DIY Recirculating Sluice

[au79ramona]

Drywallman and myself were given information on a very rich spot for the area we live in (thanks Jeff!) We have worked the spot many times using buckets of water we have transported in and panned the dirt there. I am wanting to build a portable recirculating sluice that I can carry into the location. I plan on having around 120g of water to use each time we go. The dirt is very thick and full of clay. Knowing this what dimensions should the sluice be? What should I use to capture the gold?
I was thinking 7"x30" for the sluice and feed it a shovel full at a time. Miners moss or carpet under expanded metal? Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

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[NuggetN8]

Drywallman and myself were given information on a very rich spot for the area we live in (thanks Jeff!) We have worked the spot many times using buckets of water we have transported in and panned the dirt there. I am wanting to build a portable recirculating sluice that I can carry into the location. I plan on having around 120g of water to use each time we go. The dirt is very thick and full of clay. Knowing this what dimensions should the sluice be? What should I use to capture the gold? I was thinking 7"x30" for the sluice and feed it a shovel full at a time. Miners moss or carpet under expanded metal? Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Here's one of my little portable setups. I wasn't recirculating in the pic but could easily do so if I put a tub at the end instead.




Just an ez sluice with a stand made of electrical conduit. Small pump that runs on a battery. Spray bar made of PVC pipe with holes drilled in it, and cheap hose going between the pump and bar. It's a cheap setup but works really well with very little water.

 

[Goodyguy]

Drywallman and myself were given information on a very rich spot for the area we live in (thanks Jeff!) We have worked the spot many times using buckets of water we have transported in and panned the dirt there. I am wanting to build a portable recirculating sluice that I can carry into the location. I plan on having around 120g of water to use each time we go. The dirt is very thick and full of clay. Knowing this what dimensions should the sluice be? What should I use to capture the gold?
I was thinking 7"x30" for the sluice and feed it a shovel full at a time. Miners moss or carpet under expanded metal? Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Clay and sluice are not a good combination especially when recirculating.

Be sure and use "clay gone" and "jet dry" have at least 2 tubs, 3 would be better, 4 would be even better, and run the water from tub to tub to give the dirt and clay a chance to settle. Once the density of the water in your sluice reaches a thick consistency anything smaller than a picker will not be as likely to drop out of suspension and will end up running out of the sluice and into the first or even second tub so you may as well quit sluicing at that point until the water clears up or you are just going to be wasting time.

In addition the use of a deflocculant also greatly speeds up the breakdown of clay lumps into soup prior to sluicing. (place material into a 5 gal bucket half full of water add the deflocculant and use a cordless drill with paint stirrer)

Some of the more common deflocculants are sodium and potassium carbonate, sodium and potassium hydroxide, sodium silicate, phosphates and polyphosphates and sodium and ammonium oxalates.

http://www.prospectingchannel.com/claygone.html


GG~

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Thanks guys, ya I know it's going to need to be at least a 3 container system, using 20-30 gallons of water. Just haven't decided what is the best size, and matting etc.

 

[Goodyguy]

20 to 30 gallons in each container I hope.

It's pretty much a given that the water will thicken pretty fast so I would suggest a narrow long sluice as opposed to a shorter wide sluice.
7" wide was a good choice but 30" is pretty short for running pea soup. I'd double that length and have at least a foot of slick plate before the raised expanded over the miners moss. Just stop and dump your cons into a bucket whenever the moss gets loaded up. (stick a finger in the moss while it's running, if the moss is spongy keep running, if it's hard stop and do a clean up) That will also give the water a little time to clear.

Wouldn't hurt to put a 1/2" to 3/4" tall gate across the end of the sluice to help keep the sluice fluid and stop any gold from migrating off the end. A piece of 1/2" or 3/4" angle aluminum clamped to the end makes a great gate, and easy to remove if you want to.

Running riffles spaced no more than 3" apart over moss or carpet would be better than using the raised expanded in my opinion.
But if you dont have any riffles to use then raised expanded would be the second choice. Also when running thick water the moss would be better than carpet in my opinion.

Check this vid out look at how thick the water is with three tubs going.







GG~

 

[specksandflecks]

Sounds like a cool project. Is there any way you can make some type of simple cistern to hold rain water?

Assuming you can have gasoline engines those little wx15 or similar are decent little pumps. Overall that GHX50 is a great little motor. Sips the gas and makes decent power while still being lightweight. As with anything Honda though they co$t.

I have never done any dry placer mining though so I'm just throwing this out there out of curiosity.

What I think would be cool is a 2 part system using 2 separate water supplies. One for washing rocks, dirt/clay and the other for recovery/sluicing. I'm picturing something similar to a small, back packable cement mixer maybe with a rough classifying screen say 3/8"~3/4" inside it. There is a guy on youtube using a larger version of what I'm picturing. This would batch process say about a 5 gallon bucket worth of material at a time. When finished with the batch, tilt it one way to dump off the water into your dirty wash water tub and back the other way to dump the undersize gravels in the other tub. I'm picturing the oversize dumping out beyond the undersize bucket as any classifying screen/drum would stick out beyond the lip of the washer/mixer. Then run another batch of dirt while you sluice the first batch of hopefully cleaner gravels.

