JUST RECIEVED MY BAZOOKA PROSTPECTOR GOLD TRAP SLUICE!

[gnatnutz]

Interesting sluice! The outside tubes in the fluidbox are drilled at approx a 45 degree right and left of dead center while the center tube holes are more a straight down pattern but staggered. Looks like it will give a staggered swirl pattern in the water input in the fluidbox. water is still high with snow run off right now so I will have to sniff around for a stream that drops out of lower elevations up here in the Skagit Valley area of Washington State. Has anyone with a Bazooka Sluice attempted to put deep v matting on the sluice prior to the grizzly and how far back from the grizzly? Any input on how many inches of deep v matting to use and do you think it will have a negative affect on the water flow at the grizzly? Since most of our gold around here is flake glacial variety I'm sure the gold trap will work well. Also have a local stream that my son and I discovered is heavily loaded with garnets of various sizes and since we do well with the Keene mini and the jobe folding sluice I'm wondering how the bazooka fluidbox will handle garnets? Anybody have some input on the deep v matting and garnet issue?

Heres to a good to you all;
Gnatnutz

 

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[Goodyguy]

Forget the matting....... not needed in the least. The trap will catch all the heavies including any fines that the mat would have caught.
Garnets usually wash out of the trap due to their lower specific gravity of 3.65-3.87 which is only slightly heavier than diamond @ 3.52
Both of which are way lighter than gold @ 19.3 Black sand however, will be trapped with a specific gravity of 5.20 to 6.0

With that being said, upon cleaning out the trap you will still find some material of lighter specific gravity that was not washed out of the trap.

 

[nuggetshooter323]

The slick plate before the grizzly helps to classify the material before it get to the trap. The trap gets everything down to 100 mesh.

 

[gnatnutz]

Thanks for the reply. I guess I should of said is that the area that I live in has huge amounts of overburden being a old glacial valley. The question about the v matt should of been directed towards instant recognition to prevent unecessary processing in a non productive area. What do you think?

 

[Goodyguy]

Test panning is always recommended before using a production method.

One of the shortcomings of the Bazooka is the elevated grizzly, and the mat could slow the material flow down allowing even more of a log jam of tailings to accumulate there.

Of course you could always try it and see how well it works.

Let us know the outcome.

GG~

 

[gnatnutz]

Hey GOODGUY thanks for the reply! Think I'll leave the sluice as it is. My son took some dimension measurements off of the sluice and has had a friend create a similar model design out of aluminum only they eliminated the raised grizzly design and created a flat drop in slot with screen overlay and a lexan viewing port to the fluid box. Now we're just waiting for our snow runoff to drop so we have some bank access. It will be interesting to run them side by side to see how they work. I'll be back with a update on that or a THERES THAT SMELLY SMELL THAT SMELLS SMELLY QUOTE if it doesnt work out,

 

[Astrobouncer]

I would not use any kind of matting. It is pretty worthless because the large rocks will just cause turbulence and blow out any fines that do settle in there. Also like GG says, it creates way to much drag on the big rocks and you have to remove them all by hand.

Here's an example of an earlier model I built using vortex matting (rough top conveyor belting) as an inspection mat. It ended up not working at all so I took it off. Its hard to tell from the video, but theres actually about 3 inches of drop on the sluice as well and you can see how slow the stuff moves off.

Early model:



Updated model with a slick plate instead and no middle tube, as well as narrowed the body down for faster movement of the gangue:

 

[gnatnutz]

Hey Astro, thanks for the video. I did leave the sluice as is after watching your video, I could see the drag that would occur with the matting. I have it on my other sluices, a jobe folder and my keene mini sluice. In fact, I lined the mini the whole lenght for running cons. Seems to work great. I did get a chance to get out yesterday, 06/03/12, and run the bazooka in a local river up here. Only out for five and a half hours but ran 13 buckets of material and wound up with a gallon bag of concentrates. I could of run more material but since I was working a new area, I chose to level the bazooka to slow down process to visually see if or how much color was in the area. After getting home, I panned out about 8 tablespoons of cons and so far there has been anywhere from 4 to 9 or more flakes in every pan. Looks like I'll be working that area alot more.

 

[Goodyguy]

Hey GOODGUY thanks for the reply! Think I'll leave the sluice as it is. My son took some dimension measurements off of the sluice and has had a friend create a similar model design out of aluminum only they eliminated the raised grizzly design and created a flat drop in slot with screen overlay and a lexan viewing port to the fluid box. Now we're just waiting for our snow runoff to drop so we have some bank access. It will be interesting to run them side by side to see how they work. I'll be back with a update on that or a THERES THAT SMELLY SMELL THAT SMELLS SMELLY QUOTE if it doesnt work out,

That sounds great!
Would really like to see photos of the aluminum version when it's finished.

GG~

 

[malo]

Interesting sluice! The outside tubes in the fluidbox are drilled at approx a 45 degree right and left of dead center while the center tube holes are more a straight down pattern but staggered. Looks like it will give a staggered swirl pattern in the water input in the fluidbox.
Heres to a good to you all;
Gnatnutz

Gnatnutz,
I just finished my rendition of the fluid bed sluice and I tried to get as near to your description for hole placement as I could. How close did I get? Thanks for offering your observations last year when you got your sluice.
Thanks,
Mike

Fluid Bed Sluice
Sluice Stand

 

[Aufisher]

You can watch the gold slide down the plate. That's how I know if I am on the gold. I have the 48" prospector