Why punch plate?

[A_Sly1_U]

I see so many sluices and dredges using punch plate to classify. Why punch plate and not round bar like a mini grizzly? In the Clarkson survey it talks about how punch plate is a poor screen. Why do so many still use it?

 

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[Jason in Enid]

because grizzly bars let long, thin rocks go through which will cause you to blow out your small gold, and they are prone to jambing. Jamb up your sluice while you are underwater and you may find your dredge sitting next to you on the bottom. Or at the least, you will blow out all the gold you sucked up until you get it cleared.

 

[A_Sly1_U]

That makes sense. Thanks. How about using the heavy duty 1/4 or 1/2 inch screen like they use on the bucket classifiers but cut to fit over the sluice. It seems like that would work much better than punch plate.

 

[AzViper]

That makes sense. Thanks. How about using the heavy duty 1/4 or 1/2 inch screen like they use on the bucket classifiers but cut to fit over the sluice. It seems like that would work much better than punch plate.

If you classify as I do then there is no need for a punch plate. I had ask Doc at Gold Hog about his mats and how to set them up for my sluice to be used under my trommel. My trommel will classify to 1/2" prior to dumping into the sluice but he suggested using a punch plate of 1/4" raised 1/2 inch off of the sluice bottom. In my case I do not see I need a punch plate but I may be wrong. If I am dropping 1/2" classified dirt/rock onto the 1/4" punch plate the 1/2" rock is going where after the 1/4" material has passed through the punch plate? In my eyes its going to the same place it would go without the punch plate that being down the sluice. At the end of my sluice I will be installing a fluid bed gold trap that will have very small holes to catch the super fine gold.

 

[Hoser John]

Because it works better than anything else is why no matter what insipid studies say. Once the industry converted over to over/under it has proven to be the best medium without flushing way too much water to your under current.There are literally 100s of sizes and configurations to punchplate and to condem all because of 1 is funny as a rubber crutch. Are 10 million dredgers wrong over 42 years I can attest to? Your talking apples and oranges as huge long sluicebox study and NOT a dredge-John

 

[TheNewCatfish]

Why do people buy commercially made equipment off the internet ? Anybody with half a brain and a little experience can build their own sluice box or highbanker for about 1/10 th the cost of a commercial one. And it won't be full of gimmicky screens and miner's moss that waste your time either. If you do a good job classifying your material, all you should be running in your sluice box is rubber matting. Putting anything ontop the matting will just reduce its efficiency. It's that simple.

 

[kuger]

The 49 ers used it

 

[Doitlaynstyle]

My very first attempt at using punch plate is demonstrated in the first six seconds of the following video. You can see that it is clogged, and causing problems with water blowing out and who knows what it was doing underneath at the riffles. When running small amounts of material I guess it would work ok but when you are doing 100 bucket runs like we are doing (2-2.5 tons at a time) it just is another thing to clean and tend to. If you are worried about classification and your gold blowing out you need to set your system up to work with the size of material you will be running. I am running 1" angle riffles tilted so they are about 1-1/8" tall and my grizzlies classify to about 1/2". Those rocks pile up in front of the first riffle on top of my V-Mat creating a ramp and a fine gold drop out area, and yet strangely they do not get stuck behind those riffles. Then my setup ramps down to 1/2" angles for the final stretch which gives me another slow down area that any medium missed gold gets caught in. The first video shows you the punch plate problem and the second will show you the 1/2" nugget we found that we would not have found if we had been using the punch plate.

 

[Doitlaynstyle]

Why do people buy commercially made equipment off the internet ? Anybody with half a brain and a little experience can build their own sluice box or highbanker for about 1/10 th the cost of a commercial one. And it won't be full of gimmicky screens and miner's moss that waste your time either. If you do a good job classifying your material, all you should be running in your sluice box is rubber matting. Putting anything ontop the matting will just reduce its efficiency. It's that simple.

I agree with most of your post but I dont agree with the bit about mats and moss. If built correctly the use of mats and moss only increase fine gold retention.

 

[kuger]

I agree with most of your post but I dont agree with the bit about mats and moss. If built correctly the use of mats and moss only increase fine gold retention.

...yea,show me rubber matt that will retain flour gold

 

[Doitlaynstyle]

...yea,show me rubber matt that will retain flour gold

Ok here ya go. Here's how I catch all of my flour gold.

 

[Doitlaynstyle]

...yea,show me rubber matt that will retain flour gold

And here too. BTW I frigging love your signature line. So right on point

 

[kuger]

I cant watch vids,but will take your word for it....nice!

 

[Jimmydolittle]

...yea,show me rubber matt that will retain flour gold

It's all we have in Indiana, I'm using Gold Hog with good results.

