A while ago I put together a clean out sluice made from 5’ of plastic gutter. I lined the gutter floor with V mat, and made a rudimentary water dam out of 3/8” plywood that’s siliconed in creating a water bath about 5” big. It’s fed by hole a gutter cap. Initially I had no idea how to set it up. It was trial and error on my part to get the thing to work. My water pump at the time was a cheap Harbor Freight 12vdc 200GPH. I installed a garden hose valve to control water flow. My first few attempt at trying to get gold with it were fails to the point I was thinking it was a waste of time. I knew there were variables I needed to deal with and learn. Sluice angle, water flow, and feed rate. I tried an extreme angle at first with to big a feed and had more gold in the tailings than what was. Rinsed out of the gutter v mats. I try ed a few more times changing the angle of the sluice, then changing water flows, and feed rates but something wasn’t right as still more gold ended up in the tailings. Jump ahead 2 months. I’ve finally dialed in using the gutter to catch gold! 11 deg angle, es water pump with speed controller, and tablespoon size feeds and the V mat doesn’t pass any gold into tailings. I ran my last weeks 6 buckets run entirely through the gutter, and whittled the 1/2 bucket of cons down to maybe 1.5 cups of cons. There was easily over 1000 pieces in the first exposure and just as much still hiding in the black sand! I tested the gutter tailings and saw no colors in the test. So I m glad I didn’t toss the whole thing back when I made it. It definitely makes cleaning up a lot nicer and a lot less panning. Picture is my gutter sluice when I first put it together and not knowing how it works. Today it’s set up works! It works.
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