Deep digging sifter....el jumbo size?

[archer48]

Got a river where many crossings were used from the mid 1700's to early 1900's. River for the most part has a sand bottom probably not far from the bedrock in some cases. Ranges form 15 to 25 feet deep and is very dark tanic water. Trying to come up with some type of basket scoop to drag along the bottom and recover from above....could be on a rope or long pole.

Anybody got any ideas or seen some sort of "bottom scoop dragger thing"?

P

[digluv]

I too would like such a dragger but so far I can't come up with a good solution.

It takes some power to move the sifter and any log or large trash underwater can kill it.

This coming summer I'd like to try a magnet drag. True it would only pickup ferrous metals but it's at least a start. An awful lot of good finds are made of iron and it's possible while pulling up iron some nonferrous could also be brought up with it.

I for one love old dug guns and knives so it could work for me.

The Neodymium magnets are ideal for this. Their power has to be seen to be believed.
http://cgi.ebay.com/350-lb-Rare-Eart...item335815c48a

[Tnmountains]

I worked on something like this for a while.I was after light sand and a couple inches of mud. It was to be pulled behind a boat and shallow scoop out and sift as well. I drew stuff up but could never get my engineering to work right to control my mini dredge even with two ropes to control depth and so forth. Not to much good on line. Imagine a giant kitty pooper scooper and you have one.
Good luck and please let me know what you come up with.
TnMtns

[boogeyman]

If you're working water less than chest deep you can make up a "Beach cart" to pull. There should be plans on the net. Another idea is to use a dredge. Had good success with a homebuilt 3" with the sluice removed and a trough shaped basket made of conduit & 1/2" hardware cloth about 4' long. The best way I found after much headbanging was to mount the basket so it sloped down at a 20 degree angle under the surface. Gave more time before having to clean out the junk in the basket.

Hope that gives you a couple of ideas.