looking for angus mackirk recomendations?

vaquero44 · Dec 28, 2014

ok as much as I like the bazooka's I know a lot of places I go are always not going to give me the water flow I need so looking for suggestions on low or slow water and what model and what the material needs to be classified too...........trying to be prepared in most situations

DiveDeep808 · Dec 28, 2014

Vaquero,

My friends and I have extensively used the angus mackirk AU trap stream sluice with great success. It captures large and very fine gold with ease. They make it in 4 sizes starting with the scout being the smallest and the boss being the biggest. So im sure theres a size that will fit your needs. As for operation of the sluice I find wet classifing to 1/2in works well. Wet calssifing will also improve your fine gold recovery as the water knocks the gold off the rocks and breaks up the material. As with any sluice you have to adjust it a few times to get optimal results but the mackirk tends to run a lot flatter than most sluice boxes you will see what I mean if you put to much angle on it. If you have any otbher questions PM me.

wtetro · Dec 29, 2014

I have the AM Expedition and like DiveDeep808 mentioned, it will catch chunkys down to fly-poop. It works real well in higher flows and in flows where you can not use a conventional sluice. Any of the AM models should get you the low flow performance you're looking for. And you can't beat the clean-up on it, I can dump my sluice cons and start feeding it again in under 3 minutes. I have epoxied a piece of ribbed mat where the slick plate is and this helps break up any remaining clay balls and slows down the pay dirt from entering the sluice and allows the gold more time to drop. I rarely see any gold past my 3rd riffle, and I get a lot of fines trapped in the ribbed mat. It's nice to have for an inspection area too. Sometimes larger pieces get caught in the ribbed mat and I just use my snuffer to suck them up real quick.

Reed Lukens · Dec 29, 2014

We have a couple Recon II's and the full size Long Tom. I've used other AM sluices also and not all of them are designed equal. The Recon II is a good design and we use it all of the time.

vaquero44 · Dec 29, 2014

well I ended up buying a AM recon II abyss with the new trench riffle so we'll see how that works out..........Reed does yours have this new set up? if you do how do you set yours up and what could I expect with it?

Reed Lukens · Dec 29, 2014

vaquero44 said:
well I ended up buying a AM recon II abyss with the new trench riffle so we'll see how that works out..........Reed does yours have this new set up? if you do how do you set yours up and what could I expect with it?

Yup

That's it. Set it up just like it says by using the built in lines on the sluice. Just like DiveDeep808 said we have done a lot of work with the Recon II but he is the Master of it and we bought one after using his the first few times. Send him a PM if you have any questions. Basically first you need to put yourself on the gold and then the sluice will make it easy on you. We dump in a bucket and then clean it into a bucket in a few seconds and continue. It will recover fines on up to whatever your largest screen size is. We use a ½" Garret classifier.