Any professional prospector will tell you that proper classification of placer material is the most important single step that leads to high recovery of placer gold. You will be amazed how easy it is to recover micro-fine gold, if it has been classified to the approximate size of the gold.
This system is compact and easy to use. Just put your placer material in the top #10 pot, nest the other four posts as shown above and shake vigorously to separate the five sizes. Highest efficiency is achieved if the material is dry, but wet separation is possible by shaking the set in water.
There are five separate pots in this system; Pot #10 has a 10X10 stainless steel mesh screen and anything over 10 mesh remains in this pot. The smaller falls through to the #20 mesh pot Pot #20 has a 20X20 stainless steel mesh screen and all material -10 ~ +20 mesh remains in this pot. Pot #40 has a 40X40 stainless steel mesh screen and all material -20 ~ +40 mesh remains in this pot. Pot #60 has a 60X60 stainless steel mesh screen and all material -40 ~ +60 mesh remains in this pot. The Bottom Pot does not have a mesh screen in it. The pot retains -60 mesh material. (All pinpoint or flower gold will be found here). Always process the contents of each pot separately.
Gold will separate much faster when the lighter materials are less than five times its mass. Specific gravity differences between gold and sand are what makes gold panning machines effective. When grains of gold, black sand and brown sand are compared, it will be noted that if the weights of the grains are equal, the size is greatly different.
Likewise, if the grains are classified so that they are uniform in size, then the weights are very different. It is this size to weight ratio that makes classification important when using a panning machine or even when you are panning by hand
