Building a sluice and need some help ???

Hi Guys
as i don't live near any mining/prospecting shops i am building my own sluice and have some questions that you might be able to help me with

how long and wide would you recommend i make it?

also the diamond mesh that go's under the rifles what diameter should i use?

any other thoughts would be appreciated as you have used the sluice and know what works

if you have pictures that would help me pm me and i will give you an email address to send them to me

Thank you in advance

pm sent

Gday J123
How much dirt do you want to treat in a day?
Why I ask, my mate and I built a 100 tonne a day sluice about 25 years ago. Are you after something small or large?
cheers
Brett

100 ton!! any pics?

Hi Bret
I will be making one bigenough for me to shovel into
but the 100 ton would be every ones dream love to see some pics of it and hear how it worked and how much luck you had with it
James

Hi j123
try this site they have some good plans. and heaps of help. been with this site for years
alluvialgprospectors.proboards.com/index.cgi
I have built one of my owen disigne but no pic's

Allan

Built a river sluice once that worked well. Basically a 5 ft length of old cable tray from the scrap yard. Then built a riffle section out of angle iron about 13mmx 13mm and made it removable. The angle iron was canted slightly in the direction of flow. Some matting underneath - suitable stuff can be got from caravan shops.

The feed end, also removable, was more cable tray, now split down the centre and a larger sheet of flat alloy was riveted in place to form a wide vee.

This was assembly and set up in a flowing creek with roughtly 13mm water flowing into the feed end. The water was accelerated down the riffle section due to the fan shape of the feed end. You could easily tack a larger mesh on the top of the feed section to exclude oversize - but just as easy to pick them off the riffles.

You need to play around with the amount of water feeding in to get a good 'riffling effect' down the sluice box - enough to shift the tailing steadily down the riffles but not too aggressive.

This would handle shovelfulls at at time and was pretty efficient. I regularly tested the tailings and only once found a trace of flour sized gold - never any gritty bits. Cost - only a few dollars for the matting the rest was scrap steel and time.

John

i built a sluse at canberra australia as we have a lot of aluvial gold around and so long as you can rock it one handed ruff enough is good enough .i came from bendigo victoria australia and it the kingof gold fields back in the 1850's and is still producing gold and as children we would sit in the middle of the road for hours scouring over quatz for mundick as we never found any thing else but bendigo is famous for the largest gold nugget the 'welcome stranger' found at fortuna which was taken over by the army but popet heads were a childhood memory and exploring mulock heaps .

suggest you make sluice 20-25% longer than normal and place v-lotted mat down over the additional length at top. See action mining re wave tables as they use this matting on them The v's allow the finer material to settle out beneath the sand size and larger particles. you mind be suprised as to the finer gold that is retained. Please let us no how it goes,fastgold

Here are a few different wet sluices I've built in the early days of prospecting, when Minelab released their SD series my time is now taken up with detecting only.
The first sluice was easiest to make and worked by far the best. Recycled water with rinse aid additive and even the mustard gold was retrieved....

mulgadansa wrote:Gday J123
How much dirt do you want to treat in a day?
Why I ask, my mate and I built a 100 tonne a day sluice about 25 years ago. Are you after something small or large?
cheers
Brett

Hi mulgadansa , find any pics yet ? would love to see the 100 tonner sluice , where about did you work this unit some 25yrs ago?

http://lsie.chez.com/activity.htm

http://msi-mining.com/gold/trommel/

http://engappsllc.com/index.php?pg=md2

http://www.gold-net.com.au/archivemagazines/dec99/dick2.html




cheers

used to put about 400t a day through this and the sluice was 24'' wide x20 foot long x 6'' deep with saw tooth riffles -- I have started a new thread on those

j123 this is what i use today a"Banjo"

j123 heres a link to the story of the modern banjo and a few sketches there not great drawings but if you have any questions pm me

http://www.gold-net.com.au/archivemagazines/may02/59329034.html#3

Murachu mate the little bloke would be hell of a lot easier to lag around these days than that big one

Wombat

That is a big sluice


Have a lppk at this workings " No Name Resources - 10 Minute Clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo_EJpUlOwk "

cheers

24kt you shouldn't put up vids like that man!! oohh i feel a trip comin onnnn!

Murachu wrote:

used to put about 400t a day through this and the sluice was 24'' wide x20 foot long x 6'' deep with saw tooth riffles -- I have started a new thread on those

Hi , I reckon I have seen this sluice some where in Vic ( I actually drove past it ) but just can't place the spot, never mind someone actually put some thought in the design of this unit.

LOL Murachu , seems you have been quite in the sluicing scene? I cant wait to test run my unit still experimenting stages LOL.

Cheers

good for you 24kt and that blue baby was in Avoca before we bought it and we sold it to a guy who was going to use it for washing mineral sands i think!!