home made cleanup/concentrate sluice questions

L

Lycof

Full Member
Jul 29, 2017
108
85
Western Washington
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Prospecting
I made a 10" by 4' sluice with a feed area that looks very similar to the multisluice. I currently have miners moss in the "crash" area, then about 10 inches of wannabe "V" matting, 12" of carpeting, then about 16" of magnetic material like on the cleangold. I have 2 feet of deep V matting on the way to replace the crappy V and carpet. All run on an 1100 GPH bilge.

Yes, I know, Ewww particle board, I sealed every last damned inch of it. Silicone in the seams and on cut edges, epoxy to seal the seams between the pre-applied glue paper and the plastic edges. It was a PITA, but it is 100% water proof.

- I have tried everywhere from 10-15 Degrees pitch, not getting good exchange
- water is coming in on the sides about a half inch for the last 4 inches of the sluice

Am I correct that a 2000 GPH pump solve this? going from 100 to 200 Gallons per inch?

Also, am I correct in that the deep V matting will be better for the super fine gold that is in SW Washington?

Thanks in Advance!
 

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I wouldnt throw out the carpet just yet the more different styles of riffles the better. Lightweight expanded such as the plaster lath you get at the hardware store on top of the V rib and carpet works well. My cleanup sluice is 6" by 6' and used to run off of a 1100 gph bilge pump, it worked but I replaced it with a washing machine pump run off an industrial sewing machine motor, bigger is better as too much flow can be dialed back with a valve, not enough flow is just a pain to monkey around. I would think 1100 is enough for a 4" sluice, but the bilge pump might not actually put out 1100, the quality control on bilge pumps is hit or miss to say the least which astonishes me considering their original intended purpose lol.
 

Some Photos
0729171143 (1).jpg
Header Box, I was wrong, I didn't seal the baffle OOPS
0729171143a.jpg
"Crash Zone" with crappy Home Depot carpet miners moss
0729171143b.jpg
Full Setup
0729171143c.jpg
Carpeting
0729171143d.jpg
Magnetic Black Sand Riffles like the "Clean Gold" Sluice
0729171144.jpg
Left is crappy matting, right is better V matting, showed up today.

I realized this morning that the benchtop power supply I was running the pump at yesterday will only give the pump 9 volts for some damned reason. Cheap Chinese crap is my guess. I will be getting a true 12 volt supply today that should make this thing run like a champ. I ran it over voltage at 20 volts after I installed the new V matting and it was rocking and rolling so much that it blew the mats out completely at a 10 degree pitch.
 

I made a 5"x24" sluice lined with 4" of rubber slick plate and vortex matting running an 1100gph pump dialed down to about 500gph. When spoon fed it gets about a 98% recovery of the finest of fine gold on the 1st pass. Since my main sluices use Gold Hog mats I only have a cup or 2 of cons to run. It takes about 10-15 minutes to take it down to a spoonfull or 2 to finish panning.
DSCF0008.JPG
 

mike(swWash) said:
I made a 5"x24" sluice lined with 4" of rubber slick plate and vortex matting running an 1100gph pump dialed down to about 500gph. When spoon fed it gets about a 98% recovery of the finest of fine gold on the 1st pass. Since my main sluices use Gold Hog mats I only have a cup or 2 of cons to run. It takes about 10-15 minutes to take it down to a spoonfull or 2 to finish panning.
View attachment 1477428
Click to expand...

Mike, you sound like Doc :)
I will have a Multi and Raptor 2.0 by next season
 

I made a Vid of the sluice. was made with a cell phone, so the quality is guaranteed to suck.



1314584624275.jpg
This is the ONLY piece I recovered from like 8 gallons of Moclips beach sand. Was only about a .25 in layer of black approximately 14 inches down, so on spec from a 2 foot by 2 foot area .25 inches deep isn't bad :)
 

I think I am going to lower the source to about 6 degrees and rerun it all. The lack of heavies in the v mat makes me think I blew out some gold.
 

Sockeye1730 said:
Very interesting. I was always wondering if that's all the cleangold sluice was.
Click to expand...

yup, if anyone gets any, be sure to get one of the magnetic field viewing sheets so that you can orient the stripes in the right direction. The sign material is only magnetic on the back side unfortunately, mine is white on the front, but the front has no field, so i have to use the black side of the magnet.

