Super thin large surface area gold...

[oidium45]

I watched a few pieces of very thin round flakes surf board their way down my sluice. The flakes out here are often pretty thin apparently. Anyone know of a good trick to keep that from happening?

 

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[KevinInColorado]

What kind of sluice are you running? How deep are you running the water in it? Might those pieces have been mica?

 

[oidium45]

EZ sluice, 1-2" certainly not mica.

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[oidium45]

If there is only one thing I am good at it is spotting Gold in a sluice.

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[Goldwasher]

it's only an assumption unless you pan your tailings and find those "flakes"

There are a lot of colors and pebbles that can look like gold sitting on the matt or flare.

If it is the kind of piece that will kite...the type of sluice isn't going to affect its movement very much. Mainly it needs a place to bury itself and hide.

I would confirm gold is making it out of the sluice before you spend to much time worrying about losing gold just based on "seeing it"

 

[63bkpkr]

Yes, thin large diameter flakes will go down the full length of your sluice, sigh I've seen it happen to me using an A52 and yes it was gold not Mica. For my part I had the sluice setup with way too much water going through it, a rookie mistake. Reducing the flow till it is "Just Right" - common dirt and rocks are washed out but the heavies are left behind the riffles - can be a pain depending on the site. Wipe down the flare of the sluice with alcohol to be certain all the oil is off of it. You could also try a section of thin slotted rubber mat on the Flare.................best of luck, 63bkpkr

 

[oidium45]

Yes, thin large diameter flakes will go down the full length of your sluice, sigh I've seen it happen to me using an A52 and yes it was gold not Mica. For my part I had the sluice setup with way too much water going through it, a rookie mistake. Reducing the flow till it is "Just Right" - common dirt and rocks are washed out but the heavies are left behind the riffles - can be a pain depending on the site. Wipe down the flare of the sluice with alcohol to be certain all the oil is off of it. You could also try a section of thin slotted rubber mat on the Flare.................best of luck, 63bkpkr

Thanks for the response. Sadly, glad to know it isn't just me. Yes, I am 100% certain it was gold. Even got a good look at it through a magnifying lens before it took off. I believe the problem was turbulence. I started reviewing some videos that I made and noticed that once I moved the box to the end of a dam where the water flowed across the box like glass--the black sand stopped blowing out of the first set of matting.

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[N-Lionberger]

I have seen course pickers wander out of a sluice because of black sand build up.

 

[Reed Lukens]

You want to run the ez-sluice pretty flat. Set it up so that you can watch the black sand starting to run down it around 1" per second. Once again, Vmat in the flare is a good thing and gives you a great speedometer to watch, plus it makes getting the proper set up working faster as you can see right away, how fast the material is moving.

 

[Prospector70]

You also might consider cleaning out the sluice more often as well. For instance if you were cleaning every 4 buckets maybe change it to every 1 or 2 buckets. As others have said, stuff starts to get pushed out as the black sands build up.
Best of luck!

 

[Golden_Crab]

Get a rubber flap, runs along waters surface to knock float gold down.

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

You also might consider cleaning out the sluice more often as well. For instance if you were cleaning every 4 buckets maybe change it to every 1 or 2 buckets. As others have said, stuff starts to get pushed out as the black sands build up.
Best of luck!

Holy smokes - cleaning out the sluice every bucket of material?!
I'd revert to panning if I had to do that.

This is what I like to see...sometimes more water speed/volume isn't a bad thing.
Keeps the material active and fluid.
That sand/gravel is probably 1/4" deep and it swallows up the gold pretty fast.

 

[winners58]

Just have to move more material to make up for the losses, might even get more gold to take home.
if you are worried about losses put a tub at the end of your sluice, compare what you find to whats in the sluice.
if you are losing 5% that's still a 95% recovery rate if there is a lot in your tailing's and you've tried everything,
might be a sign you should be looking to upgrade to something better than what you've got.
save up and get you one of these; Gold Hog Stream Sluice - Placer Gold Stream Sluice

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

Problem I have seen with those types of mats in a stream sluice box, is that they prefer a steep grade with fast water. That is difficult to do in most small streams without having to pack material.

 

[johnedoe]

Just add a catch tray at the end of your sluice.....
It is a tray that is the width of your sluice by about 4 inches long and 2-3 inches deep with a layer or 2 of good miners moss.
It is a cheap effective method of catching those elusive odd flakes .....
It's a kind of drop riffle fluid bed...

 

[oidium45]

Just add a catch tray at the end of your sluice.....
It is a tray that is the width of your sluice by about 4 inches long and 2-3 inches deep with a layer or 2 of good miners moss.
It is a cheap effective method of catching those elusive odd flakes .....
It's a kind of drop riffle fluid bed...

Sounds interesting. Got a pic of one?

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[johnedoe]

Unfortunately no, I don't.
But I will see if I can't put something together for you.
It is originally used under the drop of the hopper box of a high banker.. The material then goes on down the sluice from there.
It is something I picked up from an Australian site ...

 

[Keeneongold]

I'm in S.W. Ohio and have only got flour gold up to a certain point until I found a new place recently.
98% flake has been the result of our digging on this new spot with a few specks. Actually volume wise 99.99 has been flakes.
I use a a52 with gold hog mats. I've replicated the low and high flow mats in docs stream sluice except for downdraft mats. I've replaced them with the motherload mat.
This last time out I ran the high flow mat and during clean out there was the biggest piece I've ever got so far.
It was an actual picker and it was so flat it bent from rolling the mat up during clean up.

When I went to pull the mat out to clean up and looked to see if there was any visible gold in the mat, there was this thing laying totally flat, almost wedged in length wise with no room to wiggle. So tight it bent when I rolled up the mat.

It's that big dude. Looks bigger than it is because of the bend.

My point is this... the gold hog mats captured it. To be fair I haven't captured any tailing to test loss rate but my capture rate is consistent with sample panning results.
I'm somewhat of a rookie so you might want to disregard this post. Yes I know I need to test my tailings. We just got too excited to run our buckets and get home because of exhaustion. This is 2 classified buckets. 3 hours to do that. Hard pack on the very top.

We're gonna take a pick with us next summer

 

[Reed Lukens]

I'm in S.W. Ohio and have only got flour gold up to a certain point until I found a new place recently.
98% flake has been the result of our digging on this new spot with a few specks. Actually volume wise 99.99 has been flakes.
I use a a52 with gold hog mats. I've replicated the low and high flow mats in docs stream sluice except for downdraft mats. I've replaced them with the motherload mat.
This last time out I ran the high flow mat and during clean out there was the biggest piece I've ever got so far.
It was an actual picker and it was so flat it bent from rolling the mat up during clean up.

When I went to pull the mat out to clean up and looked to see if there was any visible gold in the mat, there was this thing laying totally flat, almost wedged in length wise with no room to wiggle. So tight it bent when I rolled up the mat.
View attachment 1522103
It's that big dude. Looks bigger than it is because of the bend.

My point is this... the gold hog mats captured it. To be fair I haven't captured any tailing to test loss rate but my capture rate is consistent with sample panning results.
I'm somewhat of a rookie so you might want to disregard this post. Yes I know I need to test my tailings. We just got too excited to run our buckets and get home because of exhaustion. This is 2 classified buckets. 3 hours to do that. Hard pack on the very top.

We're gonna take a pick with us next summer

When dealing with hard pack, a good SDS Max is the only way to go
https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=30s&v=1kK2Id68INA

 

[Jason in Enid]

If you have kiting gold, you need to get some form of surface damper like the crab said. It doesn't have to be big or fancy, just something that breaks that surface tension and makes sure every is under the water.