Shotmaker?

[baogongmeo]

Google search for a cyclone type dust seperator. Used by saw ills and cabinet makers. Uses centrifugal action snd seight to separate different weight material quickly.

Yes, last Monday we did a kind of "Bubba" reverse version of that. One of the big problems with dust collectors is that they operate with negative pressure where we are using positive thus our "Bubba" version.

Friday we collected 16 three gallon buckets from the richest area... we have not ran them yet but it's going to be good... we both estimated 3-4 of the buckets to be 75-80lbs each, those buckets should produce around 50lbs each.

I spoke with an older gentleman that did the same thing that we are doing in the past who is still using shot that he reclaimed. He mentioned using a bubbler and water to remove the SSG. I will get more information from him.

[Cap'n Morgan]

Come to think of it; the density of shot is about 11 while that of gravel is less than 3. Perhaps dropping the shot from a fairly high place into a bucket on a windy day could separate the shot from the dirt like "wheat from the chaff"? Of course it would take some adjustment of the bucket, perhaps an inverted funnel/lid, but it should be doable, and if not, the amount of work involved is minimal.

[baogongmeo]

Cap'n, we've been running it through a wind stream (furnace blower) since day one. We use 3 screens... after it passes through the final screen it falls through the wind stream... we've started doing it 4 times and after each pass it's got fewer SSGs... more times may be what it takes but I hope to come up with something better.
Our finest screen stops #6 shot but allows #7 1/2.

Merry Christmas

[True.grit]

I would treat like processing gold concentration. Show be able to use a sluies to wash out the remaining rocks/sand. The steel shot and magnitite can be taken out with a magnet. I would think a dry washer would work well for the primary separation.

[Mr_Sheesh]

baogongmeo - that's why I suggested a gold wheel. Water moves more "stuff" than air will; Lets you just get rid of the non-lead stuff faster.

[baogongmeo]

baogongmeo - that's why I suggested a gold wheel. Water moves more "stuff" than air will; Lets you just get rid of the non-lead stuff faster.

That may work but I don't know. I've never seen one other than on television. What little I've seen is that they put 2-3 shovel fulls of dirt in at a time for (hopefully) a few grains of gold but we would be putting in an equivalent volume of shot ( 20-30 lbs) to remove maybe a couple of shot-glasses worth of non lead.

I really do appreciate all of the suggestions and ideas that everyone has offered.

[Mr_Sheesh]

Those are the hobby, baby ones, sure. They make Paul Bunyan size ones too, and you can run several in parallel, can make your own if you can get set up to cast urethane, too.

[baogongmeo]

Those are the hobby, baby ones, sure. They make Paul Bunyan size ones too, and you can run several in parallel, can make your own if you can get set up to cast urethane, too.

Well you got my curiosity up so I Googled them... looked at one that would handle 1000 lbs per hour of raw material and was slightly less than $3000 delivered and collected the gold in a cup. They are not designed for processing like we need. They discard the vast majority of the material ran through them... probably 99.9%. We need to discard a tiny amount... probably less than 1%. Our second run was 22 three gallon buckets of dirt, we ended up with 390 lbs of shot which would have filled about 2 1/2 of the buckets if we had put it into them... in all of that I doubt there's much more than a pint of the shot size gravel.

[Mr_Sheesh]

True, but changing the cup to a larger vessel and changing the angle of the wheel / the water flow as needed to suit the lead instead of gold media you are processing, should make it work well. And it's pretty much automatable, you don't need to handle things much, if you use a trickler type device to feed it new raw materials. (But then I can't really see what you're doing so I am hoping it'll suit but if it doesn't, should be able to adapt it)