Picking Gold From The Mat

[Rdg Sluicer]

Most of my prospecting skills are self taught through trial and error and what I read. So when you guys are scooping material into your sluice do you try it pick the flakes off the mat with a sniffer bottle or do you trust the sluice will catch them and get them when you clean out? I usually try to pick them off my self.

 

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[NeoTokyo]

With the keene A52 I just left them.

 

[MadMarshall]

I use my snuffer bottle to clean the black mat while it's running but only when I am changing dig spots other than that I do not make a habit to stick my fingers in the sluice while running.. All too often I see people clean their sluice too often or pick gold out of it. I'm pretty confident in my sluice so just spend my time putting more gold in the sluice rather than taking it out.

 

[Astrobouncer]

Sometimes I will do an early clean up because of a picker or something. Its not cause I think it will leave the sluice, but rather since they are so rare around here its exciting when i find one and I want to add it to the collection.

 

[Hemisteve]

I,ve been working flood clays on bedrock on the N. Yuba and suck up the black mat after every 5 gal bucket. I do that to make sure that I am staying in the paystreak. Besides that, It's nice to see the gold building up after each scoop. On my A52, I know anything that gets past the mat will get locked up in the carpet. I don't touch the riffles till the end of the day clean up.

 

[Rdg Sluicer]

Thanks for the info guys.

 

[Fullpan]

When I did a lot of sluicing, I was comfortable with adding 20 buckets of classified (1/4") to the A52 after spotting several small flakes early on. Most of the
time (90%) they were still there at the end of day. If you are on gold, it really pays to move material, rather than stopping for any reason.