NEW SLUCIE BOX BUT....NO GOLD?

[mattisdell1983]

Hey guys just a question...attached is a video of my new sluice box, this is the very first time that i had ever used one and I set it up per the instructions but after a few 5 gallon buckets worth of material...no gold. The river Im in is one of the cleanest rivers in the us and is known for having gold plus i was getting dirt from unerneath the back sides of rocks, tree stumps, etc.... Is it that im just in a bad spot or does it look like the sluice box is setup wrong? too much water, too little water? its a royal 30" sluice box. thanks again and any help or hints would be appreciated, Matt p.s. the video licks are blow, thanks

 

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[jog]

The set up looks pretty good to me, two things that you may try. Make shure the rock that you use to hold down the sluice is not into your flow of water, it may be ok but can't really tell in the video. Second, I would use a gold pan to sample around until you find color then set up your sluice box and start running that material, this will save you a lot of digging worthless ground.
Hope this helps and just keep at it.

jog

 

[63bkpkr]

Response on your sluicing question

Hello mattisdell1983 and welcome to Tnet!!

Your question has been asked maybe thousands of times since Tnet was founded, I asked it back in 2010. If you already know how to find your way around on the current version of this site then I apologize for going slow, all I can say is it will be worth it!

Once you are on the Tnet home page click on forum, then scroll down till you get to the gold prospecting section, then scroll down to Slucing, click on Sluicing, click on I believe it is page 5, scroll down to a thread started by 63bkpkr and titled "Trip & Results with Modification to A52 Sluice" dated October 01, 2010, click on it and let the knowledge in!!

A kind fellow with the handle of auseeker forwarded two YouTube videos of how to setup a sluice properly, they are priceless. I've tried to attach the net address for them to this message but I do not see the Word document yet.

I have several other posts under the sluicing heading that you may also find useful, just look for my handle 63bkpkr.

The many folks who answered my call for help should be thanked for this information, all I'm doing is passing along their kindness.

Go Getum.........63bkpkr

 

[degoldn1]

Hi mattisdell1983, it looks like in the first video that you don't have enough water flow through your sluice box with bigger rocks building up in the box behind riffles. lower your sluice in front until you have 1-3 inches of water flow, then lower the back end of the sluice 1 inch per foot of your sluice box size. if your sluice measures 3 ft (36") that's 3 inches of drop, 24" that's 2 inches etc...this is a rule of thumb. don't let your sluice box build up with larger rocks, try to always classify your material 1/4" or 1/8". then you can run your material all day. If your sluice riffles are loading up in the screen(filling up with Material) and behind riffles then the drop isn't enough. After adjusting you should see the material dancing in behind the riffles. If you see after awhile in the sluice box that your material is building up you can gently take your hand and go with the flow of the water and brush your finger tip from top end to the bottom end lightly not to disturb the material behind the riffles to much and pick out or brush out the larger material. You should be able to run your sluice all day or when you feel you've ran enough material thru( 5 to 10 buckets) is pretty good rule. You should see when you have it right a nice flow of material washing thru and material dancing behind the riffles, filling up with the good stuff.

P.S. Find a flat rock to hold your sluice down don't let the rock disturb the flow of water, it could rob your gold!

 

[z.daniel88]

dont worry your not the only person having this problem, i have yet to get gold outta my sluice but can pan all day and find gold every 5 gallon bucket i process. i mostly blame it on myself for probably runnin too much material too quickly through a small sluice. Besides such a small sluice that you cannot shovel directly into.... i can process much more material classifying directly into a bucket and panning anyway . Good luck !

 

[Hoser John]

1st pan the tailings to ascertain if your just in a bad spot as you can move 10' one way or another and goldless- just a passing thought-John

 

[Klondikeike]

Hey mattisdell1983.....Welcome to T-net...

Klondike here...

I've been around the prospecting and mining business for over 3 decades....and have tried just about every kind of gold recover invention available....But recently purchased some matting material from GOLD HOG (http://www.goldhog.com).... If you will follow the advise other have given you... plus replace ALL your sluice matting and carpets with the Gold Hog... FLLOWING THEIR INSTRUCTION ON THE WEBSITE COMPLETELY AND TO A "T"...) you'll not only catch more gold.. you'll be a very happy camper.... I do not work for Gold Hog... nor am I associated with them.. I just totally love their matting....IT WORK VERY WELL...

I am in the beginning stages of setting up a small commercial mine in Arizona... and while waiting for our main production and recovery plant to arrive, we have been doing some prospecting and sampling.......

The pictures below shows our sample sluicing set up... we are in a dry area, so we recycle our water...

There are a couple of things to note in thje pictures that may help you with your beginning adventure in gold recovery...
1) Note we are not spoon feeding the material, we are in fact POURING the material in at a rather fast rate....(something you cannot
do with your current off the shelf sluice box set up....
2) Note how STEEP the angle is on my boxes... (close to 2 inches per foot) ...they are a off the shelf sluie boxes...nothing
special...until I modified them as follows....the top one is 48 inches long.. the bottom one is 36 inches long...

The top one has 2 sections of the "UR" Gold Hog matting...followed by 2 sections of the Gold Hog "SRUBBER" matting and finishing
off the box with the UR matting to the end of the box...The lower box has ONLY the Gold Hog UR matting in it...I placed a "damper" at the end of the
upper box just to remove the "rooster tail" from the water coming off the top box and entering the lwer box... it has NOTHING to do with the gold
recovery in this application...

