building an 8 high banker dredge combo

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manley

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Feb 12, 2013
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building an 8' high banker dredge combo

Im building an 8' high banker dredge combo. Im planning on doing a tutorial on here for people like me that have been searching for plans. Im pretty much basing it of the hecklar design and making it 10" wide with an over sized hopper with a 5.5 hp pump. Imhoping to get some answers from you guys as this will be my first high banker. One question i have is for my hopper what size epanded metal should i use? I want to be able to shovel with out having to classify. Ill be working in california river gravel and sand
 

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ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY AMAZINGINGLY INSANELY IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCOMPLISH IN ACCORDANCE TO ALL LAWS OF PHYSICS AS OF INFO YOU STATED . This is whats needed at 2,500 gallons a minute for a 8" anything:tongue3:
 

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Hoser john i think you read it wrong. My box will be 8' my suction hose will be 2 or 3inch i havent decided
 

Haha when he said that i was thinking dang i dont want to make niagra falls
 

First, learn the terminology. When talking about dredges the inch size ALWAYS refers to the size of the suction hose that feeds into the sluice.
 

Jason i said 8' ( meaning 8 feet) and highbanker dredge combo and 10" is the width of my box
 

I'm with Hoser, anything smaller than 8" is a waste of time :)
But with a 5.5, 12" width is a good start look at the South Yuba Mining hb
 

Reed thank you for that info. I wasnt sure if i should make it 10" or 12" because all the commercial ones i have seen are 10". Do you know what size expanded metal i should use in my hopper so that i can shovel with out having to classify?
 

manley said:
Im building an 8' high banker dredge combo. Im planning on doing a tutorial on here for people like me that have been searching for plans. Im pretty much basing it of the hecklar design and making it 10" wide with an over sized hopper with a 5.5 hp pump. Imhoping to get some answers from you guys as this will be my first high banker. One question i have is for my hopper what size epanded metal should i use? I want to be able to shovel with out having to classify. Ill be working in california river gravel and sand
Click to expand...

You have to figure what is the largest size gold in the material you are going to run and use that as your guide.

For instance if the gold is all 1/4" or less then use 1/4" expanded mesh (1/4" expanded will allow larger than 1/4" nuggets to pass through due to having a greater than 1/4" width)

If the gold is 3/8" or less then use 3/8" expanded mesh (3/8" expanded will allow larger than 3/8" nuggets to pass through due to having a greater than 3/8" width)

When running my high banker in areas where the gold is all 1/8" and smaller I put my 1/4" classifier in over the standard Keene 1/2" grizzly.

Most all highbankers come standard with 1/2" spaced rod grizzlys in the hopper.

The 8' length vs 4' length and 10" width vs 12" width would have no bearing on the grizzly size.
The riffle height and spacing along with the width and length of the sluice along with what size the material is classified to are factors that have to be taken into account when determining proper flow and sluice angle.



GG~
 

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Thank you good guy. So since im getting mostly flower gold should i leave my 1/2inch in or switch it to a smaller screen?
 

manley said:
Thank you good guy. So since im getting mostly flower gold should i leave my 1/2inch in or switch it to a smaller screen?
Click to expand...

If it's 1/2" expanded metal I would put a 1/4" hardware cloth over it and see how that works out. You can always change out to smaller than 1/4" screen if you see that it's needed.

GG~
 

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Alright thank you for clearing that up
 

Goodguy i just caight that you said something about the riffles. Thats another question i have. I was thinking a 12" box with 3/4" riffles. Would that be good?
 

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A few years ago I built a set of Clarkson riffles and have since installed them into a Keene A-52 sluice for use with my 15" trommel.

They are 1" tall and spaced 2" apart to create the perfect vortex according to the Clarkson study. I use rough top conveyer belt (Vortex mat) under them and no expanded metal.

Using those riffles the sluice must have a drop of 3" per foot to operate at maximum efficiency rather than the standard rule of 1" per foot.

One thing about using riffles that tall is the greater amount of concentrates left in the sluice at cleanup. The good part is much less lost fine and micro gold.

What you'll find in the Heckler study is an improved design of the Clarkson riffle that creates a cleaner vortex.
If you decide to use Clarkson riffles you may want to use the improved version that you can purchase from Heckler.

GG~
 

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That was perfect as i was looking at the modified clarkson riffles. Ill take a look at the heckler ones and probably go with those since they are suppose to be better. Ill probably have lots more questions my build starts tomorrow!
 

Or find someone who has the movie. Seeing the clarkston study is much better than reading that boring old school news. The grating that you see in all of the large equipment videos is what everyone has been using for years now. The more variations in the riffle system, the more gold you will be able to recover. Don't just stick with one type of riffle, that's so 20th century :)
 

Exactly I am with Reed on this. I mention that a couple times in some of my videos but you want as many ways to change up the flow and drop gold as you can. If you make every riffle the same then gold that got past one riffle has no problem getting past another. Change it up with different sizes of raised expanded,drop riffles, vortex matting, and different facing riffles. You can even have front facing riffles and they do a fine job of concentrating. A good example of changing it up is the pop and son sluice which is an excellent design for capturing a variety of sizes of gold.
 

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