Washing off

Definition of washing off

• Washing up – the cleaning out of the boxes, tables, blankets, etc etc, in quartz crushing, and of the puddling machines, buddles, sluices, etc, in alluvial washing. The resulting gold is got by this operation. The last process of separating gold from the associated sand, etc, by hand, after the process of separation has been carried to its utmost limit by machinery.

– The Gold Fields and Mineral Districts of Victoria, 1869