I rarely filter powders or precipitants, although I often filter the solutions above them.
Decanting (or siphoning) is a great tool; the powders can be pre-washed in the same vessel and settled and decanted again, or dissolved and precipitated again...
After settling well, I will siphon off the liquid with the tool shown below, removing liquid close to the powders, but leaving enough liquid that I do not disturb the settled powder, then tilt the vessel slightly, and carefully as not to disturb the powders, but to get the liquid pooled to a higher level above the powders on one side of the vessel, and get the last few inches and drops of liquid from above the powders with the pipette.
If rinsing or diluting, let the powders settle well again before decanting the solution (or siphon again).
The less you transfer powders or material from vessel to vessel the less you will take chances of lose, many times most of a process or even several processes can be done without transferring the values, doing most of the procedures in a one pot reaction.
Sometimes filtering or transferring is necessary. a water wash bottle or spray bottle comes in handy here.
Filters often can let fine unwanted material pass through a filter, or it can also trap values in the filter, sometime filtering is just a necessity, for this reason save those filters that do contain value.
After refining twice and pre-washing the powders I will normally transfer the gold powders to a small beaker (usually 50ml) using a wash bottle, this small beaker is used to do the gold washes as suggested by Harold in the thread getting your gold pure and shiny in the help needed section, (decanting with the pipette as described above is how I remove the wash solutions), I use the small beaker for washing and rinsing and drying in, I use a small electric hot plate (coffee mug warmer) to slowly dry the powders, with a small watch glass cover to keep dust and dirt out during washing, A piece of paper towel serves as a cover in the drying process, keeping a watch on the drying process, just before the powders are completely dry, I will pick up the beaker and bang its bottom against the heel of my free hand, when the powders are almost, but not completely dry this will knock the powders together in one lump, continuing this as the powders dry you can form balls of gold powders from the lump, these balls rolling around in the beaker will also collect other loose powder of gold into these brown balls, helping to collect the gold together, cleaning the small beaker of gold powder that would otherwise stick to the glass, after dried these balls of gold are also easier to transfer to a melting Dish, and are easier to melt, less likely to blow gold out of the dish with the torch, than which can happen when trying to melt the fine loose gold powders.
I will also use separate tools to siphon the liquids (clean designated tools for the final procedures) so as not to add contaminate to the final washing procedures.
In your reading of Hokes you will get a better understanding , and reading Harold's posts, you can learn many of the tricks of the trade and more.
Edit to correct spelling of the word siphon.
Thanks Dave for helping me out with my spelling problem.
(note: the filtering of the solution should have been done before the gold was precipitated).