61w1on6TV0L._SL1200_.jpg
 

10 inches is pretty wide for a clean up sluice. So With 1100 gpm your going to have shallow water. That is a lot of drop for a clean up sluice running material that is classified.

Vmat is a good choice you may want to glue and seal it in. spray the inside of your Box with truck bed liner if you want to seal it and give it some texture.Keep in mind that moss and carpet let a certain amount of water through and around it. It really can affect the flow dynamic in your sluice run. In my opinion a solid impervious bottom is best for a sluice designed for "clean Up" .

Low profile recovery with smooth flow. With the flattest pitch you can get that lets the gangue material move. Your not relying on exchange for concentration. Your relying on it to keep riffles, drops, grooves or what ever clear of light material that doesn't allow fine flighty gold to settle out right away. Build ups of material in a clean up sluice should not happen. It is an indicator of too little flow for the size of material ran. When running cons the answer shouldn't be changing sluice pitch.

Get the gold to the bottom of the run before it hits catches. Don't create turbulence. Big bumps or elevation changes make turbulence. Go smooth as you can.

Classify.

I don't know what you did to get what I see in your bucket.

Pan 20 to 30 mesh plus.

run batches of - 20/30 to 50 mesh

-50 to 70

-70 to 100

-100

the best thing to do is set the pitch of the sluice. Leave it there.

Start with the finest material. After each batch. You just turn up the water flow to the volume and speed you need to run the next batch of coarser concentrates.

I would consider a box 8" wide, for that size pump.

Use a battery charger and run it to a battery with leads from your pump to the leads from the charger to the battery. Disconnect from the positive lead for on of. That will keep your voltage even and prevent surges or loss of flow that you will get if you just run a battery or charger alone.

Cool set up just tune it in good luck, happy hunting.
 

Lycof said:
yup, if anyone gets any, be sure to get one of the magnetic field viewing sheets so that you can orient the stripes in the right direction. The sign material is only magnetic on the back side unfortunately, mine is white on the front, but the front has no field, so i have to use the black side of the magnet.

View attachment 1477590
Click to expand...

:icon_thumleft:

cleangold sluices are pretty spendy, always wondered about a diy, thats so simple its obscene, I'll never look at that guy at the gold shows the same again lol.
 

An 8 inch sluice would be 137 Gallons per inch. My 10 inch runs at 110 per inch. That's 20% less Gallons per inch. How would i go about compensating for that with the equipment that I have? I reran all of my material at 5.5 Degrees Pitch last night and it still blew everything out. I am feeding at a rate I believe to be correct, 1 scoop takes about 15 seconds to run. Too fast? too slow?

I have now done 15, 12, 10 and finally 5.5 Degrees maybe 4 degrees will be the ticket? it seems like I am so close.
 

N-Lionberger said:
:icon_thumleft:

cleangold sluices are pretty spendy, always wondered about a DIY, that's so simple its obscene, I'll never look at that guy at the gold shows the same again lol.
Click to expand...

There are a lot of products on the market that, if someone takes the time, are very cheap and relatively easy to duplicate. I build my own tower trickle filters for my fish thanks. It costs me about 45 dollars including the pump and filter material. If you purchase a filter of the same fashion from a business it costs about 300 dollars without the pump and filter material.
 

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I set the sluice to 3 Degrees and reran all of the material. Somehow it worked! Ended up with a couple hundred colors that I am going to have to put under the microscope to make sure that they are what i hope they are.

This is all just a learning process for me. Makes it more fun to start out this way, rather than just going out and throwing a bunch of money at some equipment and not even appreciating what has gone into making it do what it does. Deeper understanding of the craft blah blah blah, you get it :)

Thank you everyone for all of the awesome advice!

mike(swWash) said:
After watching the video I feel embarrassed, for speed control I went low tech and cheep. I use a 12vt, 30 amp led voltage controller I bought on Ebay. Got 2 from China in 7 days for $20. www.ebay.com/itm/LED-Dimmer-Adjustable-Brightness-Lamp-Strip-Driver-Power-Metal-DC12-24V-30A-360W-/112341829417?epid=869228058&hash=item1a28184729:g:NfQAAOSw4A5Yz873
Click to expand...


I didn't buy it for that :) I had it from a previous project and re-purposed it. I would actually rather have that little dimmer knob that you are using.
 

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please share how your coming up with your "gallons per inch" numbers
 

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