How to Clean Highbanker Concentrates

Remove all large particles and nuggets from the concentrates. Use your fingers or a pair of tweezers to remove larger nuggets and "pickers" spotted during the removal of the concentrates from the highbanker.

Place a small amount of concentrates in a black gold-panning pan and rinse the materials to "slough off" the less dense material to expose the gold. In a flat dish of water, immerse the gold pan and concentrates. Lift the pan out of the water, and vibrate the dish to allow the material to suspend in the water. The gold settles to the bottom of the pan during the suspension. Tip the pan to allow some water and lighter materials to spill out of, or "slough off," the edge of the pan into the dish. Repeat until all lighter materials are removed and only the gold remains. If mistakes are made, collect the material from the dish and repeat.

Place the concentrates in a fluid suspension bed. Fluid suspension devices use a flow of water to agitate large volumes of concentrates in a large tube. The dense gold settles to the bottom while the less dense materials remains suspended in the water and flows out of the suspension bed. Fluid suspension beds can process large volumes of concentrates in a small amount of time.

Pass the concentrates through a fine gold recovery sluice box. These small sluice boxes are usually constructed of a half pipe lined with black-colored recovery ribbing. Angle the pipe and allow a constant flow of water to pass down the ribbing. Add the concentrates slowly to the stream of water. The concentrates wash down the pipe suspended in the turbulent water as it passes over the small ribbing. Fine gold is trapped behind the ribbing and is readily visible against the black color.

Wet the gold and suck the gold into a gold recovery bottle. Gold recovery bottles have a tube that extends from the nozzle into the bottle. As gold is sucked up into the bottle with the water, the gold settles toward the lid of the bottle but cannot be expelled because the tube is in the way. Empty the water from the bottle and repeat as necessary.