Building a dredge from scratch?

[1jss1]

I have seen a few videos of people building their own small pontoon boats, and some of guys building their own dredges. Anyone tried this, and is it worth it?

 

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[Duckshot]

Yeah it probably is if you got the mechanical skill to get the job done and you want to save money.

I never built a dredge, but I can cut out a 7"X4' drop riffle or Hungarian riffle sluice out of a single 8' 1x8 board with just a cheap $30 circle saw for about 1/2 the cost of a commercially manufactured sluice. Takes about 15 minutes. If I did not include the saw in costs, a 8' 1x8 costs about 1/5 the cost of an equally sized factory sluice.

 

[N-Lionberger]

I made a lot of upgrades to my dredge, only thing left from the old setup is the sluice and some hose. I built the frame from scrap metal and use 4 to 6 15 gallon barrels for floatation.

 

[Goodyguy]

I like the idea of converting a pontoon boat to a dredge setup but you will need a large enough waterway to support the pontoon boat.
As far as being worth the cost it depends upon the amount of gold recoverable in the waterway.

A small dredge with pontoons is usually more cost effective. But if you want or already have a decent size pontoon boat with trailer, adding dredge capability would not be that hard to do and you could still use the boat for fishing or partying if designed with dual use in mind.

Here is a link you may find useful: https://www.tinypontoonboats.com/framekits/

My brother gave me one of his dredges and I added bicycle wheels to make it easier to handle on dry land.

GG~

 

[Duckshot]

Pontoons?

Piece-o-cake for a little dredge. Take two 4x8 sheets of 2" styrofoam insulation and cut it into eight 1' x 4' pieces, then glue six pieces together with Gorilla Glue to make two 1'x1' x 4' blocks. - done.

To secure a frame and to protect the bottom when you drag it around, first glue a 1' wide peice of 1/4" plywood on the bottom of your foam pontoons then through bolt two or three wood boards of 1"x whatever across the top of the pontoons as wide as you need. Use threaded rod and washers.

It would be light duty, but easy to haul around. Probably cost less than $100.

ETA- your gasoline will eat the foam if you don't paint several coats of latex house paint.

 

[N-Lionberger]

I almost made a set of pontoons like that but opted for the barrels. If I was making a smaller dredge I would go with the stacked foam insulation, I read an article on making a fishing kayak from the stuff where after shaping it was painted with titebond and had an old sheet stretched over it, when dry that was painted over with exterior latex paint to make a durable skin. I converted my dredge to run on propane, runs quieter, starts easier, doesn't smell like a lawn mower, cheaper than regular gas and you can't spill it in the creek! I built my flare header from ABS and used a PVC quad-jet I built from Dave Franks Vortxrex plans.

 

[N-Lionberger]

I built a frame like Reed's that used my old dredge pontoons and and two 15 gallon barrels. It worked well but then decided to weld up a frame from some scrap metal that used just the barrels that has a smaller footprint and could tuck up the jet and flare under the motor for moving over rocks, it's not perfect and welded together requires dragging back to the shop for modifications. For a weekend hobbyist who likes to tinker this isn't that much of an issue but for someone who has to hike it out into a canyon to work a spot all season, where you bring it in spring time and drag it out when it starts snowing there isn't much room for that. You can run it in swimming pool but you don't know how it will actually act until its in the creek and its full of heavies. If I were to do it again I would have stuck with the conduit/unistrut frame.

 

[russau]

I always liked the plastic barrels for floats ! The foam will not take the abuse of moving the dredge around essssssspecially in a creek that full of rocks unless you encase the foam in fiberglass sheets for strength ! The barrels are cheap / tough and EZ to come by ! Over the years I built or had about 6 dredge's from 2 inch to 5 inch and they each had their specific use's . Now that I'm a F.O.G. and have a hard time getting out in these area's I miss it like you wouldn't believe BUT that's how it get's when you get old & beat up ! BUT then again the memories and friend's are great ! GOOD LUCK ON YOUR DREDGE !

 

[Bonaro]

Is it worth it?
That depends. You can scrounge all the parts and build everything else and make a dredge that will do it's job...but you will only save less than half the cost of a decent used dredge and will have spent 100's of hours in labor. Add to that days of trial and error to get it tuned properly. If your time is worth anything then no, it's not worth it. If you like to build stuff and have a tight budget then yes.
I have built several but I have the benefit if a pile of spare parts and knowledge of how to set it up. Today if I needed a dredge I would look at craigslist for a older one priced around $800 and build on that

 

[Reed Lukens]

The problem with pontoon boats is that they don't have shallow water mobility. You can build your own dredge with help and the small drums can be dragged over anything. For me, these days I build my own simply for the best riffle set up. You can't buy a used factory dredge with an extreme fine gold set up from anyone. Check out the sluice box in this video -

 

[russau]

Now if I had a dredge like Dave's I'd most likely get back into dredging the very next day !

 

[Duckshot]

Reed Lukens, nice dredge!

You probably maybe could run raw water though your engine cooling jackets straight from the creek without a heat exchanger or coolant and save on costs and weight. It's been done that way on some inboard workboats in the past. Not with aluminum block engines in saltwater, that would rot out the cooling jackets something fierce. Aluminum is okay in fresh water so long as you don't have any stray electrical current.

But even in saltwater you might be surprised how long a cast iron block can survive on raw water cooling.

Shouldn't hurt the motor, much. Might not work in muddy water.