What is the best sluice or highbankwr for fine gold

[okie jack]

without spending a lot of cash.I live in Oklahoma and plan on going to k river and Colorado that is if I can find some spots.I heard they was some fine gold around me in north east Oklahoma but really do not know were to look.I'm looking to spend about 300 and plan on buying a small pump.Thanks in advance.

 

[Gold Cube]

I'm a bit bias but the best for the fine gold found in Oklahoma is the Gold Cube. I am from the Oklahoma City area, if you ever get down this way look me up. My cell is 650-0542 in the 405 area.
Mike

 

[ohiochris]

I agree on the gold cube , I havent used one personally but had a chance to watch somebody use one and the cleanup and I was amazed at all the fine gold it caught. The drawback of course is the cost of the cube is atleast double what most sluices are.

 

[James/Ouida]

I like in Southeast Alaska, where most of the gold is flour gold. A Miller table is what's needed to recover the elusive stuff. In reaserching this, I learned you can use a piece of plywood, what the lumberyard would call a "four by eight sheet of AC". Also, a smooth surface painted with chalkboard paint can get you the little riffle action that's needed for flour and micro gold. Personally, I'm trying out the back of a mirror for the recovery prossess.
James

 

[jmoller99]

I am using a Gold Cube in Colorado - we have an exceptional amount of fine gold here. I also bought some Gold Hog matting material (not the stuff with the molded in riffles) that I plan to use as a high banker that feeds the Gold Cube (1/8 inch material or less). The side effect is that in order to use a Gold Cube, you can't run too much water (700 to 1200 GPH) otherwise you will wash out your fines. I am using 1000 and 1200 GPH 12V Bilge pumps for my water source - anything faster is a waste of the time in my case.

Fine gold (100 mesh +) tends to float away if you can't get it wetted (dish soap and many other surface tension additives help). The Gold Cube will get it wetted without any additives. You just have to manually force the vortex matting to be wet before you start using it. This is not hard to do.

 

[Goodyguy]

The best sluice or highbanker for fine gold is one that has short to no riffles with a full length mat that will trap the fines. Vortex mat (rough top conveyer belt) works best, along with classifying your material down to 3/16" or smaller (in Indiana I prefer 1/8") and using a water speed just fast enough to keep the mat from loading up.

Vortex mat is an active mat, you will notice that the trapped material "swirls" within the pockets insuring that the heavies go to the bottom of the pockets while the light material gets washed out of the pockets and works it's way down and out of the sluice.

*Note the Gold Cube uses vortex mat but also has gate traps built in at the end of each mat section insuring that nuggets too big to be caught in the vortex pockets will be caught in the traps.

Example of a gate trap in the Gold Cube....


GG~

 

[greydigger]

I am using a Gold Cube in Colorado - we have an exceptional amount of fine gold here. I also bought some Gold Hog matting material (not the stuff with the molded in riffles) that I plan to use as a high banker that feeds the Gold Cube (1/8 inch material or less). The side effect is that in order to use a Gold Cube, you can't run too much water (700 to 1200 GPH) otherwise you will wash out your fines. I am using 1000 and 1200 GPH 12V Bilge pumps for my water source - anything faster is a waste of the time in my case.

Fine gold (100 mesh +) tends to float away if you can't get it wetted (dish soap and many other surface tension additives help). The Gold Cube will get it wetted without any additives. You just have to manually force the vortex matting to be wet before you start using it. This is not hard to do.

Does that mean you are running 2200 GPH into the Cube?
And why don't you like the Gold Hog with the riffles?
Grey

 

[Hoser John]

To heck with all the mechanics/weight/costs as for fine gold no carpet ,mat or other expensive bs as just get a great Le Trap sluice and have some FUN and keep that pile a cash in your pocket and save your back. No carpets--no engines--no hasssles--just fun and gold-tons a au 2 u2 -John

 

[nuggetshooter323]

As J said , the fine gold here in Colorado makes us think a little more than the guys in CA that can walk around and pick-up ounce sized nuggets on top of the ground in the motherlode . I currently use the Gold Bazooka Sluice, mainly because I save time not having to classify and it captures fines down to 100 mesh. I think the Gold Cube is fantastic, but I can't get out as often as I like, so if I can cut out classifing, that's more time I have to run material. And on the Arkansas River you have to run a lot of material. Just to make sure I'm not losing anything that's possible to catch, I'm going to get one of the Top Runner Sluice's and run that behind the Gold Bazooka. So people might say that that's a lot of money to spend on equipment, but I'm an equipment junkie. I like to have equipment to run in any type of water, or no water. I think Hoser John is right, have fun with it. If you want to go cheap with a Le Trap or a Tee Dee, great! If you want to go with the latest and greatest, great! For me I'm always trying to increase the amount of material I run while retaining the fines.