idea, but I never fold mine up. what I didn't like about it was these sort of chincy clamps around sprinkler pipe, that have a tendency to slip okay going one way, and not easily the other. if you go too far on the backwards angle, getting it back to a steeper angle is a pain. However, the bowl and other details of the DF is vastly ahead of the original little camel, which to me, seemed wholly snow-bird construction out of the back of an RV or some other not much room to work in or with impromptu 'shop'.

Granted, the engineering for one of these does save a lot of time, but the newer Trinity pan can get gold that the screw misses, and someone of it is pretty sizeable or of quantity. Like anything else gold related- one does one thing, another contraption does something else. I certainly can't knock the guy who got everything together to come out with the screw setup because it does work a lot better than other means. as more are made, the overall quality and ease of use gets ever better with each new model.

Now of they could make a metal detector for gold that was like some sort of magnet, that gold would cling to it... But wait, gold isn't magnetic, duh! just kidding of course. I know that. but you'd be surprised how many people don't grasp the concept of electromagnetic field projection over gold, versus thinking that a detector will project the same sideways and detect gold off to one side of the operator. If only that were the case...