How often?

[opalboy]

I’ve got gold hog mats on my gold fox trommel, I’ve been cleaning them out about every hour, I’ve found nothing in the tailings.
How often do you clean out your sluice?

 

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[russau]

For me , cleanups vary from how much time and material you suck into the sluice and if you HOG the material and ending up blowing out your gold to how many operators (different operating work methods) using the equipment. Plus if you start and stop the engine often and DONT throttle the engine down on stopping OR don't throttle the engine up SLOWLY and EVENLY , you'll end up blowing the fine gold out the back end! When you start up the pump and the water is running down the sluice , it causes the gold / material to move down the sluice , and if done often or frequently you'll end up losing your gold ! I KNOW CAUSE IT HAPPENED TO ME < AND I LEARNED THE HARD WAY !!!

 

[Johnnybravo300]

Once at the end unless i want to check whats in there for some reason.
Or if i see gold overflowing the riffles i would but never had that happen yet haha.

 

[delnorter]

What russau says. No surges in the flow, I know well.
Mike

 

[arizau]

I’ve got gold hog mats on my gold fox trommel, I’ve been cleaning them out about every hour, I’ve found nothing in the tailings.
How often do you clean out your sluice?

Just a couple of observations. Every time you stop to clean up you are decreasing your daily throughput. More throughput equates to more potential gold recovery.
Numerous cleanouts multiplies the amount of concentrate that you have to process for final gold recovery....in essence this equates to a diluted concentrate and more time spent with it.
I haven't read much about goldhog mats lately but I don't recall Doc ever recommending numerous cleanups. All that said, it makes sense to me to check tails occasionally while sluicing. If you are losing gold then your mats may be loading up and an angle or flow adjustment may solve the problem.

Good luck

 

[opalboy]

Thanks for the input guys! Sometimes I’m okay with extra cons, gives me something to do until the next time! I’m going out today alone so i will see how it goes at a new spot.

 

[russau]

opalboy Good luck on your adventure !

 

[Reed Lukens]

The mat is so easy to pull & clean out, that I throw it in a bucket every time I shut down. Depending on what you're using for a water source, I'll clean it into a bucket after running 5 buckets. I shut down & separate everything, keeping the gravel 1" and under for projects around the house. You don't get many cons from the gold hog mat, so at the end of the day, clean everything out, then throw your bucket of cons back through it.

I ended up going with Dream Mat in mine and Kelly has started selling them with a completely different riffle system now.
Here's a link to an article on mine -

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[Gold4Mike]

Running our Piglet highbanker with Goldhog mats, and testing frequently, we found that if it was just a short shutdown and the mats stayed wet, we had no blow out on restarting. If we took a long break and the mats dried out some, we could lose a little bit on start up, but not much. We just throw a Garrett Super Sluice pan on the end when we start back up and throw it back into the system. Otherwise we clean out when we're done, which for my wife and I was about 3 hours of constant digging. A lot of you probably can dig longer, lol, so maybe a couple cleanups? I agree with Reed though, the GH mats don't leave you with a ton of cons, so clean up when you feel you want to.

 

[russau]

Sounds like your plan works for you ! The important thing( for me ) is when stopping , slow the engine speed down slowly and when starting back up ,slowly increase the speed to help eliminate any blowout of fine gold ! It all adds up !

 

[Oregon Viking]

Running just a sluice, with gold hog mats...I clean out at the end of the day.

 

[ZombieKnot]

Running just a sluice, with gold hog mats...I clean out at the end of the day.

Do a cleanup after you shut down. CLARKSON, 1990; says every 24 hours of run with miners moss or visible gold at box end. why create more work with catching gold on start up at end of box. you really intentionally lose gold? i run big boxes in gravel pits and cleanup after shut down so i can say i never lose gold(wink, wink). clean up after any shut down. any surge loses gold. trommels surge and i wont use them.

 

[russau]

any time you start up or shut down you'll shift fine gold in your sluice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALWAYS slow down your pump SLOWLY and the same as you start up SLOWLY or you WILL shift your fine gold down the sluice!!!! JUst a word from my experience's BEFORE I learned the hard way!

 

[ZombieKnot]

secret loss indicator---polar fleece at end of box.
about a foot long under last mat.
can be pulled by loosening wedges at end and not removing riffles.
just drop in pan , swirl a bit, look for float gold.
adjust flow rate to stop.
add boil boxes at end you wont need this.

 

[Hamfist]

Where I dig, the riffles are loaded with black sand in the upper box and extension of the Piglet after 5-10 shovels, and gold still seems to find it's way into the crevices. Curiosity and fatigue usually get the best of me after an hour, so my cleanouts usually happen about that often. It works out to around 3/4 yard processed if I'm working solo and the pay pile is very close to the machine. It could probably go much longer since the riffles are never clogged with gold at that point. It's like a cup or so of cons per cleanout... no big deal.

Edit: This week I ran two yards in about 2.5 hours, only cleaning out at the end, and it seemed fine. There was 0.98 g in the mats and very little in the extension.

 

[ZombieKnot]

If you see gold within first 2 feet of riffles---DO NOT USE as a recovery indication.
Even crap boxes do this.
Look for gold at last foot of box before exit, when you see it there time to clean so your time running pay is extended. The idea is to trust your box to do work for you so you can run without worry. Bottom of box tells how FEED and FLOW are working. Why spend time cleaning when you could be loading PAY?