Home made dredger or sifter for water

[jp777casino]

I am interested in building some type of contraption that I can pull behind my boat to dig and sift at the same time we thought about using or welding a frame with some screen or neting behind it. Any ideas will help in the design of this... Wanted to use in the river s around to collect artifacts. I Searched the web and havent found anything to do this. Found above ground contraptions and sifters, but thats about it. Also though about using like a 55 gallon drum, or buckets with holes in the.. Need design and any info if anyone has tried this. Thanks joe

[gallileo60]

Sounds like my kinda idea....I was gonna do something like that behind my car, to rake the beach...Hope you figure something out..(I never did) Keep us posted...

[Charles, Oak Island, NC]

I am interested in building some type of contraption that I can pull behind my boat to dig and sift at the same time we thought about using or welding a frame with some screen or neting behind it. Any ideas will help in the design of this... Wanted to use in the river s around to collect artifacts. I Searched the web and havent found anything to do this. Found above ground contraptions and sifters, but thats about it. Also though about using like a 55 gallon drum, or buckets with holes in the.. Need design and any info if anyone has tried this. Thanks joe

years ago in the Pamlico River at Washington, NC, I was diving on the yankee vessel Pickett. there were a couple of guys who had converted an old military LST (beach landing craft) to a search and recovery vessel searching for artifacts. They had a water pump system with a venturi flow system on a 3 inch PVC nozzle. It pumped up to a large screen box hanging on the side of the boat. One guy worked the dredge end the other watched the stuff coming up into the screen box. They found a lot of good stuff.

Go to this old link and there is a bunch of posts on this subject. One of my old posts has links to building these. Also old Dinkydink had a picture or two of one he built.
http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.p...ic,2976.0.html

[TORPEDOX]

sounds like a neat idea but without the suction type dredge feature, I believe you would end up with an anchor!

[muckdiver]

I made one, years ago that had a basket made with 1/2" hardware screen. It had skis on it and a scraper to scrap down about 2". I tried it on a sand bottom lake and it filled up almost instandly. And yes it did become a very heavy anchor. I feel that you must have large amounts of water flushing the sand out of the basket to maybe work. Also maybe larger screen might cut down on filling up with bottom material but you might miss what your looking for.
TR