Anyone use a plastic gun case for a sluice box either wet or dry?

russau

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Wouldn't just buying a sluice be just as cheap and a lot less work ? Some material that has 90 degree bends at the corners would help the riffle's fit into the sluice without and leakage to slip by the edges of your riffle case's rounded edges. OR just get a sheet of alum. and bend it up to your needs. you have to make up your riffle setup anyway! and I am a home built kinda guy! :coffee2: :occasion14::occasion14:
 

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Wouldn't just buying a sluice be just as cheap and a lot less work ? Some material that has 90 degree bends at the corners would help the riffle's fit into the sluice without and leakage to slip by the edges of your riffle case's rounded edges. OR just get a sheet of alum. and bend it up to your needs. you have to make up your riffle setup anyway! and I am a home built kinda guy! :coffee2: :occasion14::occasion14:
Good points you make as I have a 36" sheet bender to bend thin sheet metal.

What I'm really asking here have some out there started to think outside of the normal sluice box for moving materials over say rubber, plastic, perhaps metal riffles?

I'm also asking if anyone has made a dry sluice box set up?

Any tips is appreciated.
 

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Well looks like I get to play around by my self for a while on this topic..........lol.
 

N-Lionberger

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Good points you make as I have a 36" sheet bender to bend thin sheet metal.

What I'm really asking here have some out there started to think outside of the normal sluice box for moving materials over say rubber, plastic, perhaps metal riffles?

I'm also asking if anyone has made a dry sluice box set up?

Any tips is appr
What?
 

N-Lionberger

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Ideas about both wet setups and anyone making a dry set up
By dry sluice you mean a drywasher? Hey let’s try and reinvent the wheel and trash a 170 buck gun case…. There is forum conversations here you could spend years reading through on the subject of DIY riffles. What rudimentary AI is this?
 

Jim in Idaho

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I'm also asking if anyone has made a dry sluice box set up?
I've been developing a dry sluice for almost 2 years. I've had it operating for over a year, but testing various riffle designs. I just received the ABS plastic I ordered, and will soon get to work on what I think will be the final riffle setup. I'll post a video of it operating on my Youtube channel today.
Jim
 

Jim in Idaho

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Dry Sluice porn
The black sluice inside the blue sluice is a riffle test sluice made out of posterboard
Dry sluice 1.JPG Dry sluice 2.JPG Quick video
 

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The plastic case can make a nice wind tunnel and still hold in the dust.
 

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Jim in Idaho

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So it’s basically a dry panning machine? How does the recovery compare with a drywasher?
Well, I'm recovering Snake River flour with it. In Wyoming we even recovered garnets, which is really difficult. It's really too early to make any big claims, as I'm still making changes in the riffle design. The riffles make a big difference, but mostly for gems. But they do change recovery for very fine gold, too. I've had both, and the choice is really easy for me....I much prefer the dry sluice, though the feed rate is slower, which probably accounts for the flour gold recovery. The key to that is time in the sluice. You need to slow things down to give the flour time to settle. But drywashers, by their nature, tend to blow out fine gold, which the dry sluice doesn't do.
My short video doesn't show it, as I wasn't feeding, but when it's running it looks exactly like a water sluice...almost like there's invisible water.
Jim
 

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Well, I'm recovering Snake River flour with it. In Wyoming we even recovered garnets, which is really difficult. It's really too early to make any big claims, as I'm still making changes in the riffle design. The riffles make a big difference, but mostly for gems. But they do change recovery for very fine gold, too. I've had both, and the choice is really easy for me....I much prefer the dry sluice, though the feed rate is slower, which probably accounts for the flour gold recovery. The key to that is time in the sluice. You need to slow things down to give the flour time to settle. But drywashers, by their nature, tend to blow out fine gold, which the dry sluice doesn't do.
My short video doesn't show it, as I wasn't feeding, but when it's running it looks exactly like a water sluice...almost like there's invisible water.
Jim
That is interesting, I know gem locations where that might work well. Especially this place in Nevada I found years ago, very little gold but big garnets!
 

N-Lionberger

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The plastic case can make a nice wind tunnel and still hold in the dust.
What is all this? You’re always going on about this wind tunnel stuff with no example of it being done, leave the poor gun cases alone…
 

Jim in Idaho

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That is interesting, I know gem locations where that might work well. Especially this place in Nevada I found years ago, very little gold but big garnets!
One of the things I'm going to try, for gems, is using a sluice with a mesh bottom. The big negative issue for gems is what's called "Granular Convection", or the Brazil Nut effect. That's the tendency for small particles to "float" big particles. My thought is to get rid of everything smaller than the smallest gem I'm trying to recover, to reduce the amount of small particles. I have NOT tested this idea yet. All my other efforts, over the last 10 years, in this regard, have failed. This granular convention is still not well understood by physicists. The packaging industry has been trying to solve it for a hundred years, with little success. That's why I was fairly happy to see the garnets in Wyoming, though they were really small....maybe the particular motion I came up with, for the dry sluice, works to counter the effect.? Time will tell.
Jim
 

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Just starting to play with a pre-pulse chamber going into two boxes to see how things settle out.

Not willing to go any further until a number of issues are checked out.
 

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One of the things I'm going to try, for gems, is using a sluice with a mesh bottom. The big negative issue for gems is what's called "Granular Convection", or the Brazil Nut effect. That's the tendency for small particles to "float" big particles. My thought is to get rid of everything smaller than the smallest gem I'm trying to recover, to reduce the amount of small particles. I have NOT tested this idea yet. All my other efforts, over the last 10 years, in this regard, have failed. This granular convention is still not well understood by physicists. The packaging industry has been trying to solve it for a hundred years, with little success. That's why I was fairly happy to see the garnets in Wyoming, though they were really small....maybe the particular motion I came up with, for the dry sluice, works to counter the effect.? Time will tell.
Jim
The different particle matter sizes are moving / flowing at different frequencies and speed.
 

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Jim in Idaho

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The different particle matter sizes are moving / flowing at different frequencies and speed.
So what is your point? If you're going to make statements like that you should explain your thinking. Otherwise, it's just background noise.
Jim
 

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So what is your point? If you're going to make statements like that you should explain your thinking. Otherwise, it's just background noise.
Jim
Hard to deal with unless different frequencies involved. Not a simple project.
So classifying will help a lot.
 

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