Surfin, I can certainly understand your reasoning on those points. No different than the approach to any other hobby. I own rifles that I can take a whitetail at a thousand yards with, but I prefer to get up close and personal with them and match "wits" as they say. I did some research on the subject of building your own equipment several years ago when I toyed with the same idea. I ran across a formula that told you how much flow you needed for for the size and shape of your box, rate of drop, and size of material processed. Please don't ask to see it, I can't find it right now. Here are some of the things I learned about the process, tho. Don't make the sluice too wide or long, the bigger the box, the more flow you'll need to move the material, and it increases the number of gallons you'll need to recirculate. The same thing applies to making the box too small and narrow and turning it into a concentrator for cons. The biggest factor I found in any design was the shape of the riffles used. For something to be used around the house, go with a modified Hungarian riffle. They can be made out of either wood or metal, so you should be able to whip some up with a router. I'd suggest classifying the material to 1/4" before running it. For the type of gold you have, you could probably classify to 1/8" and still not miss much, but the quarter will save you some time and not hurt your recovery any. If you try to run bank run material when all you have is small gold, the bigger rocks can knock some out of your box. Now this is only my opinion, so nobody get their panties in a wad, but stay away from miner's moss in the box. For fine gold, you'll do better using a ribbed carpet with a backing instead. It's easier to clean up and you still won't loose anything. In the head of the box, you'll find alot of designs have a deep V style rubber matting. It does give you a quick visual clue as to what you're getting, but I've found it's too hard to clean up quickly to really help your production. I prefer a small section (about six inches) of the same carpet as in the box with expanded metal covering it. If you have your water flow, drop, and material classified, you should be able to recover about 90% of your gold on that first carpet. In fact, when I am running the same type of material, I don't even clean up the main box till I run out of material. OK, pay attention, this is one of the tricks of the trade. If you have an Orange Magnet, you can use it to save yourself a bunch of cleanups. Put your material into the header box, wait till about half of it has made it into the box, and then use the magnet to go thru and pick up the black sands. I do this starting at the top of the box and work my way down, then do it again when the other half has worked it's way down. If you don't use a magnet, you'll have to clean up the whole box when the riffles and the upper carpet are covered in black sand. In some areas, that won't take long. I take what has stuck to the magnet in the upper box and dump it into the lower two riffles of the box to make sure that any gold that got caught up by using the magnet has a chance of dropping back out. Any time you use a magnet, you'll have gold stick to it, even over what got caught up. Don't fight it, it will happen. Depending on the size getting caught up, either pan it out or use a Blue Bowl to recover it. For something like what you're talking about, I wouldn't go over a 1250gph pump. Anything less, you won't be able to run raw material thru it and if you go for more, you'll have to fight washing your box. Just remember that when you are running that type of material, be sure and perk your buckets before running them. If you try and run alot of clay thru the system, everything will get gummed up. It's like everyone else has said, you can find plans on the web for anything, but with your skills, maybe look at using wood designs for some of the metal ones out there. Let us see your designn ideas! Good Luck.
Randy
