High Production Sluice V.S. Conventional Sluice

[TheNewCatfish]

Last season i purchased the largest "Stream Sluice" Keen makes with the hopes of processing material as fast as i could shovel. I wasted a couple of hundred dollars with the system. Paying dirt directly into the sluice clogged the riffles instantly. Cleaned concentrate was about all it could handle. What's the point of operating a BIG Sluice if you have to feed it with a teaspoon ? I got soaked setting it up and operating it.. and the frequent cleanouts were time consuming and messy. The Miners Moss was totally useless. I never found so much as a single "micro" speck of gold in it. Adding insult to injury, a teenage kid operating a "Poop" Tube Sluice next to me (and digging the same dirt) blew me away. I was so disgusted with the performance of the Keen, i sold it to another prospector in Canon City for $50 dollars. I warned him in my opinon it was a "Piece of Garbage".. but he bought it anyway. Recently i have seen plans offered on "mygoldpanning.com" for a "High Production" Sluice. The design appears to incorporate several features that address my complaints about the standard sluice box. It sets up streamside on dry ground and looks like it could be adapted to collect water using a small hose and a cheap boat bilge pump to fill the water reservoir, (my idea, so there is no hauling buckets of water around). It looks like it has a built in "classifying and seperation" design that could possibly handle large quantities of raw materials. Has anyone tried this system or seen the ad ? I'm a little leary and skeptical because the website also features a range of manual suction devices, (Which we all know are worthless gadgets). Hand suction devices don't even pick up sand granuals efficiently off a streambed.. more less gold. They're just a gimmick. Like magnet devices that pick up black sand, but do nothing to seperate the gold from the magnatite. I've got too many gimmicks collecting dust in my garage already. I'm tired of spending my hard earned money on equipment with bogus, exaggerated claims about how well they work.

 

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[wingmaster]

The keene sluice's work fine, you probably just needed to put a punch plate over the feed end to classify the material before entering the sluice. You can't aspect to run fine shoveling in big rocks and you need to make sure its setup for the right water flow to move the material through the sluice.

 

[rodoconnor]

Catfish , it sounds like your setup was very wrong. Keene products work very well.

 

[TheNewCatfish]

Actually my setup was perfect. I've been running sluices for years and gotten lots of hands on advise from experts. The problem with a stream sluice, (Not just a Keene, but ANY stream sluice), is the limited amount of material you can run through it before it clogs up and your dirt is blowing out the end of the sluice. The only solution is to wash the dirt before you sprinkle it onto the front of the sluice using a garden trowel. In fact, at Rose Creek in Arizona the guys nearby using only buckets and "panning" smoked my sluice. It took me three hours of tedious work to run one bucket of material through my sluice, (including digging time) from start to final clean-out. The panners were clearing a bucket of dirt in one hour speed panning. And they got twice as much gold outta the same dirt i was getting. Just do the math. You'll get lots of gold with just a sluice, but it'll take a month. Without a wet grizzly bar set up and a classifier grate, you're just playing in the water instead of steady shovelling material into a sluice. That's my take on it anyway.

 

[wingmaster]

I know with my keene A51 sluice I run way more material than I could panning anyday, thats the advantage of a sluice and it doesn't take me 3 hours to run a bucket of material through my sluice. If it takes that long your doing something wrong or you might look for better experts for advice, good luck and hope you get more color next time out.

 

[KevinInColorado]

With my Angus MacKirk Expedition sluice I typically take 15-20 min to dig, classify and run 3 gal of material...you must be doing something really wrong to take 3 hours dude!

 

[blynch35]

I agree with my keene A-52 i can run a three gallon bucket classified to 1/4'' in about 20 min's maybe 35 mins total to dig and run.

 

[Astrobouncer]

If you really want a high production sluice, look into the bazooka gold trap series. With the right flow you can feed the prospector or miner as fast as you can shovel into it, all day long. The only limiting factor is how much can you shovel in a day before your back wears out.

 

[Joel1316]

I know a guy who shovels unclassified material into a Keene A51 (small) sluice and it works fine... Its all about setting it up right and having enough water flow.

3 hours for 1 bucket? Must have really poor water flow.

 

[Vance in AK]

I have to chime in here & agree with the others that there was a setup problem, probably lack of angle/water flow. I have Keene A-51 & A-52 sluices as well as the Angus Mackirk Exporer(?). When my wife & I work together, I fill the 5 gallon buckets for her & she feeds the sluice. She goes through a bucket in about 15 minutes. I have fed them ditectly by shovel when working alone. I pick out big rocks & probably take around 10-15 sec to feed in a #2 shovel full. I prefer to shovel into a bucket.
My wife does a good job of watching the riffles & making sure they don't over load, & will routinely go through 3-4 buckets an hour. Unless we are sampeling we only cleanup a couple times a day.

 

[TheNewCatfish]

Well i'll tell you this much. I'm not throwing away any more money on ANY commercially produced sluice. You gotta work with the water you got.. especially in Arizona. So there's no use in even talking about OPTIMAL flow rates. Nor do i have a partner who can Hover over the riffles and Baby the sluice while i'm digging down through rocks with a breaker bar to get at that precious five gallon bucket of dirt. The problem with commercial sluices is that they do absolutely Nothing to Mimick the natural traps found in streams and creeks. At least, i've never seen a creek that had a flat bottom and ran perfectly straight with evenly spaced traps in it. Maybe you have ? Any creek that did look like that, wouldn't contain ANY gold.. I can just about guarantee that. I have seen pictures of wooden sluices constructed by the Ole Timers, but NONE of them were 28 inches long. Why build a "Long Tom" if a 28" sluice would accomplish the same thing ? Simple answer really.. IT WON'T. These mass produced short sluice boxes with their inadequate punch plates, uniformly spaced riffles and too short miner moss pads are pure JUNK.

