Gold Well Sluice, Bernies industrial strength tool for serious gold recovery.

[ncclaymaker]

Gold Well Sluice, Bernie's industrial strength tool for serious gold recovery.

Finally decided to stop loosing the North Carolina fine and flour gold. The only piece of equipment bought by me is a MacKirk Eureka sluice, which performed admirably, but it was never made for a four inch dredge. I simply exceeded the engineered capabilities of the sluice, which was not their fault, but mine. So after building and trying an underflow sluice, I found that it too had limitations, mainly material flow and water that had to be constant. At the beach, where materials are consistent, it should do just fine. Elsewhere or when flow variables are injected into the equation, the design flaws are apparent. Adjustments are required. I assume that one of the reasons one purveyor of this type of sluice has "plastic portals" so that the users can adjust the underflow blades.

So I finally decided to stop messing around and purchase an industrial strength tool for the job... the Gold Well from HM Research. Professional grade tools aren't cheap, this one's built to last. I took a few photos of the sluice while it's still a virgin... tomorrow we'll see if Bernie's Gold Well sluice can separate North Carolina silica from the flour/fine gold. I am classifying all of the dredge material to 0.25 inches as per Bernie's suggestion and we'll see what happens. I don't expect much recovery, as I am just outside of the Carolina Slate Belt. Who knows.

Here are a few shots of a virgin sluice...

View attachment 1247124 View attachment 1247125 View attachment 1247127 View attachment 1247128

I'll either be uploading images of flour gold or mica tomorrow during the trials on the two stream on the land that I steward. Who knows?

 

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[Goldwasher]

You really need to introduce your material pre sluice

 

[Goldwasher]

Riffles, drops, traps low pressure areas....they all rely on laminar flow....that is not what you have going on.You are hurting your fine recovery by leap frogging the engineering put into the gold well or any other sluice. You do not drop material onto a sluice...you introduce it at the head of the recovery area and let flow gravity and pressure variance do the magic

 

[ncclaymaker]

Riffles drips traps low pressure areas....they all rely on laminar flow....that is not what you have going on.You are hurting your fine recovery by leap frogging the engineering put into the gold well or any other sluice. You do not drop material onto a sluice...you introduce it at the head of the recovery area and let flow gravity and pressure variance do the magic

I forgot to include a side shot of the classifier. The classified material has an egress point directly over the slick plate at the top. I also didn't show the rubber "mud flaps" to even out the slurry/water flow before it reaches the vortex area. My bad.

 

[Reed Lukens]

Don't be afraid to run a lot of water through it. We had it maxed out on water flow when we tested it and it worked great.

 

[ncclaymaker]

Don't be afraid to run a lot of water through it. We had it maxed out on water flow when we tested it and it worked great.

After the XMAS holiday, I'll be going to the Mountain Creek Gold Mine, New London, NC for a few days. This should give me a few days to dial this puppy in. I've assembled a "crude", but functional floating dredge to dial it in. Going to Mountain Creek after the season is simple... the fine gold that no one else probably captured might still be in the sands and clay. Let's see if this expensive piece of machined aluminium can really do what Bernie at BH Research says it will do.

With any luck, let's see if the sluice can separate NC clay and silica from the gold. I just hate using the word luck, it denotes that I am not calculating the outcome and leaving the results to a deity or such.

 

[rodoconnor]

NC don't discount luck buddy! That's usually the most important thing LOL. Merry Christmas

 

[goldgit'r]

PM me when you plan on being at Mt Creek and I will try to join you. I have my trommel set up there.
I got a message yesterday morning that they had had a huge amount of rain and everything was flooded,and they had moved my pump and excavator to higher ground.
Not many people will go out at 4 AM in a pouring rain and move someones equipment, Bill and his daughter Naedeen really are great people.

Wes

 

[ncclaymaker]

Went to Mountain Creek Gold Mine with the Gold Well sluice and gave it a test drive/tune-up. This sluice delivers the goods. The slurry was a clay, sticky and quite nasty. But... I asked to be put in a location that others had gone over before. The reason was simple, capture what they could not. The sluice angle was adjusted three times, each time we captured more than the last. Bernie's Gold Well performed as advertised. I can only imagine what it does with the larger stuff.

 

[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

And we can only imagine what you recovered under what parameters?

 

[ncclaymaker]

And we can only imagine what you recovered under what parameters?

The dredge was a 4" (10cm.) running a 6.5 hp at half throttle, delivering the slurry into a straight through classifier with 1/4" (6mm) holes set for 70% open area. Each cleanout was performed after 2-3 yards of material was processed. The first trial angle was at approximately 10 degrees as indicated by my Android level phone app. This was a bit too steep for the material, as the clay was super fine, had some black sand, a few flakes/specks of gold. Decreased the angle to about 6.5 degrees, the material and water had no problem whatsoever. Panned the cleanout, lots of black sand and dozens of fine, flour gold specks recovered. Decreased the angle to about 5 degrees, water and clay discharged without a problem, better results at cleanout.

The reason that I was able to reduce the angle without any problem was the straight through classifier. I didn't have to worry about rolling stones down the sluice. All sluice angles were obtained while the sluice was running with water and slurry being discharged. Android level app used, Clinometer (99 cents), digital rocks... no guessing required.

 

[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

Is that grams or pounds?

 

[KevinInColorado]

Show. Us. The. Gold!

 

[ITS HERE SOMEWHERE......]

Don't be afraid to run a lot of water through it. We had it maxed out on water flow when we tested it and it worked great.

Yep. Add a lot of water flow......