Got my home built dredge in the water!

[nh.nugget]

After a lot of research and design I built a 3" dredge. Got it in the water last weekend. After a little adjusting and tweeking it accually worked pretty sweet. Even got some gold, after I got through the over burden LOL! I'll try to post some pics if this computer will let me.

 

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[theseeker]

Welcome to TNET nh.nugget! Look forward to seeing your dredge and some New Hampshire Gold!

 

[nh.nugget]

Well here you go!

 

[okbasspro]

Sweet

 

[nh.nugget]

Sweet

Did I do good? Even built my own jet also.

 

[treasure diver ct]

That's awesome!! What pump is on that? do you have a build log on your dredge? I'm planning on building a 3" relic dredge

 

[nh.nugget]

The pump is a 2" clear water pump from harbor freight. And I did build my own log from 3" exhaust pipe. used another piece accualy 2 pieces of 2"exhaust pipe one straight one elbow cut the straight one at 11 degrees lined it up with the log traced around it cut the log realined it and welded it together making sure it is perfectly parallel with each other. Then I welded the elbow on just to relieve the curve of the pressure hose

 

[okbasspro]

Did I do good? Even built my own jet also.

Looks great and if it catches gold heck yea you did good I have a few homemade ones to go with my store bought ones.







At the end of the day this is what counts

 

[nh.nugget]

I built it mostly because I like a challenge I used to restore antique auto's and build street rods until I suffered a spinal stroke and became instantly disabled. After sluicing for a couple of years I decided to step it up a little. Having access to a complete fab shop, mine, helps! looked at a bunch of dredges where I go fellow miners up here are really cool! Read the Clarkson report made a lot of sense. Read a lot of threads here Then basically scaled up my Keene sluice it worked great for fine gold which is the most of what we have. Came up with a design started building! The hardest part was getting the balance front to rear and side to side. Building fishing boats for a couple of years helped in that department. And what you see is what I came up with. And it worked first time out!

 

[cheech]

I would like to try to build one where did you get the pontoons thank you looks good

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Gotta like that!...nice build!....and the results!
Jim

 

[BagLady]

Looks like a factory build. Nice work!

 

[nh.nugget]

Cheech, the pontoons are Braun's I got them from Cabella's I got them on line. I think I payed around $150. each free shipping.

 

[cheech]

Thank you i'll look into them

 

[NeoTokyo]

Looks great, that is an awesome little dredge!

 

[Reed Lukens]

Looks good but I would change out the expanded in the very front to 3/16" punch plate and drop in a low velocity over/ under. What does that yellow mat look like up close? I would pull the riffles from under the expanded and run just the 1" expanded for riffles under the classifier.

 

[nh.nugget]

I will try that with the punch plate in front. the mat is a piece of conveyer mat it looks like that new vortex mat they are selling everyone up here uses it. It does work great for catching gold especially fines. We get it from one of our guy's he is actually is an engineer. not quite sure what you mean about an over and under? still new at dredging. Willing to take any advice to help me on my quest! pictures are worth a thousand words to me. Thanks Reed!

 

[okbasspro]

http://www.wisconsinprospectors.com/proline

Go here will answer all your questions I did this conversion and my 4" will catch -200 all day long.

 

[nh.nugget]

Thanks, I found Reeds thread also. I will check out this one too.

 

[CMan1]

Very nice excellent!