Gold Well - drop riffle vortex sluice in action

[LP13]

There were a few curious about our Gold Well sluice. So here is a video on YouTube that one of my customers did. He hasn't sent me the video on the cleanout yet. Will post it when I get it.



Company is HM Research out of Wickenburg, AZ. No website yet.

That sluice is the basic sluice, highbank attachment, waterfall head, tripod support setup and other options are available. He just had it sitting on a 5 gallon water jug in the video.

 

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[Astrobouncer]

Looks great! Gotta love the fast feed rates on the drop riffles (even a hybrid drop riffle like that). Cool design too. I can see some great active exchange going on there.

 

[LP13]

Here is another video. In this one, Marty Hagan, owner of the company is running some material for a man who wanted to see how the sluice worked, and brought us a sample of dirt with a small amount of gold in it.

 

[LP13]

We were working with a garden hose instead of the pump attached. The volume of water was at the lower limit of what should be supplied.

 

[uglymailman]

Interesting first vid. Do you have one that show's the cleanup?

 

[LP13]

The man who took the first video hasn't sent me a cleanup video of it yet. If and when I get it I will post it. These are videos other people have done. I will do a good and complete video myself soon.

 

[russau]

well it looks like someone had their thinking cap on! nice little unit!

 

[LP13]

thanks. there are a few more improvements to be added. they should be finished in a week or less. doesn't change the operation of the sluice, just the convenience and quality, etc.

 

[LP13]

Here's a sneak peek at our 6 inch sluice with the pump water header attached. Nicely cleans up the hose messes. (The bar running up the side of the sluice is a pipe connecting the water head to the hose that goes in the recirc tub.)

 

[LP13]

New video of the Gold Well sluice in action.

 

[Oakview2]

I am curious as to why they didn't show the cleaned gold on the scale Wasn't that the whole point of weighing before running it. And wasn't that 2.2 grams, and not ounces? Couldn't quite make it out, but it looked like he dumped a partial one ounce file into the cap, and to my way of thinking that cannnot be 2.2 ounces. No big deal, just curious...

 

[LP13]

Well the caption says 'He meant to say 2.22 grams'. He just misspoke. Camera shy maybe

He just posted that today and hasn't posted the rest of the video yet. He wrote me and told me though he got back 2.22 grams. No surprise there to me anyhow. But I will email him and see when he's getting the cleanup and weighing video posted.

 

[Doug Watson]

Nice light blond sand with some gold. Try it with some solid black beach sand.

 

[Doug Watson]

It is very nice looking and shows quality workmanship.

 

[AZgoldhuntr]

This is way overpriced for a clean up sluice. No warranty, no support, way heavy and I was looking at other forums today and these guys treat people . Your poor demeanor towards others has definately turned myself and other club members off. Oh and 99% recovery! pfft man I want what you guys are smoking...

 

[Reed Lukens]

Well I make no apologies about the price. Small quantity production, cnc machined parts, aluminum and stainless, not some junk galvanized steel that will rust out.

A CNC makes the parts for you so you can cut the cost. I didn't look at the prices but if it really is $600+ for a 6" then you should rethink your price. Spencer has his 6" x 42" South Yuba Mining sluice for $79.00, that's what I have and I love it.
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[419GottaMinute]

Reed: darn fine looking sluice!

 

[LP13]

Yes there is another forum where a few who manufacture other products continue to provoke. Well at least that's not going on here. But it won't be long until one of them wanders this way and stirs stuff up.
And for those interested here is a report I got of some testing that was done:

