any comments, concerns, or questions are greatly appreciated.
Welcome! All of us here have the same disease so you are in the right place.
Is it legal to sluice where you are at? What other laws do you have to deal with?
My crew is a frugal crew. We need advice. this is for fun and a chance to make some money
What's missing is where are you going to propspect, you want to have that figured out before you purchase any gear.
There should be gold there if that is what you want to prospect for. You need to know if there are any other claims where you decide to go as you DO NOT want to be on another persons claim.
we all want to get our own mini sluices. 40-80$ .... low price *if bought used
Start out with one sluice and then work up to more IF you are getting good color with the one. The size of sluice is useful to know, that's width and length, and where you want to prospect might determine that. If it is large river then a larger size will work if it is a small creek then you might need a small sluice. What type of Sluice?? One with removable riffles,
a drop riffle plastic sluice, some form of a gold trap sluice
Here on T-net a fellow by the name of Astrobouncer has threads on how to build your own drop riffle sluice out of wood, seal the wood and then go use it. You will need a table saw and other knowledge of "making stuff".
make, fabricate, find, or buy 1 pan. 0-12$
Buy a GPAA pan or a BatPan (see Batpan.com)
make, fabricate, find, or buy 1 classifier. 0-25$
Make or find. Think out of the box on this one. Something sturdy that is used for kitchen or BBQ tasks for cooking vegetables on a grill - thrift stores
make, fabricate, find, or buy 3 buckets. 0-10$
find or buy, the sluice needs to fit into your buckets!!!!
make, fabricate, find, or buy 1 point/spade shovel. 0-15$
Garage sales look for one made completely out of metal including the handle
make, fabricate, find, or buy 1 hand shovel. 0-6$
garage sales again
make, fabricate, find, or buy 1 snuffer bottle. 0-10$
just buy one unless you have soft plastic bottles, some plastic tube
did I miss any important tools?
Since you need a sluice your are working in water so we are talking placer deposits. Usually there's a variety of sizes of rocks involved in this, like something you can hold in your hand to VW Beetle or School Bus size rocks. Pry bars come in very handy for this type of work 2' to 6' pry bars depending on the size of rocks. If the gold is good then you might need to get a bit more serious about moving rocks with an 8000 pound capacity cable hoist from Harbor Freight. DO NOT get anything lighter duty as it will NOT last. Also some 'aircraft quality steel cable' (steel from the core all the way to the outside) with a grab hook and a slip hook and a " boulder bra" also known as an automotive tire chain (for driving in the snow type of tire chain). I mean chains not cable type tire chains!! If you get serious with this then later on you will need a snatch block and 3' lengths of 5/16" chain and 'stuff' related to cable and chain work.
we are going to factor in gas, food, beer and water later.
we have all our camping equipment already.
How are you going to carry in your prospecting gear or is this going to be driving up to the water? If it is hike in prospecting then at some point you might need backpacks for the gear.
so the low is an unbelievable 40$... per person
the high is 146$ that still seems low.
Start off simple as you may not find gold. To start with the gold pan will be your most useful tool as you will use it to locate your first bit of color and from there on you will use it to pan out the concentrates (cons) from the sluice. "LEARN HOW TO PROPERLY PAN" or you will loose the heavies from the pan. Practice with some #6 or 7 bird shot in the pan. If all the pieces of bird shot are in the pan after you've panned out all the lighter materials then your panning is pretty good.
is it a waste to have two guys working one sluice?
Depends. How much large rock there is in your ore samples, how much classifying is needed, if you are getting good color and even if not the idea here is to run as much ore sample through the sluice as is possible in each day. Hauling half full 5 gallon buckets of sample is heavy work especially if they need to be carried out into a river where the walking is slippery.
Full buckets are just too heavy and therefore are dangerous to work with, broken legs/crushed feet and broken equipment.
is my cost and inventory right on?
reduce the amount of beer to near zero and it will help to cut the costs down after all this is not a drinking contest and being blitzed on beer and tired and disgusted well, the beer does not mix well.
Be Safe! Water kills, boulders crush, snakes bite, bears like beer/camp food and will kill/eat drunk young men or women for that matter............63bkpkr
The 5 gallon bucket with modified expanded metal waste basket is a large classifier down to minus 1/8" (less than 1/8" size particles go through the mesh). 4.5' long pry bar moving boulders. Boulder work site from the down river side of the VW Beetle sized rock in the upper near center of picture. All the large rocks (but not the VWB rock) were moved by one man using the pry bar. Boulder Bra in use, sure beats a pry bar!
Thanks,
Steve
