Cleaning your green or blue sluice matting

[No gold in NY]

When cleaning up your sluice at the river do you slosh the matting up and down, shake, and beat it in a bucket of water and think it is clean? Guess again.

I use to think I was doing a good job until I got a rare brain storm. You may like my method.

Lay a couple wood strips on your bench. I used 2X2.

Place black plastic over strips to form trough.

Lay in a piece of 1/2" or 1/4" hardware cloth to fit.

Place matting up side down in hardware cloth.

Apply your vibrating sander. Remove sand paper and replace with black plastic.

You will need to do this several times. The sand keeps coming and coming.

 

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[Dirthogg]

You are totally correct.I use a random orbital sander.It works very well with actual carpet,we find that after the carpet is dried then we vibrate and the fine gold some of it so small you can't even see it till it's brushed into a pile.Totallly amazing how much gets trapped in the fibers of the carpet.Great info!DH

 

[Ragnor]

That's really cool! I have an old blue mat lying here from a sluice Ive been using since the 1990's I just havn't been able to bring myself to burn it. I just replaced it this past year.
Now I can get a whole bunch of fine flour gold too small to work with, LOL! But it really is a great idea.

 

[No gold in NY]

I got a bunch of sand out from the photo shoot. If there is any gold it will be too small for me to see.

 

[Bonaro]

I have smooth concrete floors in my garage. After my mats are all dried out I throw them on the floor and slap them all over with a 2x4, flat side down. Shake them, turn them repeat then sweep the floor. I usually free up over a quart of fines sand from my 5" 3 stage mats.