GOLD-WELL TEST
Testing Completed by:
Gary Smith
The Gold Shop
8816 E. Hwy 69 Suite B
Prescott Valley Az.
928-772-4030
About me:
I have been in the Mining/Prospecting Industry for about 47 yrs both as an individual and working for various commercial mines in California and Nevada. I have participated in the construction of 4 commercial hardrock mines 2 underground and 2 open pit. I have trained in all aspects of the mining industry from locating a possible mine site to processing the Dore cones/bars. I have been employed to operate the heavy equipment to plant operator to assay office. I have dredged in Washington, Oregon and California. Drywashed in Nevada, Arizona and California. I have built almost all of my own equipment from drywashers, dredges, highbankers, jigs and river sluices. And now I own a Prospecting Supply Store. I have seen just about every type of Recovery Equipment on the market to see how it could apply to my mining adventures. I have been around the block a couple of times.
Though I fully understand the difference between Laboratory Testing and Field Testing of Equipment I have chosen to do Tests of this equipment under a Field Test precept. For the average miner/prospector it will never be how well something works under strictly controlled test environments but how will it function under actual conditions in the field, and I am not so interested in how much the unit catches but how much is lost in the run off out the end of the unit, what is lost during the process. therefore lets begin;
TEST ONE
We have set up the unit as a closed loop recerc system here in the store. The material to be used in this test is from Medford Oregon from a dredge run on the Klamath River. There was approx ¾ of a five gallon bucket. The material had already been processed through a spiral genie a few times however I still felt there was some gold in it. I had wanted to test it on some other fine gold recovery equipment so had screened it down to 20 Mesh. Having screened to 20 mesh left me with about a little over ½ of a five gallon bucket of material for testing. The only clinical aspect of this test is that the water is clean. I proceeded to run the material out of the bucket using a Promack GRG Scoop and started feeding the unit at a rate of a scoop every 5-10 seconds at this time I was not really concerned at the unit clogging up. As I feed the unit I observed that the material flowed very well down the unit and the material flowed out of the wells without any problems or clogging. After running the bucket of concentrates I cleaned the unit into a clean bucket and hand panned this material which weighed out at about 2.3 grains. I then took the runoff material and hand panned it to see if there was anything in it. Careful examination only revealed only 3 microscopic pieces only visible under a magloupe.
TEST TWO
A friend of mine had shown some interest in the Gold Well unit during one of my test runs and I had asked him to bring me in some of his concentrates to test on it. This consisted of about ¼ bucket of concentrates from Lynx Creek in Prescott Valley Az. And ran about ¼ minus material. I cleaned the system up to ensure no contamination and proceeded to run his concentrates. Again I used a GRG scoop to feed the unit at various rates to see what would happen, and the unit performed very well in cleaning itself out. We hand panned the material from the clean up of the unit and weighed out at 23.7 grains (very good for Lynx Creek). We then turned to the run off material, where we were unable to locate any indication of gold even with a magloupe.
TEST THREE
A customer came in to my store he was not very familiar with the area, he had just joined the GPAA and wanted to get some equipment. He acquired a Drywasher and some other misc items and asked directions to a GPAA claim. Galena Gulch in Dewy/Mayer Az has a GPAA claim on it and I told him how to get there but the information would cost him. I asked him to bring me a bucket of dirt from the gulch classified down to ½ inch minus. The material he brought back looked good for I had asked him to dig it from the exact layer that he would be working. Because I was board with the gold I was seeing I measured out 10 grains of various size gold from my personal stash and in a new bucket mixed the gold at different levels with the dirt he brought in for me. Again I freshened up the water, emptied and cleaned the buckets of other material that I had been playing with. As I was running this material I noted that some of the larger rocks would get stuck in the wells but I just brushed them down with my hand. It runs the ½ minus with no difficulty but had to brush some of the rocks down as we were feeding it. We cleaned out the unit and hand panned it down and recovered 11.2 grains. Again I panned out the run off and could not find any indication of gold. So up to this point the only gold that I have seen in the run off was with the material that I had screened to 20 mesh and since I was playing with the feed rate on that test that might account for it.
Now within these tests there have been other tests done with various angles and water flows with only small variations in efficiency of the unit. Needless to say to steep an angle or to much water flow and you will get loss. To shallow of an angle or to little water the unit will lose its efficiency and clog up. The type of material did not seem to matter very much to the unit, regular run material, concentrates or straight black sand. The optimum material seems to be about ¼ minus classified, but will run up to ½ minus with a small bit of assistance to keep the wells clear.
I will be conducting further tests in both the Store and out in the field with this unit. As it stands right now I will want to run this unit behind any of my standard equipments because it is Running a 99+ percent recovery and I know my other equipment does not do that.

Gary Smith
The Gold Shop

 

[Reed Lukens]

Then test it next to a Gold Cube and then price it accordingly or cheaper to take their business if it compares.

 

[LP13]

Thanks for the suggestion Reed.

I have met Mike from Gold Cube. He was here and got a look at my sluice first hand. I have a lot of respect for him and think he is a great person. It is not often that I meet someone that earns my instant respect. Mike is one such person. I have no need or desire to take his business, and wouldn't if I could. Conversely, I wish him the best and if there is something I can do to assist him somehow, I would do it. I think his device has it's place as does mine. There is no one single gold contraption that (so far) fills all roles to all people in all situations.

The price of the Gold Well is not neccessarily related to it's cost of manufacture. A business has a lot of expenses beyond the mere cost of fabrication. Financing growth is a major hurdle. What sense to come up with a better mouse trap then go belly up and not be able to deliver it to those who could use it. And since I had set my mind from the outset that this was going to be a quality device, built entirely in the USA, price became secondary. We want to put some of our neighbors where we live to work again. If we succeed we will. The Gold Well is a quality device and will continue to be improved in quality and ease of use as time goes on. This is our entry model. In several years, the Gold Well will be much more advanced and refined even than it is today ... so long as bean counters don't get control and dictate how it's built based solely on cost. Then you would see just another made in china sluice.

Although I talk like I own the company, I really do not. I am the inventor and patent holder of it. Another man owns the company HM Research, a long time personal friend of mine. HM Research manufactures and ships them, and does ongoing research into new innovations. Gold Well LLC out of Alaska markets and sells them. I assist in product design and further research, as well design custom systems for specific needs such as larger mining companies, and answer questions regarding it's design, function, use, operation and limitations.