My Diy Fluid Bed Gold Trap Sluice

[Goodyguy]

Sorry no video of it in action.........
Couldn't get any suction at the nozzle. Will have to troubleshoot further. (most likely pump doesnt provide enough pressure)

Here it is at the creek...................

 

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[tvanwho]

Is that down at Gatesvillie,Indiana? Hope to be down there sometime July 4 weekend to test homemade dredge and banker mods, sure would love to see your inventions at work?

-Tom V.

 

[Goodyguy]

Is that down at Gatesvillie,Indiana? Hope to be down there sometime July 4 weekend to test homemade dredge and banker mods, sure would love to see your inventions at work?

-Tom V.

Yes that's Salt Creek in Gatesville IN.
I'll try to be there this Sunday maybe shoot a video.

I may have my 4" dredge there (it has an add on fluid bed gold trap) hope there's enough water in the creek to use it.
If not I'll have my bazooka style fluid bed highbanker with me as back up.

GG~

 

[russau]

Buddy to make that nozzel work with what you have, try fishing a wire through the hipressure line into the suction side and attach a 7/16 flat washer(ID) to this line and a dab of adhesive and pull it through to the hipressure port and let it cure. this would be a possible temp fix to have it work with your nozzel/pump combo. good luck on Salt creek and its fine gold.

 

[Goodyguy]

Buddy to make that nozzle work with what you have, try fishing a wire through the high pressure line into the suction side and attach a 7/16 flat washer(ID) to this line and a dab of adhesive and pull it through to the high pressure port and let it cure. this would be a possible temp fix to have it work with your nozzle/pump combo. good luck on Salt creek and its fine gold.

I'll try that Russ

The water from the jet never created a suction in the hose so it just came out the suction end of the nozzle. I knew it was because there was not enough pressure from the jet to create the suction but I haven't tried to address the problem as yet due to having too many irons in the fire

I like your fix because right now I don't have a high pressure pump available to use, only the high volume pump that couldn't supply enough pressure.

And yes the gold in Salt Creek is very fine and small pickers are very rare and that's the reason why I designed the super fluid bed dredge contraption that uses a 3" suction nozzle in the first place. Needed to move a lot of material and wanted to do it from the bank and just long arm the nozzle because the water is usually too shallow and too narrow to use my 4" dredge.

GG~

 

[russau]

yep ive been there several times! Robins cooking is enough to bring me back also!

 

[tvanwho]

Didn't see you down there Russ, maybe another time this summer? I hear Robin has 2 miles of creek to explore now. Talked to a mother,father,17year old kid team, they were pulling a load of that super fine gold with 3 homemade trommels and 2 inch Proline dredge from above the bridge, but putting in 8 hour days every weekend doing it they told me....Looks like Robin has 4 electric hookup spots now, beside the pavilion for $15 a nite, or $5 a nite for primitive camping with an outhouse and a caretaker.

-T

 

[russau]

yep ive had a great time there whenever i went.

 

[malo]

GM,

View attachment 736112

Very clean build and well documented for others to learn ............ like myself. I hope you find gold in the PI.
Thanks,
Mike

 

[LDamm]

Hey Goodyguy, Thanks for all this info.. Question... it looks like since you went to the punch plate over the trap, the entire trap is ONLY COVERED buy the punchplate

Thanks again

 

[Gelmac]

Very much useful info on this thread , being not familiar with the fluid bed (traps) before. I now know lots more about them. Thanks GoodyGuy and Astro and other members with showing off your designs. Going to implement those in my future builds.

 

[Jason in Enid]

After: installed 11/64" dia. punch plate and added second overflow discharge port.
*note diverter baffle located inside to prevent floating gold washout.
Also ..Discharge ports are positioned to be level at a 1 inch to 1 foot rate of overall sluice drop.

Found the punch plate to be more effective for classifying out the debris while still allowing the fines to be trapped.

Go for the gold!
GG~

It's winter, so it's back to tinkering with dredge improvements time!

I was wondering if you could explain a little more about the "discharge ports" on your add-a-trap. Why did you find it necessary to add them? If they are not present, what problems with material through-put did you encounter? Was it necessary to keep the top level of material lower than the sluice to prevent kiting gold from continuing to wash out?

 

[Goodyguy]

It's winter, so it's back to tinkering with dredge improvements time!

I was wondering if you could explain a little more about the "discharge ports" on your add-a-trap. Why did you find it necessary to add them? If they are not present, what problems with material through-put did you encounter? Was it necessary to keep the top level of material lower than the sluice to prevent kiting gold from continuing to wash out?

