Never sluiced before - Made my own.

[lokiie1984]

I have never used a sluice before but figured one would be handy to have so after reading up on them online i made one myself out of an old metal sign and some frame pieces. I can post some pictures here tomorrow and i will go into more detail on what i used then.

For now i have two questions: First, i want to use a Black Vinyl Ribbed Mat for the matting. I figure when using scrap for the rest of it, the matting should at least be something good. Plus it looks like the easiest mat to do clean outs on, at least for the mats my local store sells. Now my question is, for any one that has used this stuff. How thick is it? I need to know so i can drill holes to pin my riffles in place and still have them sitting on of the mat plus the diamond wire mesh that i would have on top of the mat. I will most likely have to wait a week before i could buy the mat. But i would like to get the sluice done.

The second question i have is, when you go to a river/stream/creek and the water is deep, how do you set up the sluice? The creek we plan to go to, i have never seen before but i imagine the water is on the deeper side this time of year. I mean the area still has snow on the ground. So if it is a little deeper do you just set it up on the bank or in a sand bar? So far that's the only thing i cant figure out online, every time i see a sluicing video or read about it, the water is always really low.

Thanks.

 

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[wingmaster]

I think you want to use rubber matting as I'm not so sure the vinyl ribbed matting will hold the gold very well.

 

[lokiie1984]

I think you want to use rubber matting as I'm not so sure the vinyl ribbed matting will hold the gold very well.

Do you have any pictures of of good rubber matting, so i know what I'm looking for. My local shop only carries the vinyl and some kind of carpet and i personally don't think i would like the carpet style. I'm looking into rubber matting but so far everything with good looking grooves are crazy priced.

 

[Duckwalk]

Its actually difficult to give many suggestions without a good understanding of what your sluice looks like.

 

[KevinInColorado]

One thought tho...you will want the riffles to be easily removable. Most build them in a frame (like a ladder laid flat in the sluice) which clips to the sides of the sluice.

 

[wingmaster]

What state do you live in? Do you have a dunham belting and rubber in your state? I know they sell on-line as well and if you call them they most likely have some scrap pieces that would be cheap that will probably work for you.

 

[lokiie1984]

I will get some pictures here soon and you guys can take a look. The riffles are set up in their own tray that can be pulled/slid out. Our plan is to pin the riffle frame down with bolts or something similar so its as low as possible. Right now there is a pretty large gap below the riffles and i worry that any sand or gravel would just be carried under them by the water. I doubt any mat would be thick enough to make for the space.

It doesn't look like we have any dunham belting companies here but we do have a conveyer belt supplier here that might have some scraps. I live in Cheyenne WY, so must of the choices are a bit limited.

 

[Duckwalk]

Miners moss is thicker than mats, although im not a huge fan of it, it would def fill the void. also, i would use something with wingnuts for easy field removal of the riffles.

 

[lokiie1984]

Here are some pictures:

It is a bit on the rusty side in parts but it was made from scrap. Before i toss it in a stream i plan to run some sand and gravel we have here to help clean it up and break off some that rust. Then i can see what i have left over and if i need to redo the riffles.

 

[Duckwalk]

Nice! here are my concerns that i see right off the bat. If those are little slots cut into your riffles, that is going to interrupt your low pressure zone behind each riffle thus flushing gold right out of the sluice. the expanded metal looks pretty thin to me, but it would act as a barrier between the riffles and matting/moss you use for sure. if you can get some raised expanded metal, that would really be best to create a mini vortex behind each raised piece to catch the finer gold.

Someone else care to chime in? im by no means an expert sluicer.

 

[lokiie1984]

Unfortunately it is very limited on what i have to use. Short of going to the store and buying materials anyway. The sign that i used for the box is kinda thin but its pretty damn sturdy, getting it to bend was by no means easy. The mouth piece was considerably easier to work with. As for the riffles, most do have those thin slots cut into them. Originally they were used for tracks in wire animal cages. They would go under the cage in a frame to set a tray on. They were originally 90 degrees and i hammered em until they looked right.

We are using scrap to make scrap, quite literally. Our anvil is a sledge hammer and my hammer is a lead hammer that must be 50 years old or more. For the riffles i can dig around and see if i can find some better metal to work with, we do have some of the wavy tin that maybe i could cut. But its rounded and i don't know if that would effect anything. See the picture here to see what i mean.

I am thinking it would be better to replace those though as even the spot welds we used to hold them in the frame is coming apart. The old rusted metal just cant hold and the welding was burning away more metal then it welded.

 

[Duckwalk]

If you have to make what youhave work, you can always get some silicon and small pieces of thick plastic over those open slots.

 

[lokiie1984]

i ran it through a test, and i honestly cant tell if its performing correctly or not. Sadly the closest stream is 2 miles away and i don't have a car so i cant really test it with that. I tried pouring water from a bucket over it but that doesn't seem to be working very well.

In the test pour sand did get to the last riffle but most of it just dropped onto the mat i put on it. i do live out in the country with well water so i suppose i could try and dam up a pool of water and make my own stream.

When you buy a sluice what angle degree is the riffles normally? These are pretty close to 45 degrees, or at least i think so, i have no way to really measure it. And do they need to have bend in them or can they just be normal flat slats of metal welded into the frame at a 45 degree angle?

 

[Sluiceguy42]

Dumping water usually isn't a good way to show how well the riffles work because the water flow isn't evenly spread out, and there is usually not enough water coming in. The water needs to be at a constant flow so that the riffles clear properly. Also, in order for the riffles to work, there has to be no air under the the riffles. To have an even flow of water coming in, you could try sticking pieces of metal or wood at the front and then right before the first riffle and then use a hose and fill it up to make a little pond, then let it overflow. It might work.

 

[lokiie1984]

We did see enough to know that our riffles wouldn't work as planned, they were too far up off the mat so all the water/gravel just slid under em and maybe 10% got into the riffles. So we decided to go with some different riffles and a slightly smaller riffle frame that should sit in there better. They will be a little less wide too. The ones we had were at least two inches, the new ones should be an inch or so.

It would be so much easier to just go to the local prospecting shop and buy a sluice... but then i guess i wouldn't have anything to do until I'm able to get up to the creek. Maybe if my homemade one catches me a couple grams of gold i will be able to afford to buy a real one lol.

 

[benny]

Good info on riffles found here
http://www.hecklerfabrication.com/files/sluice-build-partIII-2.pdf

 

[Reed Lukens]

don't make them higher than ½". They can be long but the height for the amount of water is critical. ¼ to ½" high varied will catch the gold. Or you could go rip some bark off a bug tree and have a ready built sluice with the wormwood riffles°°°