Gold Cube Test

Hey Gold Adventurers...

I picked up a good used Gold Cube, 3-stack deluxe with 12-volt deep cycle battery about August 2012.  First thing I wanted to do was "play with it"...........learn how to operate it...

So, I set it up in my garage, ran some of my "old hand panned out" black sand cons...

All set up, leveled up, a little JetDry in the water, running:



A sample of previously panned cons to run, check for any lost gold:



The cons from both trays of the Cube, ready to finish pan out:



Gold that I recovered here.  Shows you that even a good panner can & will lose SOME gold hand panning:




Learning curve experience here....  Best to place your bilge pump inside a bowl in your water tub to help prevent black sand and debris from getting sucked up:



Now, here's the first REAL test a few days later with some cons I sluiced up at Cache Creek.  Here's the Cube processing my real cons:



Upper and lower trays cleaned up separately, to be panned out separately.  Less than 1 cup of magnetite/gold per tray:



What was in the lower tray:



What was in the upper tray:



So, overall..............EXTREMELY happy just how fast & efficient the Cube is at running heavy black sand cons and how WELL it get the gold.  Probably 98% caught in the top tray and 2% in the lower tray. LOVE my Cube.  

Later.................I bought one of the "Topper" units (now called the Gold Banker unit) to essentially turn my Cube into a on-stream production tool and not so much as a cleanup device.  The Topper essentially turns the Cube into a small high banker.....lets me work smarter, faster, wash WAY more material in a day without stooping, bending over as much or having to classify material in buckets, as I "classify" using the Topper unit.  I bought the bigger 2,000 GPH 12-volt bilge pump and 50 feet of 1 1/8th inch black plastic hosing to let me work hard on the river/creek/stream, or even way off of them.  I'd shovel up 2 loads of "dirt" wash/wash/wash, rake off the rocks.........repeat:

Some Ark Cubed fine flood gold:




One issue was the Topper screen filling up with small rocks over time as you washed the material.  I just removed, turned upside down, rubbed them with a river rock to clean probably 95% of the holes out in a jiffy:




A few more pics of me Cubing, even in the winter:








So, in summary:  LOVE MY CUBE!  One of the best fine gold recovery & processing tools on the market.  Idiot proof...     Sure the Cube & topper unit aren't "cheap", but I can tell you, for me, they've paid for themselves many times over.....plus saved my back too!

Randy  C-17A  

Randy I totally agree with your statement about the Gold Cube and its abilty to strip fine gold out of the cons. I also really enjoy using it also!