Great question Jason!

And your answer was spot on. Without the discharge ports the material in the trap would fill up to the top of the grizzly and incoming gold would scour out before it had a chance to settle down into the trap. Besides, the less material above the fluidizing tube the more fluidized the trap will remain. Also the diverter baffles located between the intake grizzly and the overflow ports insure that any floating gold will get submerged to prevent it from flowing out the overflows.

Red arrow points to a diverter baffle......



I am working on a new design this winter for my 4" dredge sluice to do away with the riffles and mats altogether and just run a fluid bed trap at the end of the sluice as it's only source of gold recovery. Of course the trap will be a slightly different design than the one I'm using now. (more tubes and longer plus the discharge port will be at the end like the Bazooka gold trap instead of the sides)

It will make clean outs simple and fast and should eliminate any worry's of gold blow out due to a sudden burst of flow after clearing a hose clog etc.

* The trade off for eliminating mats and riffles will be that the new system will only be capable of recovering gold small enough to fit through the 3/8" holes in the grizzly. However since here in Indiana 99.99% of the gold is less than 1/8" it shouldn't be a problem.

Here is the one currently in use on the dredge.


GG~

 

[Jason in Enid]

Thanks!

 

[Prospector70]

Great question Jason!

And your answer was spot on. Without the discharge ports the material in the trap would fill up to the top of the grizzly and incoming gold would scour out before it had a chance to settle down into the trap. Besides, the less material above the fluidizing tube the more fluidized the trap will remain. Also the diverter baffles located between the intake grizzly and the overflow ports insure that any floating gold will get submerged to prevent it from flowing out the overflows.

Red arrow points to a diverter baffle......
View attachment 1081592


I am working on a new design this winter for my 4" dredge sluice to do away with the riffles and mats altogether and just run a fluid bed trap at the end of the sluice as it's only source of gold recovery. Of course the trap will be a slightly different design than the one I'm using now. (more tubes and longer plus the discharge port will be at the end like the Bazooka gold trap instead of the sides)

It will make clean outs simple and fast and should eliminate any worry's of gold blow out due to a sudden burst of flow after clearing a hose clog etc.

* The trade off for eliminating mats and riffles will be that the new system will only be capable of recovering gold small enough to fit through the 3/8" holes in the grizzly. However since here in Indiana 99.99% of the gold is less than 1/8" it shouldn't be a problem.

Here is the one currently in use on the dredge.
View attachment 1081550

GG~

Just put 10 of them in a row, different size classifier on top of each? Like one of those old coin counters hehe. Nice design

 

[Canuck]

Great build GG. I think this would be a great addition to any high banker. I was wondering why you would need to limit the the size of the inlet to trap to 1/2 inch. Can it be larger?

 

[Goodyguy]

Great build GG. I think this would be a great addition to any high banker. I was wondering why you would need to limit the the size of the inlet to trap to 1/2 inch. Can it be larger?

I chose 1/2" because my highbanker was set up to classify to 1/2". Really only the tiny flakes and small fly poop size gold is all that ever gets away from the sluice without the trap. So even smaller is recommended.

I now limit the inlet to 1/4" holes. Although here in Indiana there is so much black sand that I sometimes back feed some larger gravels into the trap before running to keep it from getting too densely packed by the black sand.

GG~

 

[Canuck]

Thanks for such a speedy response GG. I'm planning on using 3/16 punch plate to limit the size of the material but my original plan was to cut a 2 or 3 inch inlet to the fluid bed. After reading the thread again, you mention the trap over flow is a 3/4" opening while the trap intake is a 1/2" opening. The 1/2" expanded metal is fastened underneath the 1/4" plexiglass. I'm starting to think that my 2 or 3 inch gap under my punch plate needs to shortened up to 1/2 inch. It just seems like such a small gap to let everything in. Maybe I'm missing something. This highbanker I'm building right now is all set up for flour gold.

 

[Goodyguy]

A word about the diverter baffle.......




*Note I've found that the diverter baffle can cause a scouring effect in the trap if the water flow down the sluice is too great.
My solution was to replace the hard baffle with a length of clear vinyl to be used as a damper flap. It keeps the gold from washing out while helping to eliminate any scouring effect. Does not interfere with clean out.



GG~

*Found that a heavier damper flap works much better than the one pictured. (I had used clear for testing to observe the results)

 

[PROSPECTORMIKEL]

I think you are yet again, one step closer to "micron proofing" the sluice box.
I, m still testing and improving my hand powered mini dredge.
I doubled my flow, but weakened the pump.
R & D over and over again.
#/;0):--