Goldwell gone? Oh well, no Goldwell

[Reed Lukens]

I tried contacting Goldwell a few times in the last month to see where they've been and to try to decide whether to get a Gold Cube or the 48" Goldwell for our hardrock crushed first stage and guess what Absolutely no reply to the email or call backs by phone after the messages I left to try and communicate with them. So I called Mike Pung Friday at Gold Cube and set up an order with him for a Gold Cube Trommel instead. This way we will have a cube trommel for our first stage right out of the crusher and then my partner Rodney has his cube for deep in the bush.

Anyone ever tried adding a stage to the Gold Cube with Gold Hog UR or Bedrock mat instead of Vortex?

 

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[russau]

LP13 I agree with your statement that on your newer ideas to hold off and NOT present them! look what happened to Phil Hontzs DFS sluice(Dam Fine Sluice) after he posted pictures and explained how it worked! and there are other examples of a persons work being copied and then everyone was building them! Phil has a new design but now he wants to sell it to a manufactor to prevent this from happening again to him!

 

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[bobw53]

As far as why it takes so long for me to get the sales up and running again, it's because I am broke and have no one that I know (well before recently) that had any money sufficient to get manufacturing launched properly. I have to order parts in small batches and because of that pay a high price. When a machine shop has to set up their machine and run parts, and only run a few parts, it's a nuisance job and not apt to make a good profit for them, and so the prices of parts are far higher than if I ordered parts in the thousands.

The quantity thing... Tough to get around that... Material is cheaper in quantity. I went to buy 5 sticks of aluminum the other day. $40 bucks a piece..
Asked about going to 10 sticks, $25 a piece.... So I got to double the material for 25% more. If I went further it should have been around
$14 a stick.

As far as making small quantities.. That can also get expensive. Have you thought about offering a blanket order to get your cost down.. What I mean
is a minimum of so many parts per month for so many months.. A little more risk on your end, but the shop can order up material for 4 months of
production, run it all.. Pay off the material the first month, eat the labor and time, but then its all gravy for them the next few months.

I do this a lot with one customer... He needs 2 parts now... I don't want to set up and run just 2 parts, he doesn't want to pay for me to run just
2 parts... He buys enough material for me to make 40, and then I sit on them until he needs them. He pays a slightly higher price than if he took and
paid for all 40 at once, but he pays far less than if I had to set up and make just 2 parts. And down the road, I get a nice little stream of essentially
free money for doing nothing but writing an invoice. I take it in the shorts a little on the initial production, but once I get it set up, it just runs and I can
go off and do something else.

If you pay for the material yourself up front, that can drop your cost too... A machine shop isn't a bank, and they need to get something back for
essentially loaning you money, so they are always going to mark up the material a little bit. There is also the time involved in getting material quotes,
writing the purchase order and then having to write the check.

Also on the side plates and the sheet aluminum you are using.. Are those being machined or do you have somebody cutting them with a laser or a waterjet?

I assume for now you are doing the assembly and packaging and shipping yourself? That can save you a bunch, or if you're too busy with a 9-5 job and family,
get some kid down the street to do it, it'll be far cheaper than having a machine shop do it.

A lot of ways for you to cut down your costs, until you get a decent volume of sluices going out the door.

 

[bobw53]

or making them in-house (which I personally would prefer.) If I can make them in-house I can quickly make changes when I want or need to and retain all the profits and get my prices down some. But the prices will probably never be as low as a bent sheet metal sluice of traditional design, it's just not realistic to think that you could. And I really am not prone to sacrifice the quality. Maybe later when someone else owns the company they will make galvanized steel, stamped out riffle Gold Wells that can sell for under $150, but not me.

I haven't looked at much more than the little swirly things, but if I were you... And I'm not... Bring the sluice part in-house, that's really the only mill part on there that I can see.
Its also the part that is *important* and proprietary. A CNC mill can be had cheap... My first was a series 10 Acroloc, $1800. I pulled $140k off of that machine before I sold it. It
was slow, not really rigid, but she got the job done. Ran it on a phase converter.

I would sub all of that sheet metal stuff out. Laser or waterjet... Both very expensive machines, and not cheap to run or maintain. Most fab shops are also really good at bending stuff
too.

As for the threaded spacers... You might be running into a quantity problem again. There is also the problem of you are being tagged with "inventor"....
Not the inventor of the sluice, but the general tag of "inventor"... "inventors" can be a HUGE pain in the ass.. I've never had one completely pan out yet... I've made money
on a few of them(lost a lot of time talking to bunches of them). But I have yet to see real production(I've done a little), though I'm working on it right now with one guy, trying to set him up with low dollar
machines (mainly drill presses and fixtures, and assembly) to do the easy stuff himself, and hopefully down the road get him set up to produce the entire product himself. I did the prototypes,
and sort of the same boat you are in. A high end product.

