'Sluice and a half'

Hi all.

Just thought I'd share my GS16 with upgrade to dream mat.

I named her 'Sluice and a half ' lol.


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Shane, it's about the best upgrade you can get for a Sluicy, you won't regret Dream Mat. Have you had it out in the field yet? do you find you are catching gold up there in the hopper with the moss/v-mat? Another good option is to extend those arms for the hopper to get a bit more angle, quite a few posts on the forums with Frankenstein Sluicys.

Good luck hunting the yellow mate.

Yeah I will be extending the arms tomorrow. Won't be able to get the material until tomorrow.

Maiden voyage will be on Monday mate.

I'll give you an update with how the mat performs.

Thanks,
Shane

Bunning's although lacking in larger sheet and expanded mesh etc carry a fairly decent range of all that aluminum extrusion, reasonable prices too. All you really need for smaller modifications.

A good topic is one by Aussiefarmer he modified his in all sorts of ways, I was very impressed with the grizzly refit.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=21423

where about's you located Shane? or is it secret

Yeah that's my supplier of the flat bar for the arms

Yeah I've got a piece of perforated sheet that slides under the grizzly to help classify shale if required.

Aussie farmer has alot of good ideas there. O love the chem drum splash guard/hopper extension.

In fairness though I copied the Gold Rat set up. Hence the longer sluice box with void between mat and rear of sluice box. But I can see it will need further mods.

She's grown since I've owned her arty:


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Very neat :Y: :Y: :Y:
Thats probably where i was heading till sum grass eating bunch of book reading over educated #"*%its fu#> g wa~ rs banned high bankers in nsw
Sluiceys are the cheapest entry sluice that are light and portable , and doing mods are exiting as getting a new sluice .
Well done :Y: and.. hopefully the weight of gold buckles your sluice and you go home dancing a jig :Y: :Y:

Haha thanks mate :Y:

I'm lucky. I live on the border so Victoria is a stones throw away. Until they go down that route of course...

Once i get new ute i will be doing some trips down there...
cause i miss slooping

First impressions on the dream mat!

I went to a well known fine gold area to work out the bugs. Known for Copious amounts of black sand.
Setup as per recommendations by gold rat. Around 9 degrees
Ran creviced material with heaps of quartz in it. Bad idea. Blocked the cells. So stuffed around with angles and flow rate. To clear. No luck getting it to self clean.
Discovered it hates heaps of fractured quartz like you get from crevicing this area.

Tried low lying eroded material. Ate it up and captured heaps of black sand.

I was sceptical of the capture rate as some black sand was getting into the tailings but no gold. Just the nature of the beast I think. Let's the lighter black sand clear.

Clean up is ridiculously easy, love it. Heaps of black sand as you would expect but heaps of gold also. Only fine with heaps of fly turd size bits but typically for the area.

In conclusion extremely impressed. Despite the teething problems. But you get that with anything new to you.
I can't wait to take it to my chunkier areas with minimal black sand.

Removed the miners moss from hopper as it slowed the flow rate to much. Ended up using just the expanded mesh.


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Good work mate, now get up into that chunky alpine stuff.

Anyone played with the washing system on the sluicy?

The set up on the top picture would restrict how much you can shovel into it without busting the pipe

Yeah just toying with flow for the dream mat more then anything in the top photo.
By no means permanent. Got be thinking though. Is there improvements to be made there?

I like the idea of putting back to the standard set up but with a valve on either end with two 90s creating rearward facing jets that can be opened to clear the nozzles in the pipes but also push material back into the jets for clay and such.

I have built 2 over the time and found that bigger holes are not always better smaller the holes obviously the better the pressure for cleaning
And the number of holes help as well with cleaning material and water flow
I have never used dream mate so to comment on that would be above my pay grade so to speak
Maybe someone slse will jump on and do that sorry

I see what you are trying to do there Shane, like the GS21 pushing back into the hopper, but yeah you have really restricted yourself shoveling, that pipe will become a problem like that and inevitably out in the field you will dump a bucket or one too many sharp rocks on it and break it.

Is clay the problem or you just think you are not getting enough flow in the sluice?

I've made a few changes since this, but no pics, anyway this might give you a few ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t11y1p-Ef1k
Also it's good to even the flow out before the water hits the dream mat, running some large expanded mesh before it will stop the ski jump effect the dream mat clamp creates.
Also just screw any joins from the side with a small button head screw, a few leaks won't hurt. You'll find any changes are a lot easier, once you are happy after three or four field runs you can glue it, up to you. If you use those taps with the red handle that come from bunnings drill a hole before trying to pop a screw in as the material is quite brittle compared to the pipe.

Thats the kind of info im after OP. Same principle I was talking about great setup mate :Y:

What size pump you running mate?

I had to reduce the angle of the feed hopper significantly as the first few cells were being flushed clean by the "ski jump" effect.

thanks mate,
Shane

That video has an electric pump running, but I use a petrol one in the field.
You really do need that big mesh at the front to smooth it out, you could try some miners moss maybe, but that kind of defeats the whole easy clean up idea.

Need to track some down now...

Thanks :Y:

Geez OP you did great work with that spray bar setup, really love the ball valves. What is the bilge pump you are using rated? It really pushes some water.

One way of stopping that ski jump and smoothing out the flow.........