Gold Well Vortex Sluice

The Gold Well has no matting. As you run material it scrubs the mud and clay out. It takes 5 seconds to rinse it out and you have clean cons. It's not a mud collector like other units. Right now I'm running unscreened material and the unit catches nuggets to dust gold. All of it! I'm running a production line. One guy running the Gold Well. One pricking out nuggets and one panning fines. I've not used the gold hog. A friend has a gold cube. I don't like it. It's a mud collector. My friend also has the gold well and he has recovered gold the cube missed.
 

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afreakofnature said:
Hey Sgtda,

How far down does the gold get on that sluice. I contacted GW and inquired about buying a plate to add to my current setup. Just was wondering if most is caught in the upper part for a days digging. I guess I should ask how many wells down the sluice.
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No what I meant to ask was, in the length of the sluice, does most of the gold stay near the top (like in the first few riffles on a normal sluice) or does it distribute the whole length?
 

Considering how absurdly expensive the gold well is for what it does, I think it odd that a promoter of it would trash talk another useful tool...especially one as popular and as modern science based as the Gold Cube! I say save your $$$ and get a Bazooka which will do just as well as the gold well, maybe better (but let's avoid that argument!).
 

KevinInColorado said:
Considering how absurdly expensive the gold well is for what it does, I think it odd that a promoter of it would trash talk another useful tool...especially one as popular and as modern science based as the Gold Cube! I say save your $$$ and get a Bazooka which will do just as well as the gold well, maybe better (but let's avoid that argument!).
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Last I looked a gold buddy runs $300+, processes less material for an equivalent width per given period of time, loses more gold and leaves you with more cons to clean up at the end of the day. Gold buddy is not made of aircraft aluminum and stainless either, and isn't a machined product. And a 6x36 Gold Well weighs 8.4 pounds, you don't need carpet or matting and cleanout is 15 seconds or so once you do it a few times.

Dakota Fred and his crew have a gold cube ... and a 12" Gold Well now ...
 

afreakofnature said:
No what I meant to ask was, in the length of the sluice, does most of the gold stay near the top (like in the first few riffles on a normal sluice) or does it distribute the whole length?
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Most of the gold is caught in the first foot (92% according to one of person who broke down the capture of gold in a 6 x 36" Gold Well). He broke it down row by row of the sluice. The spirals caught 62% of the gold and all the gold was captured in the first 1 foot 4" of the sluice of a 3 foot sluice (2 feet of vortex plates). NO gold was found in the last 2/3 foot of the sluice after processing 16 gallons of heavy concentrates.

The sluice works with unclassified material as well as classified.
 

LP13 said:
Most of the gold is caught in the first foot (92% according to one of person who broke down the capture of gold in a 6 x 36" Gold Well). He broke it down row by row of the sluice. The spirals caught 62% of the gold and all the gold was captured in the first 1 foot 4" of the sluice of a 3 foot sluice (2 feet of vortex plates). NO gold was found in the last 2/3 foot of the sluice after processing 16 gallons of heavy concentrates. The sluice works with unclassified material as well as classified.
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Thank you
 

Did Dakota Fred buy his or did he get a free one?
 

I wasn't at that show in Mesa when he got it. A bunch of sluices were sold there so I am not sure. The booth was run by a friend of his who is also a dealer for us. They had dirt that had already been processed on the Gold Rush show from all 3 seasons there, and they ran it as a demo. As I hear it, he was a bit shocked by how much gold was missed by his operation and the cube wasn't working well for them, so he (or his son, not clear on this), wanted it, so they got one.

Since it was my dealer who had the booth and is also a personal friend of theirs, that sold/gave it away, I am not really sure if he bought it or not. Regardless, I think it's good they have one, and maybe we can all see how it does for them on the Gold Rush show in a later episode? I'm pretty sure how it will work because we have hundreds now in the field in operation and they are performing as expected.
 