 

[A_Sly1_U]

My very first attempt at using punch plate is demonstrated in the first six seconds of the following video. You can see that it is clogged, and causing problems with water blowing out and who knows what it was doing underneath at the riffles. When running small amounts of material I guess it would work ok but when you are doing 100 bucket runs like we are doing (2-2.5 tons at a time) it just is another thing to clean and tend to. If you are worried about classification and your gold blowing out you need to set your system up to work with the size of material you will be running. I am running 1" angle riffles tilted so they are about 1-1/8" tall and my grizzlies classify to about 1/2". Those rocks pile up in front of the first riffle on top of my V-Mat creating a ramp and a fine gold drop out area, and yet strangely they do not get stuck behind those riffles. Then my setup ramps down to 1/2" angles for the final stretch which gives me another slow down area that any medium missed gold gets caught in. The first video shows you the punch plate problem and the second will show you the 1/2" nugget we found that we would not have found if we had been using the punch plate.

YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvH2Rr4uTus&feature=share&list=UUt-1aaFBefwV-zYbV_4PYJQ

YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7uJAHwH_ww&feature=share&list=UUt-1aaFBefwV-zYbV_4PYJQ

I see in your video you're retorting Hg with a cheese grater supporting your torch. I must issue a word of caution about cross contamination. Mercury is toxic at very low doses if it has the right pathway to enter the body. Even small amounts of metal fumes escaping can potentially contaminate the tools you're working with. I wouldn't use anything that I'd used around Hg in my home. The image we portray as miners on a public forum such as you tube is most certainly monitored by the enviro-nutsos. Personally in any conversation about mining with a non-miner I always try and avoid the subject of mercury or I stress how modern methods remove it from the environment. I think many of the problems we face today as miners are in some part self inflicted. A lack of forethought in the way we deal with those that don't share our own interests has caused a lot of extra headache at times. Anyway...I'm getting off subject. Thank you for posting your video. Having to tend a punch plate like you show in the video is exactly what makes me question if there isn't a better way.

 

[Jason in Enid]

My very first attempt at using punch plate is demonstrated in the first six seconds of the following video. You can see that it is clogged, and causing problems with water blowing out and who knows what it was doing underneath at the riffles.

That's because it's setup wrong. You don't have anywhere near enough water to wash the gravel across that punch plate. Punch plate works fine as long as the sluice was designed for it and not added in as an afterthought.

 

[Doitlaynstyle]

I see in your video you're retorting Hg with a cheese grater supporting your torch. I must issue a word of caution about cross contamination. Mercury is toxic at very low doses if it has the right pathway to enter the body. Even small amounts of metal fumes escaping can potentially contaminate the tools you're working with. I wouldn't use anything that I'd used around Hg in my home. The image we portray as miners on a public forum such as you tube is most certainly monitored by the enviro-nutsos. Personally in any conversation about mining with a non-miner I always try and avoid the subject of mercury or I stress how modern methods remove it from the environment. I think many of the problems we face today as miners are in some part self inflicted. A lack of forethought in the way we deal with those that don't share our own interests has caused a lot of extra headache at times. Anyway...I'm getting off subject. Thank you for posting your video. Having to tend a punch plate like you show in the video is exactly what makes me question if there isn't a better way.

It it's a knife sharpener. And none of the evaporated mercury ever hits the air outside the retort. I have since built a stand for the bottle and I use regular propane now cuz map gas is very hot yes but very expensive. It causes the Merc to boil right there in the cup and can splash the gold out instead of just evaporating around the gold. I appreciate your concerns and they have been already been addressed as I had the same ones. That is a gold pan underneath of it there and I don't even use it for panning anymore because the Merc falls out in almost invisible beads in the water and all it would take would be a tiny bead lodged in a scratch in the pan and a cut in my finger.... as far as the enviro nuts... fvck em... they are always scared of the things they don't understand and I wish that their fear was so bad that they would never leave their houses....

(EDIT cause I didn't have time to finish before I left for work this morning) I try to avoid conversations with them all together for the most part. I was approached by a couple hippie looking hikers (you know the type, khaki shorts, designer boots, bandanas for sweat bands) while highbanking and they asked if they could watch and I said yes. They stood there for a long time asking the usual questions and as usual I was thinking c'mon guys I only have two hours left today before I have to clean up, I need to get some work done. Then it shifted to a question about the discharged water and the silt and I stopped him in his tracks by saying that the discharged water contains .0001 percent of the silt that is discharged during spring runoff and storms. He said but doesn't that hurt the fish? I told him to go over to the waters edge and watch. The minnows were feeding right there in the silt. They gaggled over that for quite a while and then they moved on.... That was a good day

 

[Sick4gold]

It's all we have Indiana...

I disagree


I'll spell out "Indiana" when I run those cons this winter
True we have far more flour gold but there's decent gold here too

Also this little bugger. Doesn't look like much but pic doesn't do justice. She's small but fat and dense.

 

[A_Sly1_U]

I grew up un Northern Indiana. There's decent gold to be found all along the Wabash River. Just google indiana moraine map and find a place where the glaciers dumped their rocks and you can get into the gold.

 

[Aurabbit79er]

Here is my A52 with a punch plate in the flair that extends over the first riffle.





Now more gold stops on the ridged matt in the flair.