Tried wet screening my dirt sift and saved 3 hours of sorting

I've been digging test pits on a site near Rome, Georgia for about 6 months. Dry sifting was taking forever because the clay clumps wouldn't break up. Last week I just hosed the dirt through a 1/4 inch screen before sorting and it cut my processing time by almost half. Has anyone else tried wet screening on heavy clay soil?

3 comments

3 Comments

parker_palmer4423d ago

Whoa, hold on. That sounds like a huge pain in the ass to me. You're basically making mud and then sorting it, which means you get water in your gear, you have to deal with runoff, and everything takes forever to dry out. For clay, yeah, it's tough dry, but wet clay turns into a sticky mess that clogs your screen way faster than dry dust. I'd rather just break the clumps with a hammer or a trowel before sifting. Plus, you're washing away any fine dirt or small artifacts that might be in there with the water. I think you traded one problem for another, and now you're just fighting wet sludge instead of dry dust.

the_diana23d ago

Read an article about wet screening for gold prospecting that mentioned using a spray nozzle to keep the screen clear instead of dunking the whole thing. The guy said it works way better for clay because the water breaks it down without turning everything into a paste. He was using a setup where the screen was angled so the runoff just went straight into a bucket. That way you don't get water all over your gear and the fine stuff settles out. Might be worth looking up before writing the whole method off.

karen_sanchez4923d ago

A buddy of mine tried this same thing out near Cartersville and it was a total disaster for him. He ended up with a muddy slurry that clogged his screen so bad he spent more time cleaning it than actually sorting. His whole setup got caked in mud and he said it took like two days for everything to dry out enough to even see what he had.