KevinInColorado said:
Considering how absurdly expensive the gold well is for what it does, I think it odd that a promoter of it would trash talk another useful tool...especially one as popular and as modern science based as the Gold Cube! I say save your $$$ and get a Bazooka which will do just as well as the gold well, maybe better (but let's avoid that argument!).
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I still want to try out the gold well sluice regardless of the unsavory sales tactics. And I'm hoping the prices will come down to a reasonable level at some point or else a less expensive version that isn't machined or made out of aircraft aluminum and stainless steel so I can afford to own one.

At my age I really don't need one to last a hundred years.
tongue3.gif


GG~
 

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Don't look now but Kevin In Colorado who was trash talking the Gold Well is not affiliated in any way with HM Research. No one here except myself is connected to the company. SGTFDA was treasurer of GPAP Phoenix and isn't a dealer of the Gold Well, though he is a respected customer.

I brought up the Gold Buddy in response to demonstrate that $429 for a 6 x 36" sluice is not so far out of line with current prices for sluices, especially considering the increase in performance and reduced quantity of concentrates. I wasn't trash talking Gold Buddy. They make the product that they want to make, like I do.

Dunno why the "cheap" and "plastic" thing keeps raising it's head. I make the sluice from metals that MINERS get out of the ground. Last I looked ABS and other plastics aren't mined. Oil and plastic companies aren't my customers. Miners are. They dig metal out of the ground. Metal works good for my sluice and my customers like it.

I am not anticipating dropping the price a whole lot (though I just did lower prices some a month ago), as I would prefer to add features to my sluice with even better quality rather than reduce the quality and make it 'cheap'. I'm now adding an 'unbreakable' bubble level due to a suggestion from one customer and will soon be replacing the quick release pin pull rings with titanium rings that won't deform if pulled on too hard. Might even build in a small drawer under it that you can put your fishing kit or a survival kit in! :laughing7: That's the way I'm headed, better, not cheaper.
 

I suppose I'll just have to get by using my cheap homemade aluminum sluices and plastic gold pans, at least until I hit the motherlode or else the lottery.

Thanks for the enlightenment.
And although I may not be in the gold well league, I do applaud your commitment toward quality in both materials and workmanship
icon_thumleft.gif


GG~
 

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For all you inventor/innovator types G/G, Astro etc: Last year I made a plywood knock off of the Gold Well. It cost me nothing but a scrap piece of cabinet grade plywood and the use of 2 of my Forstner bits. It's 11"X 36". The thing works! I work the Snake River which has talcum powder sized gold. I don't classify and I never found anything in my tailings. It is every bit as fast as a BGT. His sales technique not withstanding, The guy is on to something. As soon as I become more savvy with my cameraphone I'll attempt to post some pictures.
 

rodoconnor said:
For all you inventor/innovator types G/G, Astro etc: Last year. I made a plywood knock off of the Gold Well. It cost me nothing but a scrap piece of cabinet grade plywood and the use of 2 of my Forstner bits. It's 11"X 36". The thing works! I work the Snake River which has talcum powder sized gold. I don't classify and I never found anything in my tailings. It is every bit as fast as a BGT. His sales technique not withstanding, The guy is on to something. As soon as I become more savvy with my cameraphone I'll attempt to post some pictures.
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I've never questioned the ability of the gold well to catch gold. I believe that it works and works great!

I also made something similar out of wood several years ago, random sized holes/pockets in a staggered pattern.
It worked just fine while it lasted, was going to make another out of abs but never got around to it.

GG~
 

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rodoconnor said:
For all you inventor/innovator types G/G, Astro etc: Last year I made a plywood knock off of the Gold Well. It cost me nothing but a scrap piece of cabinet grade plywood and the use of 2 of my Forstner bits. It's 11"X 36". The thing works! I work the Snake River which has talcum powder sized gold. I don't classify and I never found anything in my tailings. It is every bit as fast as a BGT. His sales technique not withstanding, The guy is on to something. As soon as I become more savvy with my cameraphone I'll attempt to post some pictures.
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Very cool!

I think manufacturers need to be very careful to respect each other and to avoid comparisons...leave that to the customers and you'll be much better off. Really, let's chill out here and respect each other's pov.
 

