Pics inside our lead sifter.

[websterz]

[websterz]

[websterz]

[websterz]

[tomme boy]

How about the rest of it?

[DeputyDog25]

Okay, call me dumb, but what is a lead sifter?

[C. Latch]

What does it do? How big is it? I can't get a feel for scale from your pics.

[websterz]

It is built from a 55 gallon steel drum. The inner baffle is made from a barrel lid that had the lip cut off so it will fit inside the barrel. There are a number of 3/4" slots in the baffle that allow material to pass through from the crusher side to the sifter side. The first stage has a hinged loading door where lead bearing dirt is loaded into the machine. The fins welded to the inside of the drum and on the baffle break up the dirt and allow it to pass through to the other end where the dirt passes through the screens leaving the lead behind. We can add several railroad spikes to the crusher side to help pulverize the dirt clods if necessary.
Clean out is done through a hinged access hatch in the end of the drum. The screens are made up of 1/4" hardware cloth with expanded metal reinforcement. The machine is powered by a 5hp air compressor motor. Reduction is accomplished with a jack shaft that converts the 3450 rpm from the motor down to about 27 rpm on the drum itself. A full load of dirt takes about four minutes to run. We power the thing up with a gasoline generator, transporting the whole setup to the berm site on a small trailer. The sifter is mounted on a frame made of 2" pipe with large steel wheels. I'll post a video of it running on site, as well as a pic of the whole rig, here in a few minutes

[websterz]

This is a pic showing the loading door open. At this time we didn't have the current motor mounted. The rest of the machine hasn't changed since this pic was taken.

[websterz]

Click above to see a short video of the machine running on site. Pardon the loud generator, we hadn't moved it away from the sifter yet. A hundred foot extension cord puts the genny at a nice quiet distance.

[tomme boy]

Heck yah! Looks good to me. Having to open it up and clean it out looks like the worst part of it.

[websterz]

Actually it's not bad. We just set a big tub under the end of the drum and open the hatch. We have a small hoe we made to rake the boolits out. It takes about a minute to empty. The big door in the pic is just for shoveling in the dirt.

[JASON4X4]

Looks good it must have taken some time to get it all cut and welded

[knobster]

Sweet! So when you going to start selling all that lead to your good buddies here on the site?

[websterz]

The actual cutting and welding only took about six hours. We engineered as we went.

[DeanWinchester]

If i had one critique, you should invest in some pillow blocks for the two ends of the shaft. Even well greased, the steel on steel you have with the U-block and shaft section aint gonna hold up long in the nasty environment its operating in.

[websterz]

Already got them ordered.

[Rfieldbuilds]

Can I ask what percentage of lead recovery is? IE weight or volume of soil and weight or volume of lead recovered per load
Or how about lead weight recovered per load?

[websterz]

Right now we are working our way up the berm to the height of the old target frames where we believe there will be the highest lead concentrations. On our last trip we ran 9 wheelbarrow loads of dirt through the rig and came home with a raw scrap weight of 195 pounds. Out of that raw weight we should realize about 150 pounds of ingots. Once we start working the richer soil our recovery rate should increase dramatically. The old berm has seen at least 40 years of heavy use and has never been mined.

[websterz]

Sweet! So when you going to start selling all that lead to your good buddies here on the site?

Check back with me in two or three years when we're done recovering it all. :^)