Inexpensive Sluice Fox 31 inch sluice vs cheaper riffled sluice box matting

[Boarteats]

For those who might be looking into entry-level, inexpensive options for jumping into the wonderful world of sluicing...

Few months back, bought a Sluice Fox 31 inch for my first foray into sluicing. Cost was $59 + tax. Experience was useful. Worked as expected.

Recently, decided to build a more robust sluice. Started by purchasing "ASR Outdoor Rubber Mat Riffled Sluice Box Matting for Gold Recovery, 27x10 inch" for $29 + tax. Thanks to zombie apocalypse, had some time to test mat, so I could better understand required water flow, need for classification, good sluice length, etc.

Didn't intend to carry out head to head test between Sluice Fox and my DIY sluice. However, tests using mat ONLY surprised the crap out of me especially when compared to my experiences using Sluice Fox. So, here we are.

Bottom line:

The cheaper riffled sluice box matting performed a ton better than the Sluice
Fox. Note, I hadn't yet built the sluice box. Just used mat on platform, sides rolled up a bit to keep water from running off edges.

More details:

Sluice Fox performed its best when classified rocks down to 1/8 inch or less. It was very sensitive to sluice pitch, water flow velocity/volume, and rate/amount of sluice material added. It did an O.K. job. Could tune sluice such that I ended up with a relative small amount of light material at end of the day. Was not good at catching fine gold or lighter materials such as silver (chloride). Sluice fox clean up was a bit of a pain. Removing plastic riffles was not easy.

The riffled matting performed better by itself than a well tuned Sluice Fox. Only needed to classify material down to 1/4 inch. Could process more material and faster. Collected larger amount of heavies while leaving a much smaller amount of lighter sand/minerals. No problem catching fine gold and even silver (chloride). Clean-up is a crap ton easier. Just remove mat and slosh it about in bucket.

IMHO. There are better and cheaper options available to beginner sluicing enthusiasts than the Sluice Fox 31 inch sluice. For example, a $29 inch riffled mat will do a much better job for less money and less effort.

Good luck!

 

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[Hard Prospector]

Was thinking about buying a sluice fox for a "one way" trip into the boonies. Don't mind classifying down so much to 1/2 or even a 1/4. But to an 1/8.......what a pain! Thanks for the useful info

 

[Vance in AK]

Good to hear.
I orered a couple of pieces from the outfit Goodguy got his from to try in my highbanker. If it works may even try putting a couple pieces together in my 2.5" dredge with 13" wide sluice.

 

[Boarteats]

Good to hear.
I orered a couple of pieces from the outfit Goodguy got his from to try in my highbanker. If it works may even try putting a couple pieces together in my 2.5" dredge with 13" wide sluice.

Finished my sluice a couple days ago. Pretty simple. Box with mat and PVC spray bar attached to 12v bilge pump. Narrowed above referenced mat from 10 inches to 8 inches since it appears that I can run water over mat at pretty fast rate without losing anything I care about off the end.

Experience so far has been really good. Can easily process 5 gal bucket of material that is magnetite heavy without worrying about riffle capacity. Don't have any light material mixed in with heavies at end of day. Clean up is super easy.

Only thing to keep an eye on is the potential for pebbles to get stuck in some of the riffles. Mat is rubber, so seems like stuck rocks are slightly more problematic than if using riffles made from more rigid material. Honestly, however, hasn't been a big deal.

 

[dougw]

For someone that can't seem to picture your homemade setup, would you have a photo or two you would share? Thanks

 

[X4FRNT]

I have a couple sluice fox’s and I never use them. They were my entry level sluice, and did a poor job at catching gold. I upgraded to a Royal Compact Sluice and use the riffles with a combination of different mats (miners moss, carpet, v matting), I still wasn’t satisfied with my gold recovery using that system either (it was okay for what I was doing, and 10x better than the sluice fox. I finally upgraded to drop riffle sluices, I have an angus MacKirk and a Robinson Brothers Drop Riffle Sluice and boy did that make a difference! The RB drop sluice is amazing, super lightweight and very reliable. I also made an aluminum sluice box with Vortex matting and it works about the same as my drop riffle sluices when it comes to gold recovery.

 

[Boarteats]

For someone that can't seem to picture your homemade setup, would you have a photo or two you would share? Thanks

Made this with scrap material sitting around garage. Of course, the one exception is riffle mat, which was recent purchase.

PVC is spray bar that connects to bilge pump via washing machine hose.

 

[Boarteats]

Did a quick run this AM, since I had an hour to kill. Filled up a 5 gal bucket about 2/3rds with material classified to 1/4 inch. Ran over sluice, probably too quickly but was curious to see how fast I could process material. Ended up with a few specs. Nothing too exciting but not bad for an hour on a beautiful apocalypse Friday morning. Below are some pics that show sluice running, material left in mat after run, and result.

 

[N-Lionberger]

From what I can tell of the sluice fox is that its a knock off of the tee dee EZ sluice which is a very functional sluice, it is a narrow sluice it will not handle the same kind of volume feed as some of the other plastic sluices compared here. My first sluices were made of wood, my first factory sluice was a Keene A51M, similar width to the EZ.