Goodyguy said:
I've never questioned the ability of the gold well to catch gold. I believe that it works and works great!

I also made something similar out of wood several years ago, random sized holes/pockets in a staggered pattern.
It worked just fine while it lasted, was going to make another out of abs but never got around to it.

GG~
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After inventing the Gold Well, I talked to a friend who knows a lot about mining history, and he told me that the chinese used to make a device called a riffle board which was full of holes. They too worked great. The drawback was that once the pockets filled up with material, there was very little exchange in the pockets and had to be emptied, causing a lot of tailings per volume of material processed. So the drawback was all the extra work at the end of the day going through the cons. The Gold Well is designed not to have that issue which is why it's unique.
There is a guy in Montana I talk to regularly, who invented some time after I invented the Gold Well a similar device (well not too similar really), but it uses a vortex principle and is made out of plastic (hey that's where you guys can get your plastic cheap vortex sluice from! I think he sells them for $60 or $80!) Drawback to it in my opinion is the large quantity of cons developed that need to be processed at the end of the day. Other than that I think it probably works alright. Pretty nice guy too, a lot nicer than me. :laughing7: It's Khrysos - God of Gold - I think you can look it up on YouTube. Like me he's a small guy. He intends to put the big guys out of business though, where I am happy just creating the best darn sluice there is.

The Gold Well is the best invention in mining since the 1940's when the hungarian riffle was invented (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!), inexpensive enough that most can afford it, with efficiency high enough that it will pay for itself if it's used seriously more than a few times in a year. That's value.

Doesn't surprise me that someone copied my Gold Well design. Unless a CNC was used and proportions kept the same as a Gold Well however it will never work quite as good as a true Gold Well. That little spiral ramp and distances between rows and pockets isn't accidental. It's those small things that make a big difference. Probably won't be long until other manufacturers copy it too, as well as the chinese. A wood sluice, plastic or even a stainless steel sluice like mine would be missing the molecular attraction between the aluminum oxide molecule and gold for ultra fine gold collection. (Hint). He might be able to oil it though since it's wood. That might make up for the microscopic gold losses he's not aware of. And that microscopic gold does make a difference too. I get around 5 grams (4.86 grams last run) of microscopic gold per 20 buckets processed in my test unit that I demo the Gold Well with at the store. Amounts to double or triple the amount of visible gold found in the material.

(Anyone ever notice that a steel spatula sticks on an aluminum frying pan more than a stainless pan? It's not due to softness of aluminum as the coating of aluminum oxide on the pan is 8 hardness where the stainless is 6. This sticking is caused by the fact that aluminum wants to bond to other metals and when microscopic gold touches it, that force becomes far larger than the force on it from flowing water (which is very small due to boundary layer effects at the surface), capturing microscopic gold only visible under a scope! I retrieve it with aqua regia.

Currently I am using my sluice to capture gold from a 6oz per ton hard rock mine I am in the process of setting up. Got a new vein of around 9 oz. per ton I found just the other day on one of the 3 new adjacent claims. Pretty soon I may spend my time in a mine and make less sluices ;) More profitable and I don't have to deal with being bashed by anything other than a rock falling on my head if I am stupid enough not to shore up the roof!

I have other even better technologies for getting gold that are nearly finished, but I am going to wait and see what happens with the Gold Well to decide whether I make it available to the public through my company or keep it solely for my own uses. There is a much faster and simple, easier way to get placer gold from dirt or crushed ore than a pan or a sluice. But I will keep that under my hat for now.
 

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Personally, if a product is great and affordable it will sell itself, or the customers will sell it for you. The price of the product and constant touting of its ability and downplaying of the competition through comparisons frankly, sounds cheep. Maybe you are just passionately defending and promoting your product but, to me and others it comes across badly. Jmo take it or leave it along with some advise. Any other lengthy answer to criticism will probably result in more of the same opinion.
 

Tastes Great!
Less Filling!
Let's get along boyo's, it's all about the gold! Anyone in Denver operate a Gold Well? I'd like to see it in action! :)
Love,

Prospector70
 

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