clean up time

[efret]

I've been curious as to when I should be cleaning up my sluice box. Right now I've just been doing it every hour or so but that's not very scientific. How do you decided it's clean up time?

 

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[eureka77]

I've also wondered what other people are doing considering clean-up, good question.
I personally clean up on the norm. every five 5 gallon buckets to see what I'm getting, aside from the gold on the black mat. Other times when I'm lazy or doing good I just keep rolling until it is nothing but black sand behind the majority of the riffles. Depending on how much black sand is in the area I'm working it could be 6-10 five gallon buckets.
My figuring is once my riffles fill up with black sand, it'll be hard for the small gold to get trapped as well so I'll clean up.
This is just my expirence as the areas I work have alot of black sand and small gold, which is all I find. Shoot I'd have over an ounce by now but I always give it away to spread the fever. Nephews, my girls friends, dad, and brother.

 

[Tuberale]

Wish I could speak from experience. I'd clean when riffles were full of black sand. Magnetite and ilmenite very good indicators the riffles getting too full. Time or amount of sand processed are not as good indicators IMO. Another indicator, but not as strongly indicative, is where larger stones not behind riffles. Some areas will have more or less heavy materials. Quick test: put a couple of lead shot through the sluice. If they don't get trapped, you're missing some fine gold too, and a cleanup is appropriate.

 

[kuger]

You can spend too much time cleaning up.I clean up once,at the end of the day,and I have as heavy ladin black sand material as you will find.

People do not realize the stories of the gold rush days where they talk about multi ounce pans,were a clean up at the end of the week

 

[TAKODA]

You can spend too much time cleaning up.I clean up once,at the end of the day,and I have as heavy ladin black sand material as you will find.

People do not realize the stories of the gold rush days where they talk about multi ounce pans,were a clean up at the end of the week

 

[FiresEye]

While running a gutter sluice, you can actually catch more gold than a store bought sluice.... if you're careful. You can also loose much more gold than someone with zero experience and a nice keen sluice. Thus, it's all about trying to classify material before sluicing, which then eliminates cleanup times because you can have two sluices... one for the fines, one for the rouger nuggets.. Both in the same stream, and both fed the same starter material.. the difference being classification and water flow. Slower water flow for the fine sluice and of couse faster for the..... oh, you get it.

 

[bedrock bubba]

I only clean up at the end of my day!

Why? Because I use a fine gold recovery sluice that has just the rubber riffle matting on it. It uses a shallow sheet laminar flow, and the gold just gloms onto the little riffles and stays there. And 95% of my black sand has washed out. Seive everything down to 1/4 ".
So when I go home, I have clean gold in my vial.

I finish up using the rectangular Le Trap pan. You end up with clean gold that way.

No big heavy buckets of black sand to haul home and hassle with.

 

[kuger]

That works too,but my time in the feild is getting the gold....then later at home or camp,after dark I do the separating......I have a buyer for my black sand though too