- Jan 27, 2015
- 974
- 3,371
- 🏆 Honorable Mentions:
- 3
- Detector(s) used
-
Minelab Equinox 800
XP Deus 2
- Primary Interest:
- Metal Detecting
When I take my sluice out into the wild I typically take the buckets and classifiers along with it.
I hate classifying. It's very hard, maybe one of the hardest things for me in this prospecting hobby.
So I whipped up this little header box for my 8" sluice with stuff lying around the house. *** the design is inspired by someone else's pictures, and I wish I could give them credit but I can't find their post.
Like the other person's design, I combined the kitty litter box with a paint roller screen. I'm a little worried that the screen isn't very robust, and I know I'm not going to be able to shovel large volumes of material through this thing.
I had the spray bar lying around from another (failed) project, so I just repurposed it for this project. It connects to a garden hose, and I have a small Tsunami 12v bilge pump that will spray water into the header box.
Unlike the other design I saw, which was a recirculating sluice, I designed mine to sit in the river and use the river's water flow across the riffles as the primary water source (the pump and spray bar will just wash rocks). I envision needing to work really hard to get this contraption set up with just the right flow, but hey - it's a Version 1 design. I may add legs to the sluice to make it easier to get the right flow.
One final reason I build this: there's a spot I've gone up in New England (with some others from this forum) where the gold is trapped between pieces of slate and in moss, and recovering it involves washing off the dirty slate. Previously we've done this by just washing the slate in buckets; my hope is that this contraption makes the process much faster.
Anyway, I thought I'd share the design for 3 reasons:
1. maybe someone else has been wondering about something like this
2. maybe some of you have suggestions or critiques that could help me to improve the design
3, at the risk of asking a question I don't want to know the answer to, does anyone know if this type of setup violates any prospecting rules? For instance, some GPAA claims are "sluices, pans and shovels only. No high banking." Would my little setup break that rule? (again, I don't think I want to know the answer because I think I already know the answer....)
- Brian
I hate classifying. It's very hard, maybe one of the hardest things for me in this prospecting hobby.
So I whipped up this little header box for my 8" sluice with stuff lying around the house. *** the design is inspired by someone else's pictures, and I wish I could give them credit but I can't find their post.
Like the other person's design, I combined the kitty litter box with a paint roller screen. I'm a little worried that the screen isn't very robust, and I know I'm not going to be able to shovel large volumes of material through this thing.
I had the spray bar lying around from another (failed) project, so I just repurposed it for this project. It connects to a garden hose, and I have a small Tsunami 12v bilge pump that will spray water into the header box.
Unlike the other design I saw, which was a recirculating sluice, I designed mine to sit in the river and use the river's water flow across the riffles as the primary water source (the pump and spray bar will just wash rocks). I envision needing to work really hard to get this contraption set up with just the right flow, but hey - it's a Version 1 design. I may add legs to the sluice to make it easier to get the right flow.
One final reason I build this: there's a spot I've gone up in New England (with some others from this forum) where the gold is trapped between pieces of slate and in moss, and recovering it involves washing off the dirty slate. Previously we've done this by just washing the slate in buckets; my hope is that this contraption makes the process much faster.
Anyway, I thought I'd share the design for 3 reasons:
1. maybe someone else has been wondering about something like this
2. maybe some of you have suggestions or critiques that could help me to improve the design
3, at the risk of asking a question I don't want to know the answer to, does anyone know if this type of setup violates any prospecting rules? For instance, some GPAA claims are "sluices, pans and shovels only. No high banking." Would my little setup break that rule? (again, I don't think I want to know the answer because I think I already know the answer....)
- Brian
