Well, I got it in the creek, and it works a hell of a lot better. Gets better than 80% of the water down the sluice, and virtually 100% of the half inch minus. Got a good slurry depth going now, too. Somewhere between 3/4 and 1" depth. Just what the Doc ordered!
My next mission is to decide if I should put some expanded metal over Doc's mats. Doc says on his web site that I have it right, so I think instead, I will look at adding a 14" flared secondary sluice after my primary sluice. That seems like money better spent. Also, if I don't have space, I can just run the primary sluice. It looks really good running, with only about 1/2" of material stacking up behind the riffles in the matting. Clears out quickly, and I believe I have the right pitch. I caught some small flakes yesterday, and I have yet to run the material through the table, so I will see how small I caught.
Also, I need to work on adjusting the pitch of header box. I had to do a bit of clearing of the grizzly, and I hope that by raising the angle, I can avoid some of that.
Also, I found that I need to install a flare at the outlet pipe for the header box. If I let it simply pour into the box, it splatters considerably, and has a faster velocity out of the back of the header box, and pushes more of my good material out the back as well. But, when I put my fingers over the outlet hose, it boiled nicely in the front of the box, and slowed down the velocity considerably. This allowed a lot more of my good material to hit the sluice. I found a large rock that sat perfectly on the outlet tube and flared out the water. It worked so well, that I actually found some of the smaller rocks sitting in the biol zone for quite a bit of time. That seems like a very good thing to me!!!
So, I will work on using some aluminum and maybe a trucker's mud flap or some old tire to make a flapper.
Wish me luck!