3) Using the standard riffle set up that come with the off the shelf boxes, I removed some and and moved some of the riffles to get
a steady 6 inch spacing from the tail end of one riffle to the front end of the next riffle...and completely removing all riffles in the
"SRUBBER" section...as the SRUBBER section has build in riffles of their design. (this modifiaction was following their---"Gold Hog"
---instructions...when using their matting)...

4) Using an over sized pump... you will also note an extreme amoujnt of water flow and the high volocity of tha water.... which would
normally blow out the gold in your unmodified off the shelf sluice box.... However... set up the way I have described above... not
only did we capture gold.. we sample panned our tailings and found NO GOLD AT ALL...
5) We knew this area of our property ONLY gave up extremely fine gold particles...200 mesh or smaller...so we figured this would be
a great test for this new Gold Hog mattimg.... Several folks have sample panned this area and claim there is no gold in this dirt...
After running only less than 1/2 yard of screened material to minus 1/2 inch...of which we ran in about 20 minutes...after panning
out the cons.. in the upper box we found an estimated over 400 specs of gold, probably smaller than 200 to 300 mesh...so small
they don't show up in the picture very well at all.. so I don't have a pix to show you...and in the lower box... which has standard
dredge riffels in it spaced every 6 inches on top of the UR matting... we found 4 specs....

I posted this to help those who read these posts to increase their gold recovery... STOPP using the carpets and off the shelf matting that most prospecting stores sell... Starty using the Gold Hog matting.. follow their instructin completely..do NOT deviatte from them...and you will be a very happy camper.......and prospector too...lol

One final note.. the Gold Hog mattng is not cheap.. it is above average in expense.. but will pay for itself many times over in a short amount of time...just remember 3 things.. Lots of water... High Volocity of water and steep box angle...

I hope and wish every one a great and prosperous time of prospecting and mining...

Klondike...

 

[Goldwasher]

If you classify down roughly to the size of your riffles......only classify down to an 1/8 inch if your recirculating or in Indiana.....and make sure to feed only about one handful or trowelful every 30 seconds or so you will recover the same size gold you can recoverwith a pan easily.......if you are in a spot that is worth digging and are losing a little gold you are definately keeping more than you loose dont loose sleep or try to hard to reinvint a well tried system.those style sluices are designed for fairly decent flow, you will have problems with builld up if you have low flow because the gold doesnt make it to the bottom of the sluice...it can ride over the riffles and packed material.....you SHOULD see material STAY behind your riffles about a third or even halfway between riffles is just fine...make sure you see pebbles leaving your sluice and look close after you just drop a scoop you will see material dancing and....moving upstream against the current...not all of it but some look real close..dont feed to where your riffles get buried like space in between riffles is full and riffles are not visable that means you are feeding to much..Classify into tour bucket and have another handy....split your cons into two buckets when you have a load to run it makes the bucket more manageable....take the bucket to the creek and stir with water slosh mix with a stick let settle pour off the muddy water then sluice helps break up clay....and the last scoops will be your richest in each batch your inspection match will reveal this..drop your material as far up on the flair/slickplate as possible...help the gold get to the bottm before hitting the riffle set,..i have run a sluices end to end.....and always find 99% in the first sluice and barely a speck in the second......think of this ....your cons are muddy always.....if that silt can stay settle to the bottom and leave you with muddy cons......then you will also capture very fine gold....including gold you need to magnify to really see.......your sluice is fine your using it pretty much right ....MAKE SURE you are digging material that is worth it.....if your not getting gold it most likely because your not diging it, not because your losing it outta your sluice. Your sluice is a small one try getting a litlle more depth to the water running throuh it....and slow down a bit.....you might lose some the way your running in the vids...but,if theres gold you will find some too..

 

[Klondikeike]

Pvillehunter .....is right in respects to classifying and the off the shelf sluice boxes and their design being for the average person capturing an average amount of gold....... and one can go broke trying to capture every single speck of gold....I know I've tried many years ago...never again for me... But that doesn't mean I won't try new inovations, such as the Gold Hog matting....if they work great...if the don't great...either way I have added to my experiences as a professional miner and have learned new something either way...

And as I stated earlier.. I've be prospecting for nearly 40 years.. and commercially mining close to 30 years...in many different locations...all different types of gold, situations and locations... it is what I do.. it is my only income...and from my perspective... and I am kind of old school, from back in the day, we had to build EVERYTHING we used in mining..even as a weekend warrior.. long before Keene.. Pro-line and such....and learned very quickly... every stream is different... every kind of gold is different due to various impurities, and so is the water tempatures and ph levels and on and on and on... gold reacts differently to water currents and riffles when using the standard carpet..miner's moss, expanded metal under different conditions and situations and envirnments......it just does.. and the off the shelf may work well on this stream.. but in the nextwater shed may not work as well.. one size, unfortunately does not fit all situations... especially mass produced for the average week end warrior.....

The Gold Hog matting is the first matting DESIGNED FOR THE GOLD MINING INDUSTRY.. it didn't come from another industry like the carpets and miner's moss have......And if you want to just recover "average" amounts of gold.. keep on using the off the shelf equipment.... But if you wish to recover higher amounts each time you go out... do a small amount of modifications and replace the carpets with the Gold Hog Matting, follow their instructions completely.... really watch and study all the videos on thier website...learn from what you see and hear there...apply what you learn... and you'll be extremely happy.....for real... you'll be very happy and glad you took the time to make the modifications...

Good luck to you...


Klondike...