sluice / Highbanker question (New)02-25-2008

[kdfritton]

OK , I have to re-word my previous question (understandably). I have land In Georgia as well as relatives with mountain land in and near Dahlonega. My wife and I plan on filling the back of our P/U Truck with 5 gal buckets of soil from there and bringing it back to Fl. to Classify/sort/Sluice. I want to buy a relatively inexpensive Highbanker/sluice but am unsure which one to get. I do know however that I am looking forward to sitting down with a beer in my back yard here in fl while I employ this trade,,Ha..We have been watching the gold channel for awhile and I really like the one where the Calif. Guy brings buckets home and has his whole set up in his back yard,he wears a light blue hat and sounds very educated. anyway,,I recorded the episode and replay t often. He built his own sluice..Thank You...Dan

 

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[Lookin]

Are their creeks on the land where you plan on prospecting? If so, why don't you get yourself a sluice box and run material through it, then just bring home the concentrates to clean up rather than hauling a bunch of stuff that may or may not have gold in it? At a minimum, classify out the bigger stuff, check that for nuggets and then toss, and just haul your classified stuff. I'm just thinking of the volume you'll be hauling, gas prices, miles per gallon, etc.

If you ran your material through a sluice box in GA, haul the concentrates back, then you could just pan them out or run them through some other clean process - roto-pan, blue bowl, Tom and Perry poop tube, etc.

As far as what to get, just figure out what you'll be using it for and then do a search on Google. There are some deals out there, but with the price of gold, some companies are having a hard time getting stock to ship out.

Good luck!

 

[Eu_citzen]

If you want a cheap highbanker build one yourself or look into "Gold Buddy" quite cheap yet with some mods rather good as well small and nice to backpack to.

Could you specify how you travel it might be possible that you'll need easily back packed equipment at some hard to get to places. Also are the creek running year round? If not you can recirculate a highbanker to.(a sluice to it will need some extra stuff though, i.e. tub for water)

You may also get a pan (if you don't own one) and prospect then bring home some "probably rich paydirt".
Or pan as much as you can down to BS then clean up at home or as lookin sad get a sluice. It really only depends on yuo and the conditions not all places are good for sluices.

 

[Cynangyl]

The Gold Buddy is a good unit and would serve you well obviously. I do see the point some are making for doing some concentrating of the materials before hauling them home and the Gold Buddy could easilly be packed in to wherever you are going to do just that. At home you could run the concentrates by panning or using a spiral wheel. David and I have done that a few times when we have had to go home and were not ready to quit. We take concentrates home then when he is stressed he sits in the back yard and pans at a tub of water then runs what he has left through the spiral wheel. The Gold Miner and the Desert Fox are both real good for that as well as the blue bowl concentrator. Good luck with your venture and let me know if there is anything I can help you with!

 

[jewelerdave]

I agree with Lookin

If your going to drive from FL to GA then back with a few buckets of dirt, You wont be doing yourself any favors.
Keep in mind that for every 100lbs of extra weight you carry will drop off a mile per gallon or more. Figure you will get 50 to 75lbs per bucket...ok, a few hundred miles for dirt that may or may not have gold in it.

Its far better to do as much concentration in the field. Dont take the mine to your back yard, take the richest concentrate from the mine back

You may need to drive a couple miles with a truck load of dirt to a stream but its better than that type of haul.

Get all the mateiral you can concentrated into one bucket. But dont go down to just a handfull either. save the concentrate till you get home, you get more gold that way.

You need to find a balance, dont haul a ton or two for a few grams of gold that could be sent with a postage stamp.

if you can work 20 buckets down into one. thats going to be worth going though a couple times. If you can work down 100 buckets into one or two, thats even better.
if you have one or two buckets to go though...one you will fine more gold in it. and two, its a lot easier to dispose of the sand and gravel that is left over.

If your doing concentrate run it a couple times. You will get gold each time. Just make sure you do this step at home and not in the field. I see so many people trying to get it pure and gold alone in a little bottle in the field and they waste time they could be moving dirt. If ya see a nugget, yeah pick it up, But the gold in the buckets are not going anywhere but home with you, Just get as much concentrate as you can.

 

[Lookin]

If you can concentrate the materials down on site, that is the way to go. I have taken trips to AK, UT, WY, CO, and others for a week or more, where I was able to put all the concentrates in my checked or carry on baggage. Unless you have a sinkhole or two to fill in, do what you can to just bring "the good stuff" home. Leave the other on site! Hope you have lots of color!