Water Flow in Sluith

[Oatman174500]

I am new to the gold hunting hobby and I have a sluith with a home made set up that I run material through. My question is I am not sure about how much flow of water I should have so that the sluith catches the gold. In my area Pa. we for the most part have small flakes and what I am going to call mico gold. I told a video of my sluith running yesterday and would love to send the video to someone who would be willing to look at it and give me their thoughts on the water flow.
I can't attach a video to this forum or at least I am not sure how to. If someone would be willing to review the video that would be great but I think I would need that persons email address so that I can send the video but I am not sure that is proper for someone to post their email address. Does anybody have any other ideas on how I can post the video and get feedback on my water flow
thanks
Ken

 

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[et1955]

Welcome to the forum, first it's called a sluice box. Can you post a picture of it. Your design will determine flow rates and maybe we can help you with ways to improve flow and gold catching.

 

[Oatman174500]

Here are a few pictures
water comes out of the top white pipe and hits the back of the silver tray and then washes the dirt down the sluith.
I have the sluith at about a 7 degree angle
I have a 650 gal per hour pump but I only have it at about half pressure
thanks

 

[desertgolddigger]

Ken, I have a suggestion for you. First, do not try to sluice big and powdery material all at the same time. Invest in some classifying screens. I would suggest you get a set of say 4, 8 16, 30, 50 and 100 mesh.

Why all the screens? The allow you to sluice similar sizes of material. If you try sluicing everything at once, the bigger material is going to bully to lighter material right off the end of the sluice.

As for water flow rate, all I can tell you is you need to experiment. You need, I believe the rule is one inch of slope per foot. I don't use that rule myself. I tend to make the slope much shallower, about 1/3rd inch per foot. This allows me to capture gold down to as low as 800 mesh, when I have the water flow properly adjusted.

Most of the gold I process is from hard rock, and it is mostly 180 mesh and smaller. If you're a placer miner, then you probably will only encounter gold down to about 200-300 mesh, but mostly larger.

Best wishes with your sluicing.

EDITED: I just looked at your sluice pictures. I purchased something similar, but didn't have any luck with catching anything but larger gold 50+ mesh. I couldn't get all the things like slope and water flow set to catch anything smaller.

Your sluice is pretty short (like the one I have similar to yours), so it will be more difficult to get everything adjusted so it'll work with optimum efficiency. I have another suggestion. Invest $100 for a gutter sluice, or if you're skilled, make your own. Make sure it is at least two feet long. I use this type of sluice as my cleanup sluice, and get gold down as small as 800 mesh. Of course, the material I am running is 180- mesh and smaller.

One final suggestion. Do not throw away your concentrates. Keep recycling them. I run my cleanup sluice until my two gallon bucket is nearly full of the tailings that fall off the end of the cleanup sluice. I sift the remains once dry, into three categories: 80-119, 120-180 and 180 mesh and smaller. I always get more gold from these, sometimes quite a lot, as no matter how careful you are with a sluice, you always lose some off the end.

 

[Oatman174500]

Thanks for your input, I am going to run some tests today on angle and water flow to find the ideal setting for both so that I dont loose and fine gold or bigger gold. I have some gold from gold dirt that I bought so I will put a few small pieces and a few larger pieces in the sluith to determine what angle and pressure would be the best to catch the gold. And I will start saving my concentrates and rerun them a few times.
thanks for taking the time to help me
Ken

 

[N-Lionberger]

That’s a pretty small sluice. You can get away with running a single tub recirc if the material is well washed and of low volume. If you can put in a slick plate aka a sluice trough with no riffles before that short of a sluice you can get a better slurry mix for better recoveries. You can run multiple tubs in-line with U pipes made of PVC or ABS pipe that allows the water to siphon from one tub to the next. The higher volume a system the better for allowing silt/mud to drop out, which can change the viscosity of the water and can cause fine gold to slip over riffles.