First time Sluicing, am I doing it right?

[JoshHat]

Hi there,

My father and I recently finished building our Sluice's high banker, this is our first time sluicing and I guess were not quite sure if we are doing it right. I've looked both around the internet and on these forums and haven't found to many instructions, so I though I'd post to see if I could get the advice needed.

The sluice was bought from a professional builder, forget the name. We built the high banker from an old water thing, it has a mesh filter to take out the larger rocks, this is all powered by a cheap eBay 2000GPH pump. We've spent approx 5 hours so far out sluicing in river beds (Looking very promising) and yet to find any gold..

These are the main questions I currently have..

• How much angle should the sluice be on? [/*]
• How much water should be flowing though the sluice?[/*]

Below, some pictures of our setup.. (The foam is due to the water tank we used was full of handwash before.. )

Thank you for reading, I can't wait to hear for a reply so we know were doing it right!

 

[yobskin]

Hi joshhat,

It goes a bit like 1inch drop in angle for every foot of sluice..
And about an inch of water flowing over riffles.
Pic looks like to much angle...once you reduce your angle the water will fill riffles better. Nice effort all the same mate i hope it helps and you start finding some gorgeous colour...

 

[Heatho]

G'day JoshHat, mate I'd do a bit of sampling with a bucket and pan before setting up the highbanker, some places just don't have any Gold. Even if the sluice was set up totally wrong you'd still expect to see a bit of colour if it's there.

 

[user 1769]

Is all your foaming from stuff in the water? Something to think about: I'd be a bit concerned of loosing superfine stuff by flotation. Of course that depends on your area and what the gold is like. Some places I go it's all flour and you'd potentially lose a good amount in that foaming.

 

[cracka]

Lose the handwash (detergent) and if your recycling your water (recirc) use some rinse aid, not to much though it will foam if you use to much. Dont use either if your running in a creek. Also heres some interesting info to read about sluicing.
http://www.hecklerfabrication.com/files/sluice-build-partIII-2.pdf

Should give you some tips on riffles, expanded, Angle, flow etc.

Cracka

 

[G0lddigg@]

good looking setup mate, lose the bubbles.... no reason to use bubbles unless you have established that you have really fine gold and if that the case slow the water and replace the carpet with ribbed rubber.

best thing you can try to do is flatten out your water run it almost flat then adjust slowly to gain velocity, throw in some small material and count how long it takes for a piece of quartz to work its way down the sluice. I try to go with around 60 seconds per meter when sluicing, highbankers alot more aggressive.

 

[Marked]

A picture is worth 1000 words, so the saying goes, but sometimes you need to read the words as well.

Make sure you clean all the handwash residue out of your tank before you head out again, for all the reasons explined in the posts above. Also heed the excellent advice on angle that has been shared.