MY HOME MADE SLUICE BOX.

G

Golden-1

Jr. Member
Sep 8, 2013
53
10
Bieber Ca
Detector(s) used
my eyes work just fine.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
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this is my home made sluice box made out of a plastic rain gutter, expanded metal, some regular carpet with ridge pattern, a nugget catcher made out of the things off of a cooler (not sure what they are called), under that there is some rubber with riffles, and i have main riffles made out of thin aluminum. i have a auto parts washer that i prop it up in and it makes the perfect wash plant NO MESS!8-) so far i have found a few nice flakes and i catch a lot of black sand but i feel i need improvements any ideas or complements would be great. Really need improvement ideas
 

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First WELCOME!! Second, Way to go! This is very inventive, It reminds me of my cleanup sluice. Way to use the scraps you had laying around to get going. The only recommendation I would have is that if you want to get more gold you HAVE to process more dirt which means you are going to have to go bigger and better. We are finally at a point where we can process up to five tons of dirt per day. All by hand. Hopefully next year I will have a trommel built and we can double or triple that number. We have come a long way from a simple sluice design that transformed into a highbanker. Keep up the good work and show us a few picks of those flakes. Here is my build and mining playlist from this year. The last video shows the gold from this season.

Gold sluicebox progression - YouTube

 

wow thanks for the encouraging words and improvement idea. i have not found great pay dirt yet my flakes are super small but i am going to a place that i feel has great gold and i will def post pics of my finds and a video of my sluice doing its thing. thanks again :thumbsup:
 

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here are my itty bitty flakes i found...but gold is gold lol i found this in a river that everyone though was stupid to prospect in. i have found more black sand than gold but my time will come soon i feel i will have at least 1oz :)
 

Sluice looks good.

You need the water flowing at a much higher rate. Maybe double what its running now.

Your current water speed might be ok for cleaning cons but not for running material.
 

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it seems to run fine i mean in the nugget catcher it collects a lot of pebbles but there is always black sand in the bottom too...i don't know if i can change the pump in the auto parts washer but i will try with a garden hose to see if higher water flow makes a better difference and go from there. thanks for the input
 

Golden-1 said:
wow thanks for the encouraging words and improvement idea. i have not found great pay dirt yet my flakes are super small but i am going to a place that i feel has great gold and i will def post pics of my finds and a video of my sluice doing its thing. thanks again :thumbsup:
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Your sluice would be best used for clean up as suggested earlier, perfect for those flakes you're finding.
 

true true my neighbor is giving me a a nice pro sluice box to use for finding big stuff so then i can use my home made one for fines :)
 

First off let me welcome you to the "Family". It's a great place to be and lots of helpful folk in the neighborhood.

Seems to me that you're developing a good case of "The Fever" for which there is no cure. It can be contagious though so be careful of who you choose to share it with.

A pump from an auto parts washer is not going to give you enough flow to really move materials the way you need to if you want to be productive. What you want is something like a 12 volt bilge pump for a boat. The size of the pump you need will depend on several things. The size of the sluice (width more so than length), the type of matting you're using etc etc etc. Setting up a good working sluice is kind of like a balancing act. The flatter you have the angle on your box, the more water you need to be going through it to move the waste materials. You can increase the angle to make up for lack of water only so much though before you start blowing gold out the end of the sluice. Also remember to keep the sluice as close to dead level across the width so you're using all of the surface to catch gold. Tilt to one side and the materials will gather on the low side due to gravity. There are really a lot of things to keep in mind when you're first starting out, but it gets easier with a bit of practice and experience. The forum here is a great place to learn from the mistakes that others have made so you don't repeat them yourself.

Good luck in your hunt and keep us posted on your progress!

Jeff
 

i made a great improvement to my sluice box. i made a sprayer and hooked it up to a cap that fits on the end of my sluice box and i hook a garden hose up to that i then lay my sluice on two 5 gallon buckets to level it out and let the water run into the bucket at the end...it works awesome plenty of water flow when i tested it yesterday i did not find any Gold but my clean out ended up giving me a full 1 oz bottle of black sand and then some, with hardly any blond sand. if i am thinking correct that means my design will catch gold if it kept that much black sand in the sluice. i can post a video later on today if anyone is interested in seeing my design work :) just let me know
 

Golden-1 said:
i made a great improvement to my sluice box. i made a sprayer and hooked it up to a cap that fits on the end of my sluice box and i hook a garden hose up to that i then lay my sluice on two 5 gallon buckets to level it out and let the water run into the bucket at the end...it works awesome plenty of water flow when i tested it yesterday i did not find any Gold but my clean out ended up giving me a full 1 oz bottle of black sand and then some, with hardly any blond sand. if i am thinking correct that means my design will catch gold if it kept that much black sand in the sluice. i can post a video later on today if anyone is interested in seeing my design work :) just let me know
Click to expand...

Looking forward to the video!
 



here is the sprayer i added let me know what yall think -thanks- :) :thumbsup:
 

thanks :) i put it all together in a longer box shortly after this video will def make a straight stretch and see how it works tho
 

well i have collected well over 2 oz of black sand witch i am saving my neighbor and i are going to extract any gold in it. i am super happy with the design of my sluice and i thank you all for the improvement ideas and encouraging complements. time for me to venture out and do some more studies on where there mite be some good Pay Dirt around here in my area. thanks again cant wait to find some good gold and share my finds with yall. :thumbsup::headbang:
 

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with all the improvements the sluice works good enough to catch flakes like this :) :thumbsup: was super excited when i saw this in the sluice
 

Hate to say it Golden, but that looks more like a piece of lead. Is it gold colored,
or maybe gold covered with mercury?
 

i am 100% sure it is gold it has a dark gold color but my camera and the flash from my camera make it look like a lighter color...i pressed on it really hard with tweezers and it was solid. i have a neighbor that is pretty smart when it comes to gold he was there when i found it and conformed that it was def gold...so def not led
 

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here is a hi powered up close pic of my flake...say what you will but i know it is gold :)
 

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