what is the best sluice box for finding gold fast and easy???

[robbenmessi1010]

i was checking out some youtube videos and found that many people like the bazooka gold trap sluice box. i thought it looked very nice and easy to use. the price isnt really a problem for me either, so $200 is OK. so i need reviews from other people who have used this sluice. also, i would like to know if the bazooka sluice is better than the keene engineering A52 sluice. well, thank you so much!

 

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[Goldwasher]

There is no such thing as a sluce box that will catch gold. All any of them will catch is visible gold, 100 mesh up! The water flow is too fast to hold the micro gold. Since that visible gold is only about 5% of the total gold your running, the absolute best sluce looses 95% of the gold ran through it. This includes all high bankers, and dredges that use a sluce system. Sorry but that is the truth. In fact, you run a 4 inch dredge all day, you will dump enough fine and micro-fine gold back into the creek to pay for it several times over!!!!!

Learn to use your gold pan! Quit being afraid of it! A supersluce pan will hang on to 95% of the gold! You will go home with far more, properly production panning than you will running a sluce, ever! And you don't need to clasify.

This has to be one of the most uneducated comments I have ever read about gold recovery! There have been millions of dollars put into gravity separation. From large gold mining companies and small scale retail producers. Using closed circuit tests and real science. It is true that gravity separation has its sweet spots for optimum recovery but, the fact is you have to set up a sluice pretty wrong and feed it very wrong to lose 30 to 40% of the gold that travels through the box.
Most small scale especially beginning in stream prospectors run so flat and feed so slow that they could never get below 80% recovery. They don't realize they could have more drop feed more and still have 85 to 90 % recovery plus move more material.
I would rather have 80% recovery of 25 buckets of good material than 90 % of ten slow buckets. But, like I said you have to be just plain bad at it to come close to losing 30 % of the gold you dig out of the ground. The newbies lament of " Well, my samples were great but my box must not be working right cause I didn't get as much as I THOUGHT I should" is often heard and based on fiction. The reason you don't recover very much gold if your at the sluice and shovel level is because you were just plain digging the wrong dirt....or the only dirt available!
There is truth in the notion that a certain prospector could produce more gold on a given day than a two man hibanker team.....However it would be because of the prospector and not the equipment used.
Lets do some math shall we.....
I take my totally worthless not recovering anything 4" dredge out for a three day run, I recover an ounce( I WOULD ACTUALLY GET MORE THEN THAT BUT I"M KEEPING THIS EASY)
based on Ol' Mitch's math. That ounce is now 5%....ONE OUNCE OF GOLD......and my extremely inefficient dredge lost upwards of 19 ounces....you see 100% would be 20 ounces.... Ratchet that up to a small commercial op that is pulling say 15 oz clean ups... how much are they losing?? There isn't ground rich enough to justify your theory on sluices.
Sorry, Mitch there's more for you to learn about sluice boxes.

 

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[Oregon Viking]

There is no such thing as a sluce box that will catch gold. All any of them will catch is visible gold, 100 mesh up! The water flow is too fast to hold the micro gold. Since that visible gold is only about 5% of the total gold your running, the absolute best sluce looses 95% of the gold ran through it. This includes all high bankers, and dredges that use a sluce system. Sorry but that is the truth. In fact, you run a 4 inch dredge all day, you will dump enough fine and micro-fine gold back into the creek to pay for it several times over!!!!!

Learn to use your gold pan! Quit being afraid of it! A supersluce pan will hang on to 95% of the gold! You will go home with far more, properly production panning than you will running a sluce, ever! And you don't need to clasify.

Well thank you!!
You must be 200 years old to know what you know...thanks for taking the time!
Finally I have one expert to educate me. Clay, Hoser, Az...Goodyguy, Lanny etc pay attention!.. (sorry if I forgot you) I'm stunned by this massengill man.
He will post again in a year or 2.....

 

[johnedoe]

Well thank you!!
You must be 200 years old to know what you know...thanks for taking the time!
Finally I have one expert to educate me. Clay, Hoser, Az...Goodyguy, Lanny etc.. (sorry if I forgot you) I'm stunned by this massengill man.
He will post again in a year or 2.....

Only if we are blessed............

 

[Hoser John]

No piece of equipment is the best without a educated operator.......John

 

[beekbuster]

what john said. i got lucky last weekend when i plopped my standard raised riffle sluice in the water it was perfect. it doesnt take much experience to figure out when its running correctly if you pay attention. i then ran my 1/2 inch classified material through pretty fast, not sloppy, but i wasnt afraid of losing anything. not a single peice made it past the ribbed matting. as a matter of fact all the gold was in the top third of it. nothing even made it to the first riffle. i have found anything of decent size doesnt make it to the riffles, only flour gold.

 

[steveh2112]

interesting thread this, i've learned a lot reading it. seems like it belongs in the Sluice section of the forum but what do i know.

to narrow down the OP's question to my case, what would you pros recommend for California rivers and creeks, running between May and Sept/Oct ish, so low water, and something that's easy enough to backpack into hard to reach places.
I'm leaning towards the Royal folding sluice box but want to check i haven't overlook anything.

thanks

 

[Duckwalk]

i would go with a drop riffle. Excellent in fine gold recovery and pretty easy to set up. classify to 1/2" minimum. If you dont feel like classifying and have enough flow, go with a Bazooka gold trap.

 

[GoldpannerDave]

i would go with a drop riffle. Excellent in fine gold recovery and pretty easy to set up. classify to 1/2" minimum. If you dont feel like classifying and have enough flow, go with a Bazooka gold trap.

I use a Le Trap if my Bazooka doesn't have enough water. Like KevinInColorado (and others) stated elsewhere, if you use a small blue tarp and a wing dam, you usually can get enough water for a Bazooka. All things considered, go with a Bazooka, like Ducky and others have stated.

There are small Angus MacKick drop riffle sluices others like, but you do need to classify. No classifying--that is the big, big advantage of a Bazooka over the rest of the field. With my Le Trap, I can hand feed if I don't want to classify and it works fine. Slower than just shoveling in, however.

 

[The Gilded Lens]

interesting thread this, i've learned a lot reading it. seems like it belongs in the Sluice section of the forum but what do i know.

to narrow down the OP's question to my case, what would you pros recommend for California rivers and creeks, running between May and Sept/Oct ish, so low water, and something that's easy enough to backpack into hard to reach places.
I'm leaning towards the Royal folding sluice box but want to check i haven't overlook anything.

thanks

Just get out there with your pan first and get the lay of our land man. Learn how to read the waterway and sample. You can sluice your nuggets off but if you're not digging where the gold falls it's all for naught. After that get yourself a Bazooka.