$20 Hillbilly Highbanker

[Caminochaos]

Here it is. My $20 highbanker.

The wood was scrounged up at a Flooring/Siding place. They were giving it away for free. Most of the PVC pipe came from a co-worker. The grizzley screen was from my wife's grandfather. It was all painted with a roll-on bedliner I had from years ago. The pump was my dads.

All I had to buy was a few screws, a few bolts, the hinge and a couple PVC caps and adapters.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
The Good: It works. It was about $20.

The Bad: The sluice was to wide for my little Tanaka. We strapped a couple of our sluices to it. It weighs a metric ton. I wish I a BBQ grill for the grizzly.

The Ugly: Well. What do you think?

[pvillehunter]

so bummed i couldnt go...stupid ex wife ....dont forget i have that grizz stuff at my house...dont forget your gonna convince your wife that you can go sunday morn...........

[pvillehunter]

oh yea looks great... how did the legs hold up?and dont forget im rated to carry 3/4 of a metric ton pre beer consumption. message or call me later.

[Caminochaos]

lol....The legs held up fine. I left the highbanker at the cabin. It was huge! I am already looking to build a smaller, lighter, folding one we can attach our sluices too. I'll let you know about Sunday.

[riverrunner814]

Now thats a real cool highbanker. The brains are turning now ( had to put some WD40 to it) have some scrap Alum. )

[Caminochaos]

Now thats a real cool highbanker. The brains are turning now ( had to put some WD40 to it) have some scrap Alum. )

Thanks. I will be using it again this weekend. Unfortunately the sluice I built for it was to wide so a thinner sluice/high banker is in the works to supplement the small pump I have.

[pvillehunter]

hey hillbilly........its raining.....its supposed to rain again......there will be nice puddles at###%$#$#%# creek..... 8) did you see the reply i made to astobouncers sluice thread? Hope the lil' tanakas rarin to go.....also i went panning at my old spot sunday only like two hours in the rain fun but slippery....Dude no ones been down there but me and if so thy're not poppin all the cracks that are just everywhere. i dug in and around a nice bedrock drop area...lots of hard pack blue gravel and clay and rusty oxidized sand mixed in. I only classiffied one three gallon bucket down to minus three eights at the creek, and brought the bucket home to pan the cons. (hated it..but had to cause i didnt bring my sluice.. lol) anyway i got a nice flake almost an 1/8 of an inch long but real flat and some other color...and even though i was close i wasnt cleaning bedrock yet... its close to your dads!!!!!!! he can drop us off and we would have it all to ourselves... ...text me..

[SushiDog]

I have a question.....I recently found out about the ban on dredging (SB670), and I pulled the Bill up to read, and from what I read, if you use a highbanker that discharges water into a stream, river, lake, etc., it is considered illegal....am I wrong? SushiDog

[Caminochaos]

I have a question.....I recently found out about the ban on dredging (SB670), and I pulled the Bill up to read, and from what I read, if you use a highbanker that discharges water into a stream, river, lake, etc., it is considered illegal....am I wrong? SushiDog

idk to be honest. Perhaps someone else could answer that.

[Jason in Enid]

I have a question.....I recently found out about the ban on dredging (SB670), and I pulled the Bill up to read, and from what I read, if you use a highbanker that discharges water into a stream, river, lake, etc., it is considered illegal....am I wrong? SushiDog

Nope, you are correct.

[Caminochaos]

what if you use a settling pond before it reaches the creek.

[GoldinSocal]

Daaaaaaamn Duct Tape and alllllllll LOL. Looks like you had a ball and that doesn't always come cheap

[Gravel Hog]

Reminds me of something from the 30's, hey, those guys found the gold using whatever they could make up with what was laying around. The real pick and shovel miners.
Looks as those times might be coming back around.

[kiwi jw]

Good on you mate, Half the fun is in making your own gear & putting it to the test. I bet it works great, although I didnt see any pics of gold found. One bit of gear made always leads to another being made as you always think of better ways of doing things. Smaller, lighter, better concentrating & less amounts of concerntrates to deal with on clean up. It is all good fun & personaly very rewarding when you make your own gear. & cheaper. It is all a learning curve, Again....good for you....well done

All the best

JW

[Caminochaos]

Good on you mate, Half the fun is in making your own gear & putting it to the test. I bet it works great, although I didnt see any pics of gold found. One bit of gear made always leads to another being made as you always think of better ways of doing things. Smaller, lighter, better concentrating & less amounts of concerntrates to deal with on clean up. It is all good fun & personaly very rewarding when you make your own gear. & cheaper. It is all a learning curve, Again....good for you....well done

All the best

JW

Yeah the highbanker has already been modified quite a bit.

The legs broke on this one so I decided to make it more compact. I took the hopper off and made it taller. Remove the the construction mesh and added a BBQ grill. Riveted the hopper to a folding grill that I scrounged up somewhere. Now I can fold the hopper up and slide the big metal sluice in the picture underneath the hopper. It works much better. The pour tanaka pump doesn't discharge enough water for that size sluice but it is better than nothing and the stuff was free. I will post a picture as soon as I can.

In the future I will build a highbanker with my small A-51A sluice. It will be a banjo style with about 3 or maybe 4 sluices made out of road signs. The sluice's won't be as wide. Same width as the A51A so the pump works better. And yes it will be really cheap for you frugal ppl out there.

[russau]

as long as its getting gold, who cares what it looks like! go for it!heck anybody can buy a peice of equipment if they have the money! you will soon with your setup!

[Gravelwasher]

Looks good, also looks like a fun spot!!! I can see the sun was still shinning, oh what I would give for a warm sunny day. Goodjob Camino!!! Gravelwasher