RonnyB
Tenderfoot
Hi All,
New to the forum but not to prospecting. When I was younger I used to poke around in California and Arizona while on camping trips mostly running material through a sluice looking for gemstones and cleaning out a little gold from the sluice at the end of the day. I moved to the east coast (PA) and for 20 years I had a rather demanding career where I did not have much time for anything other the occasional fishing trip. The last couple of years I have returned to prospecting whenever I had the opportunity mostly in NC and GA while on my way down or back from visiting my family in FL. I have refined my technique quite a bit to include pre-classification of material and post classification before panning out concentrates that has greatly increased both my gold recovery as well as finding cool gemstones. I'll be moving to northern Florida in a couple of months which is great since I will be much closer to mining sites in GA, AL, SC, NC etc. Woo Hoo! Anyway, introductions aside I have a question for everyone.
I like to classify raw material in the field to 4 mesh and then bring a few buckets home for further processing on weekends when I can't get into the field. I've made several attempts to convert one of my sluices into a home high banker but I have run into a couple of technical problems I can't seem to get past. (BTW I have a 50" Keene, a 50" Proline and a 30" Proline) I began rather simplistically by attaching a garden hose to the Keene and running material. The problem was water flow. Too much flow and the stream of water jumped over the rubber mat at the feeding end of the sluice, too little flow and I had to increase the angle to over 30 degrees to prevent build up at the bottom. I was also flooding the backyard with water which put me in the doghouse with the wife. I bought a cheap bilge pump to reduce my usage of water but that only exacerbated the water flow issue. I have seen some youtube videos where folks have customized a 5 gallon bucket where the water is delivered to the bucket and exits into the sluice by a rectangular hole on the side near the bottom but in the videos I can see that the water flow is jumping over the rubber mat as well. I'm thinking that a metal box can be constructed to attach to where the feeder triangle is usually attached to be the hopper. Then set up the bilge pump hose to deliver water to the back wall of the box at an angle such that feeding material fed from the top should slow the flow enough to be laminar by the time it hits the rubber mat. Has anyone tried the bucket or customized hopper/box method of converting your sluice? Any help would be appreciated. Ron
New to the forum but not to prospecting. When I was younger I used to poke around in California and Arizona while on camping trips mostly running material through a sluice looking for gemstones and cleaning out a little gold from the sluice at the end of the day. I moved to the east coast (PA) and for 20 years I had a rather demanding career where I did not have much time for anything other the occasional fishing trip. The last couple of years I have returned to prospecting whenever I had the opportunity mostly in NC and GA while on my way down or back from visiting my family in FL. I have refined my technique quite a bit to include pre-classification of material and post classification before panning out concentrates that has greatly increased both my gold recovery as well as finding cool gemstones. I'll be moving to northern Florida in a couple of months which is great since I will be much closer to mining sites in GA, AL, SC, NC etc. Woo Hoo! Anyway, introductions aside I have a question for everyone.
I like to classify raw material in the field to 4 mesh and then bring a few buckets home for further processing on weekends when I can't get into the field. I've made several attempts to convert one of my sluices into a home high banker but I have run into a couple of technical problems I can't seem to get past. (BTW I have a 50" Keene, a 50" Proline and a 30" Proline) I began rather simplistically by attaching a garden hose to the Keene and running material. The problem was water flow. Too much flow and the stream of water jumped over the rubber mat at the feeding end of the sluice, too little flow and I had to increase the angle to over 30 degrees to prevent build up at the bottom. I was also flooding the backyard with water which put me in the doghouse with the wife. I bought a cheap bilge pump to reduce my usage of water but that only exacerbated the water flow issue. I have seen some youtube videos where folks have customized a 5 gallon bucket where the water is delivered to the bucket and exits into the sluice by a rectangular hole on the side near the bottom but in the videos I can see that the water flow is jumping over the rubber mat as well. I'm thinking that a metal box can be constructed to attach to where the feeder triangle is usually attached to be the hopper. Then set up the bilge pump hose to deliver water to the back wall of the box at an angle such that feeding material fed from the top should slow the flow enough to be laminar by the time it hits the rubber mat. Has anyone tried the bucket or customized hopper/box method of converting your sluice? Any help would be appreciated. Ron
