I've never questioned the ability of the gold well to catch gold. I believe that it works and works great!
I also made something similar out of wood several years ago, random sized holes/pockets in a staggered pattern.
It worked just fine while it lasted, was going to make another out of abs but never got around to it.
GG~
After inventing the Gold Well, I talked to a friend who knows a lot about mining history, and he told me that the chinese used to make a device called a riffle board which was full of holes. They too worked great. The drawback was that once the pockets filled up with material, there was very little exchange in the pockets and had to be emptied, causing a lot of tailings per volume of material processed. So the drawback was all the extra work at the end of the day going through the cons. The Gold Well is designed not to have that issue which is why it's unique.
There is a guy in Montana I talk to regularly, who invented some time after I invented the Gold Well a similar device (well not too similar really), but it uses a vortex principle and is made out of plastic (hey that's where you guys can get your plastic cheap vortex sluice from! I think he sells them for $60 or $80!) Drawback to it in my opinion is the large quantity of cons developed that need to be processed at the end of the day. Other than that I think it probably works alright. Pretty nice guy too, a lot nicer than me.
It's Khrysos - God of Gold - I think you can look it up on YouTube. Like me he's a small guy. He intends to put the big guys out of business though, where I am happy just creating the best darn sluice there is.
The Gold Well is the best invention in mining since the 1940's when the hungarian riffle was invented (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!), inexpensive enough that most can afford it, with efficiency high enough that it will pay for itself if it's used seriously more than a few times in a year. That's value.
Doesn't surprise me that someone copied my Gold Well design. Unless a CNC was used and proportions kept the same as a Gold Well however it will never work quite as good as a true Gold Well. That little spiral ramp and distances between rows and pockets isn't accidental. It's those small things that make a big difference. Probably won't be long until other manufacturers copy it too, as well as the chinese. A wood sluice, plastic or even a stainless steel sluice like mine would be missing the molecular attraction between the aluminum oxide molecule and gold for ultra fine gold collection. (Hint). He might be able to oil it though since it's wood. That might make up for the microscopic gold losses he's not aware of. And that microscopic gold does make a difference too. I get around 5 grams (4.86 grams last run) of microscopic gold per 20 buckets processed in my test unit that I demo the Gold Well with at the store. Amounts to double or triple the amount of visible gold found in the material.
(Anyone ever notice that a steel spatula sticks on an aluminum frying pan more than a stainless pan? It's not due to softness of aluminum as the coating of aluminum oxide on the pan is 8 hardness where the stainless is 6. This sticking is caused by the fact that aluminum wants to bond to other metals and when microscopic gold touches it, that force becomes far larger than the force on it from flowing water (which is very small due to boundary layer effects at the surface), capturing microscopic gold only visible under a scope! I retrieve it with aqua regia.
Currently I am using my sluice to capture gold from a 6oz per ton hard rock mine I am in the process of setting up. Got a new vein of around 9 oz. per ton I found just the other day on one of the 3 new adjacent claims. Pretty soon I may spend my time in a mine and make less sluices
More profitable and I don't have to deal with being bashed by anything other than a rock falling on my head if I am stupid enough not to shore up the roof!
I have other even better technologies for getting gold that are nearly finished, but I am going to wait and see what happens with the Gold Well to decide whether I make it available to the public through my company or keep it solely for my own uses. There is a much faster and simple, easier way to get placer gold from dirt or crushed ore than a pan or a sluice. But I will keep that under my hat for now.