There would still be a lot of sediment to deal with in the mixer/washer circuit whether the water is batch processed along with the diggins or constantly recirculated and I'd think it would be an issue either way. These sediments could be dealt with in typical settling, screening ways, but in addition to that I have wondered if there would be any benefit to using basically a type of spin down trap filter similar to whats used in well water systems with heavy sediment loads.

2-3 spin downs daisy chained with the right size progressive screens should be able to cut down on some of that sediment load. I'm picturing a basic spin down trap filter here but the spin down would be about 5-6" diameter and would have a detachable trap about the size of a 5 gallon bucket .

If Goodyguy Inc. or Angus Mackirk think any of these things are worth building I could probably be persuaded to find a place to demo test them and video document, free of charge of course.

 

[golden sluice]

Another water tension breaker is kodak photoflo... I only use that for pan cleanups. A little goes a long way. It is very low foaming.

 

[KevinInColorado]

As the Dakota Boys ablely demonstrated at Porcupine creek, thick water will keep gold in suspension even through a 6 foot long sluice box. Water viscosity is a major risk factor in your plans so learn everything you can about it and how to manage it. The two reasons gold gets carried in a stream are speed of stream flow and water viscosity due to sediment load. Like GG wisely said, there's no point in running dirt if the gold is going into your tailings.

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Agreed, just gotta see what's gonna work best. I'm even starting to think about a rocker box in a mixing tub to reclaim the water?

 

[Goodyguy]

Running the water through a series of filters would do it but you would have to keep cleaning the filters.
Kind of a catch 22 cause you need clean water to clean the filters.

I'm thinking a vibrator attached to the tubs would cause the sediments to settle out faster.
Haven't tried it, but it looks good on paper.

GG~

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Interesting concept GG. I just might have to play around with your vibrating idea.

 

[Goodyguy]

I've heard that a gold well sluice works pretty good with thick muddy water. Not sure how reliable that info is as those guys seem to exaggerate somewhat, but If you know someone with one you may want to see if they would give it a test. If it somehow does what I've heard it may be worth the price in your situation to look into owning one.

GG~

 

[KevinInColorado]

The hard thing to beat is that high viscosity reduces the differences in specific gravity that is normally present for materials of different densities. No sluice design can really make up for that. Only reduced viscosity solves that problem. Physics sucks huh?!

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Lol that it does Kevin. I have already experienced some viscosity problems just classifying and panning in a tub, after a few hours the water is almost useless even for classifying.

 

[Hard Prospector]

I know the material you guys are working(hard mineralized clay clods) so if I was setting up a recirculating system that needed to be portable yet as efficient as possible, I would consider building it around the Quicksand Concentrator fluid bed device(gotnuggets.com) Its 12 volt and uses a low amp pump, the fluid bed jets help break up the material, very cost effective and uses a lot less water than any highbanker/ power sluice. This device should allow numerous yet smaller multi stage settling tanks to give all that muddy crap plenty of opportunity to drop out of suspension.I would run 5, seven to ten gallon buckets connected by 2" hose via thru hull bait tank fittings. By the time that muddy water cascades into the 5th and last settling container it will be a lot cleaner than if there were only 3. A 120 gallons would support this system a long time, something to check out. Good luck

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Thanks HP,
That is something I need to look into. I've also seen some videos where guys are making large concentrators using a 5 gallon bucket, pipe, and fittings.

 

[specksandflecks]

Running the water through a series of filters would do it but you would have to keep cleaning the filters.
Kind of a catch 22 cause you need clean water to clean the filters.

I'm thinking a vibrator attached to the tubs would cause the sediments to settle out faster.
Haven't tried it, but it looks good on paper.

GG~

Don't know what these guys can bring in, or already have for equipment. My 4" dredge motor has a compressor that would make quick enough work of dirty filters . Or you could use a 2nd filter then just knock the first one off when its dry! No way in hell I'd run that soup through my 180 though. Soo many possibilities! Nothings stopping you from dunking them in the clean water I suppose .

Point being since you are already pumping the water anyway, I can't see the harm in directing some of that energy into a centrifuge/vortex. Rumor has it those have some precedent in removing solids from liquids.

Then again if they are limited to battery power maybe vibrators are the ticket, just make sure they are waterproof .

Seems like dry areas with small gold and a lot of clay could hold some good potential if one could keep the water clean enough. Have fun, looking forward to the gold already!

 

[Goodyguy]

High viscosity slurry was most likely the reason that the Hoffman crew in Guyana was not getting any gold! They had a state of the art trommel, state of the art sluices, and they knew from test panning that they were feeding it gold. Yet when they did a cleanout there was no gold.



GG~

 

[Goodyguy]

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