1st Homemade sluice

[eureka77]

Made with stuff had laying around the garage including the welcome home mat I cut up
Gonna try it tomorrow, sure I'll find some improvments that I'm gonna have to make but it's a new toy.

 

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[maui]

cool, looks good and let us know how it worked out for you.
take care and be safe out there. ron

 

[Astrobouncer]

Hey Eureka. Looks well done for a first sluice. I would say you can improve on it very easily though by adding some kind of expanded metal or gutter guard over the carpeting areas. Also there is a riffled carpeting you can get at home depot for like a couple dollars for a couple feet that is awesome at holding gold. I wish I had known about this stuff a year ago, I would have caught a lot more fine gold.

The carpeting looks like this:



When I started using this stuff my fine gold retention went way way up! I am so crazy about how good this carpeting is that I now run a complete sluice made out of this stuff behind my regular sluice and yes, it catches fines that get out of my 20+ riffles in my main sluice!

This is some of the riffles in my main sluice they are even sealed on the bottom with cloth strips and clamps on the side exert force downward, and the really fine stuff (below 40 mesh) will still get out, but the carpeting sluice will catch those.



Also check out some other cheap materials you can use to hold and capture gold:



Top left the wire mesh stuff is gutter guard and its pretty cheap but it works great. Under that is toolbox liner and it will catch and hold heavies as well. And to the right of those is the rubber V matting I got at a local rubber mat company for like 13 dollars for a 4 foot by 1 foot section. You can probably find some v matting like that at a rubber store near you.

Anyway, just trying to help ya improve it. Good luck out there and hope you catch lots of shiny stuff. Oh and another tip: make sure you use some kind of water proofing on the wood like varnish, Thompson's water seal or even polyurethane. Otherwise the wood will warp and expand from the water.

 

[eureka77]

Thanks.
That sluice is sweet Astro! Hope ya don't mind if I copy your design for my 2nd build. I just built this one to try out in the creek, trying to learn what it looks like with water running through it, the eddy action of the ripples, how to elevate the top from the bottom, and water flow.
I think I'm getting the hang of it, slowly but surely. I notice I get alot of build up in the last stretch.... more water flow needed?
But yeah I might pm [bug] yah for details of that sluice when I start on my 2nd if I cant follow it from your hungarian riffle post.

 

[Astrobouncer]

Hey Eureka, did you ever get a chance to try this or work on it anymore?

 

[eureka77]

Yeah, tried it out for about a half hour just to see how it worked. I bought some deep v mat from cotton patch and just waiting to go to home depot to get the gutter guard. Not going out again with it until the improvements are done. Need to get back on the ball with it.