# Hydrostatic Vertical Table



## Traveller11 (Feb 2, 2011)

Does anyone recall a separator called the Hydrostatic Vertical Table? It was invented in the late 80's by Jim Humble; co-founder of Action Mining Services Ltd., then of Las Vegas, Nevada. It was discontinued, for reasons unknown, in the early 90's following the introduction of their Micron Mill Wave Tables.

This separator was a variation on (and vast improvement over) the standard cylindrical elutriation towers that were developed in the 80's. Rather than a cylindrical chamber, the HVT had a wide but thin (bare millimetres thick) flat panel that served as its elutriation chamber.

Any info on the HVT would be greatly appreciated. I have included an ad for the HVT which appeared in the October 1988 issue of Popular Mining.

Regards
Bob


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## JonSnow (Apr 12, 2011)

It was a product invented and built by another gentleman in Las Vegas. They had a parting of ways, which is why it was discontinued. The Hydrostatic Vertical Table worked great, but the feed rate was extreemly low. I would feed mine with a teaspoon. I did use them for years.


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## Traveller11 (Apr 24, 2011)

Hello JonSnow
Thank you for responding to my post. As far as I know, you are the first person I have spoken to, aside from Jim Humble in the late 80's, who has actually used this device.
Did it actually separate gold from lighter materials, as Mr. Humble claimed, and not just deliver a richer concentrate? If so, it would be very useful to me as a cleanup machine. I am endeavouring to recover -200 mesh gold and platinum from beach deposits here. The fact that it would have to be fed with a spoon does not bother me as, hopefully, my concentrates will be reduced to a small volume by that point. However, Mr. Humble did claim it was possible to scale this unit up to larger sizes.
Do you know of any of these units still in existence? If not, do you think you could recall enough of the details of ther construction to allow a person to re-create this device? I have made several requests to Action Mining Services for assistance in this matter with no results.
Once again, thank you for responding.
Best regards
Bob


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## Richard36 (Apr 24, 2011)

Hello Traveller11,

If you have never heard of a "Hydrofuge", 
you may be interested in looking up one of those, if they still exist.
They are a completely different device though.

They work on the same principle, which is that a moving flow of water at a specific rate of flow will carry away particles of a lesser specific gravity, while those of a greater specific gravity (Density/Heft) will not be washed away, thus creating a heavy mineral concentrate. The rate of flow will determine how dense the recovered particles will be.

In a sense, all recovery processes utilize that process when using water to wash away lighter material.

The device in the photo looks to have a pocket with a clear window allowing you too see the separation in action, 
with the water flowing upward over a slope. This separation is tunable by water flow.

I hope that this has been helpful.

Sincerely, Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## blueduck (Jun 12, 2011)

I offer a product for sale called the Gold Cube and for only being on the market a few months it does have good reviews including my own. We have here in North Central Idaho what is best described as 2 dimensional gold in our beach sands and it does not like laying down in a regular sluice box very well, though some will of course and it doesnt matter which brand you use, though there are few folks designing for this gold now here.

I was impressed on how much it pulled out of 3 gallons of 8 mesh classified material [that is the biggest drawback to the Gold Cube is a person has to classify it down at least to 8 mesh] if you are after the micron gold that you cant see, then you may want to classify it down to a 20 mesh or 30 mesh to keep the bigger sands from keeping the gold from laying down as fast as it should. You can test pan the concentrates off the first or top tray and move that tray to the bottom of the stack and toss your cons back in and catch them again so you dont have to deal with them in the field, at the end of the day you shouldnt have more than cup or three of concentrates and you run those through sieves and pan the individual classifications out, -50, -100, -200, -400 and you will have enough to be able to see it once it all gets together of the similar classification!

For those not familiar with the concept of the Gold Cube, the concept was invented by a fella from New Zealand about 15-18 years back and patented in France, I heard of it about 5 years ago give or take and found him on a Yahoo group and studied his drawings and made an attempt at making one from plywood [i had more wood than metal scrap laying around i could use] but i couldnt get it to work the way he said it should and was busy trying to do to many other things [including learning to refine gold here on the forum] Anyhow a couple other fellas had more time to play with it and redesigned it a little and made it work, they sent a unit to Trevor in NZ and in one day on the beach there he pulled out a little over an ounce of gold [not that everyone is gonna come that close, as i am sure he had a premium spot picked out!] with the majority laying on the first 2 inches of the first tray, about a 1/4 ounce on the second tray and just a few specks on the third tray..... ive got the pictures hidden somewhere in an email on the hard drive. It uses good old conveyor belting that in the circles of gold catching is being called "Vortex" matting, and uses a 12 volt 1100 gph pump [some folks think they need more pump , thus far with mine i have not found that to be true yet]

It is NOT the last tool anyone is ever going to purchase, but it is I believe one that in applications such as you describe will work well and recover the gold that is there. 

We currently have high water, and last month at our gold club outing one of my friends brought his Gold Cube [i had mine too but left it in the truck] and we set it up after getting only 3 buckets of sands, the water was raising about 2 feet an hour and run us off the beach, but in those 3 buckets he pulled out enough gold to make a lot of folks happy and it was dug in a not the best of places on that beach due to the high water already keeping us out of the better places. Last weekend we had a big enough rain that the level rose another 3.5 feet [about a meter] and flooded a few lower places and is still a threat to some if we get some more rain.... ALL my favorite beaches are under 6 feet of water or more and have been for over a month, and we still have unseasonable snow up high! or i would be able to tell ya just how much and what type of sands i had to run to recover a decent amount of gold here.

My wife and I are in the process of combining our 2 websites but i still have Mikes video up from last year on what is left on My photo page on our original website. So Ralph when ya asked on Facebook what i was up to......

Anyhow if ya got some questions formulating in yer brain and want to know more about this Gold Cube, ask here [it notifies me when there is a reply or contact me on my webpage if i have not replied in a day or two here, then my wife will remind me some one hollered on email at me!

thanks for being patient with me, I would love to sell everyone i talk to some equipment of some type, but at the same time i want folks to know either the equipment works good for me or i have problems with it, the Gold Cube works well. And at the same time i dont want folks to think all i do is push folks to purchase something from me i have for sale cause i posted about it...... 

William
Kamiah Idaho
Digg It Prospecting Supply, LLC


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## Palladium (Jun 12, 2011)

How you find time between cutting grass and those little league games. lol Good to hear things are going your way Duck. 8)


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