 

[Goodyguy]

One's man junk is another mans treasure.
........oops did that sound gay?

Anyway, those "junk" sluices as you call them have caught lots of gold and always will. It's all just a matter of sorting out the heavy material from the lighter material.
Lots of ways to do that, some better than others.

But I feel your pain that's why I modify everything I use, or else build it from scratch.

GG~

 

[TheNewCatfish]

Well if they arn't JUNk.. It sure leaves me wondering why they lose 95 % of their value the instant they're dropped off at your door by the UPS guy ? And why do prospecting stores universally enforce a "NO RETURN" policy on these sluice boxes Hmmm ? It's gotta make you wonder, don't it ? Probably because companies like Keen would go outta business quick if they allowed their JUNK to be returned. That'd be my guess.

 

[KevinInColorado]

New catfish, it must be nice to have such a clear, strong sureness of your facts. Do keep in mind that one reason for those long sluices back in the day was to bring the water to the material, also so multiple miners working along the length of it could shovel in from where they were digging, finally so they could clean out only once a week. Also remember that most of those guys only caught 40-70% of the gold they shoveled up. An open mind catches more gold ;-)

All that said, I certainly agree that a lot of the stuff for sale is overpriced, old out of date designs or poorly made. Do your research before you open your wallet!

 

[wingmaster]

This is some very small Indiana gold, you can't even see the really small stuff here as its to small to show in the pic, you can only see the real small stuff in there if the sun light hits it just right. I ran this material through my Keene A51 sluice set up in the back yard as a recirculating sluice with bilge pumps and spray heads as the creek was dry at the time I got the material, and only ran about 2 gallons of classified material.

 

[walldo]

Looks like the fines from western Washington.

 

[Vance in AK]

Another reason for the longtoms was because their riffle system was nowhere as efficient as the riffle system in the new factory sluices. I find fine gold in my Keene sluices. I have put one behind the other & find VERY little in the 2nd sluice. I think my Angus Mackirk maybe does even better on real fine stuff.
Why won't dealers or manafactureers take back used sluices? Because everyone who dug a hole & didn't find gold would blame the sluice & want to return it when the truth is most folks who don't find gold aren't putting any through the sluice.
As far as not imitating a river bottom, river bottoms are NOT the perfect sluice. That's why most areas of your average river don't collect high quantities of gold. Low pressure areas in the river collect gold. The vortexs & low pressure areas behind the riffles in your Keene gave the same action.
It takes time & practice to learn how to use any piece of equipment well, even the lowly sluice box & pan.
What you describe building in your first post is a highbanker or power sluice. It soulds like you want to build a small recurculating one (cheap bilge pump = very little water so small sluice). That will handle VERY little material in an hour, although the recovery rate can be high.

 

[Goldwasher]

El Gato Pescado Nuevo.........You are very very incorrect in your critique of Modern Personal lightweight Hydraulic Gold Concentrating and recocery equipment.Every one in previous threads has been correct about set up and results.And as pointed out the fact that your sluice has no gold in it is most likely it never had gold put in it.....this little message goes out to all new guys Buy your first sluice don't make it. get a Keene,proline,jobe,Angus,Mckirk.....a design that has PROVEN to be able to recover Millions in dollars in gold over the last 50+ years.learn to set up your sluice and dont worry about your recovery,and focus more on Digging and running gold bearing material.You actually have to be pretty far off to make a sluice lose a lot of gold when it is running from the flow of a creek.Also hand suckers work great..for sucking gold out of holes and getting rid of water from holes.These pics are of gold recovered whith a 30 year old proline wich is pretty much a keene a52. The only modifacation is black v-mat instead of carpet or moss.Now I carry a plastic drop riffle because of weight not cause the a52 didn't work, it also can handle less flow better, I have run an a52 with pretty low flow also and did just fine.Look at the pics look how fine a lot of that gold is,and I have a bucket of Black sands that has microscopic values I'm not gonna deal with yet. I understand that some guys have to go after gold that is always fine,they would do well with different set ups and classifacation to a degree past what i have to deal with here. But, if it will increase your take its a must.I won't classify past 3/8 of an inch too much of a chance of missing a nice specimin or Nugget.

 

[Goldwasher]

Furthermore when you are talking about The old longtoms the volume of material ran through them would bury an a52...your talking about totally different operations...and doesn't show that stream sluices don't work, they just have their own limitations.So whats your solution to your problem? Why don't you Hi bank? or built your own sluice? Why don't you do the exact same thing that the guys who were getting so much more gold than you were doing?

 

[Rdg Sluicer]

Well if they arn't JUNk.. It sure leaves me wondering why they lose 95 % of their value the instant they're dropped off at your door by the UPS guy ? And why do prospecting stores universally enforce a "NO RETURN" policy on these sluice boxes Hmmm ? It's gotta make you wonder, don't it ? Probably because companies like Keen would go outta business quick if they allowed their JUNK to be returned. That'd be my guess.

Make me a deal and I will be glad to take it off your hands. Seriously send me a PM we can work it out.