olga1913-Alaska
Greenie
Hello all,
Looking for some input from some fellow tinkers. I plan to post this on a couple of sites so please ignore it if you have seen it elsewhere. My partner and I are building a three inch dredge around a Honda 5.5 hp motor, Keene P180, and a Proline power jet. The rest of the materials have been cobbled together with what we could find here in Sitka.
The sluice is 14x60 with tapered sides from 9 inches at the head to 6 inches on the lower end. The local boatbuilding shop did it for us.
The stand is built from aluminum and is adjustable enough for us to use it with our home built highbanker as well.
The flare is a tapered aluminum box that is 30 inches long. It tapers from 5 inches to 14 inches. It is 9 inches high.
The punch plate is stainless and was cut out of a larger piece at a local gravel pit. It was beat to heck and we had to have a cement truck run over it a few times to get it close to useable. Heated and hammered out the rest. This stuff is impossible to find in town. Know it is heavy but it is all we had.
The entire length of the sluice is lined with black ribbed matting.
The miners moss starts under the first riffle and runs the 30 inches to the end of the sluice box.
The riffle insert is steel. Five riffles will be mounted on two inch side rails. The lower three riffles are one inch tall and we have one at a half inch and the upper riffle is at 3/8 inch. All are at 115 degrees.
The upper three riffles are covered by a 29 inch section of punch plate. The punch plate has a 3/8 hole pattern and sits 2 inches above the miners moss.
Please offer any suggestions for modifications. It is not done yet so any suggestions or comments will not hurt anyone’s feeling. (except for the welds....hehe) This has been a fun winter project and we are excited to put it to work.
Some questions rattling around our heads are:
Is the gap between the punch plate and the black matting too great at 2 inches?
How long should we trim the rubber dampener off the flare?
What range of degrees should we be able to adjust the flare to in relation to the sluice?
Are draw latches the best option to secure riffles in the sluice?
Thanks for reading this and thanks for responding with ideas,
Bruce
Looking for some input from some fellow tinkers. I plan to post this on a couple of sites so please ignore it if you have seen it elsewhere. My partner and I are building a three inch dredge around a Honda 5.5 hp motor, Keene P180, and a Proline power jet. The rest of the materials have been cobbled together with what we could find here in Sitka.
The sluice is 14x60 with tapered sides from 9 inches at the head to 6 inches on the lower end. The local boatbuilding shop did it for us.
The stand is built from aluminum and is adjustable enough for us to use it with our home built highbanker as well.
The flare is a tapered aluminum box that is 30 inches long. It tapers from 5 inches to 14 inches. It is 9 inches high.
The punch plate is stainless and was cut out of a larger piece at a local gravel pit. It was beat to heck and we had to have a cement truck run over it a few times to get it close to useable. Heated and hammered out the rest. This stuff is impossible to find in town. Know it is heavy but it is all we had.
The entire length of the sluice is lined with black ribbed matting.
The miners moss starts under the first riffle and runs the 30 inches to the end of the sluice box.
The riffle insert is steel. Five riffles will be mounted on two inch side rails. The lower three riffles are one inch tall and we have one at a half inch and the upper riffle is at 3/8 inch. All are at 115 degrees.
The upper three riffles are covered by a 29 inch section of punch plate. The punch plate has a 3/8 hole pattern and sits 2 inches above the miners moss.
Please offer any suggestions for modifications. It is not done yet so any suggestions or comments will not hurt anyone’s feeling. (except for the welds....hehe) This has been a fun winter project and we are excited to put it to work.
Some questions rattling around our heads are:
Is the gap between the punch plate and the black matting too great at 2 inches?
How long should we trim the rubber dampener off the flare?
What range of degrees should we be able to adjust the flare to in relation to the sluice?
Are draw latches the best option to secure riffles in the sluice?
Thanks for reading this and thanks for responding with ideas,
Bruce
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