Here is one I did have fun with.. And it actually relates to the GOLD forum.

I just did the machining. 3/4" aluminum plate. 34" in diameter or something. The legs and the feet are all fancy....
The customer did all the plating and coating, and sourcing of the glass.

Prototype.. I made the phallic symbol sculpture (short fat one) on the top also. Supposed to be the record player spindle.

Short production run.

And that is real genuine gold plating... Some poor sucker had to sluice his ass off for that gold.

And then just screwing around... I made some coasters for the table, and he thought it was cool... As samples, and I made a few more dollars off of that.

The pics are for no particular reason, I just don't feel like working right now.

 

[Hard Prospector]

I've been watching this thread and it really sucks the way you were victomized by scheming low-life poachers. Glad to hear things are improving, sounds like quite a journey.

 

[LP13]

It's certainly been a study in human nature at it's worst where greed and gold are concerned. All the people that tried copying me were certain that I just wasn't doing it right, and that they could make the sluice cheaper and make more money than me, and become overnight millionaires. Didn't happen. I understood that it would take a long time to prove my invention and establish a reputation, so I was prepared for the long haul and all the hard work it would take to get there. And being broke while I did it. That never entered these guys' minds, and so when they didn't get rich fast they became disillusioned. They didn't want to work hard to make money, they wanted to be the 'overnight sensation' that when they turned on their internet sales they would become the next Zuckerberg. Happened to my brother too. Greed and wanting it all overnight. He was sure that the market globally was tens of millions of customers. My estimate was more like a few hundred thousand spread out over 10 years or more. Couldn't convince him that it wasn't going to happen the way he imagined, and when it didn't, he bailed. But I expected that too. So I guess it's up to me to continue. One difference between me and the others who copied me. For me it's a work of art, an expression of me in a way. So I will always strive to make it the best I can. Others will only strive to make it as cheap as they can and make the most profit they can. Ultimately will I succeed, or will it be someone making a knockoff of it? Time will tell. But one thing so far is pretty well established. That the Gold Well is one of the most efficient gold sluices out there able to recover some ridiculously fine gold at warp speed to boot.

 

[russau]

Good thread LP13! and to top it off , you've kept calm with a cool head about the entire thing! SALUTE! My days of dredgeing / prospecting are winding down really fast (faster than id like to see! ) BUT if I had the time / health / money id like to of had one of your Gold Sluices ! Good Luck on your adventure!

 

[KevinInColorado]

I agree with Russ. You have won me over with your genuineness and candor. I was a skeptic but now I'm cheering for you!

 

[triple d]

Keep doing what your doing. It is a small market. You have faith in your product. It built very high in Quality. It does the intended job well.Your in it for the long haul. You never know what tomorrow will bring. Rome wasn"t built in a day. You just have to work hard to promote your products. Best of luck.

 

[DizzyDigger]

<snip>I can clean every last micron speck of gold out of a gallon of my cons in about a minute to minute and a half.

Sure do hope that Chslbrns doesn't see this...we'd never hear the end of it..

 

[delnorter]

You are correct about the expenses of advertising LP13. Let me do a little word of mouth.

I, along with a number of other prospectors, was shown how the Gold Well Sluice works by my friend Derek, here in Northern California. We were all truly impressed. It captured all the gold we were able to see by eye, from small to large.

Derek is a very successful and expert miner. He basically said, after using this sluice, you'll throw rocks at the other products.

All the best to you for your honest efforts.

Mike

 

[LP13]

Thanks everyone for the support. I mean it.

 

[LP13]

... I can't even find a patent for it. Do you have a patent #? ...

Sure ... 14852328
Two previous provisionals too

 

[russau]

yep! proof is in the pudding!

 

[Timberdoodle]

Hi LP13, This patent application came up recently in another thread. Vertical Vortex Generating Sluice/Slurry Separator - PETERSON DAVID S. This application is from the Khrysos vortex sluice, but it looks to contain a picture of your sluice (fig. 12b) as one of the possible embodiments of his design claim. Hopefully you are aware of this and already let the Patent office know. I'd hate to see you have to deal with this type of problem having to take the time to prove your prior art if he was ever issued a patent especially after all the other problems you have run into with unscrupulous characters.
Really like your sluice!!! I wish you all the best getting back into production.


WOW! I just found the matching pic in his application. It's right out of the HMResearch main page of revolving pic's. I'd nail him and his patent attorney.