My sluice seems to pass as much micros as it catches?

Foulwind

Jr. Member
Sep 3, 2024
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Hey all. I have a 50" folding sluice (Vevor) im using at a local beach thats loaded with micro fine flour gold. I dont have any meshs to accurately size the color, but a guess might be way smaller that 100. I started using my old sluice my dad built for me back when I was snotling 55+yrs back. It collected gold but was not efficent with only carpet and 7 riffles. it's length is 48" × 7" after i found high numbers of color in its cons, i got my new sluice to collect more. New sluice does collect more color from less buckets Vs old sluice (Carpet, miners moss, and light expanded metal and riffles) i recently added my old sluice to the bottom of new sluice and ran a 12 (3gal) bucket run, adding the old sluice in after 5th bucket. I know that beach gold has been washing out the back side of the sluice since i started, but it was also getting trapped in sluice. Only when i cleaded up and panned the concentrates from the old sluice did I see how much color is washing out of the back of my new sluice. The geology of tne stream I'm sluicing in does not allow the sluice to have proper angle (1" per ft of lenght drop)4" low at back so its sitting at maybe 1" low at back. There is sufficient water flow to clear small hand shovel loads of sand in about 5 -7 seconds from the feed section. The front riffle sometimes does pack up, but will clear in minutes when feeding is suspended. Following riffles remain clear. Small rocks clear the sluice no problem.
Is everyone having this issue with not catching 100% of their beach gold?
How did you solve that problem?
If you've read tnis far, thanks! And thanks for any replies.
 

I don't know of anyone that can capture that small of gold at a 100% rate with any gravity method ! You could get more gold retention with bigger equipment but you'll be spending lots of money and it would be rough to transport that to your location OR transport all that material back to your equipment yard ! :BangHead:
 

Maybe re-running the same materials though the sluice box will catch some more?

A longer sluice box will also help.
 

I have that same sluice off amazon. I switched out the carpet it came with, with the deep ribbed matting from Royal and it made a big difference in fine gold recovery. Also make sure your expanded mesh is going the right direction. :) https://royalmfgind.com/product/deep-ribbed-rubber-matting/

Might also try running it with just the v-mat and play with the flow of water.

This guy's channel has a lot of good info on beach gold:
 

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