what size material should go through the sluice?

[seafox]

Thankyou for your thoughts . I am posting here on the origional highbanking and sluiceing forum because it is more popular and hope to glen as much knowlege as possable as i'm wanting to imporove my highbanker before spring comes.

I use a distruction chamber( term coined by Doc at gold hog who i admire and have learned so much from} to hold material in with flattened pipes shooting a solid blast of water about 1/4th inch by 3 inch up into the pay gravels I have dumped in 5 or 10 gallons at a time. the broiling water hope to tear the clays apart and wash the gold off the rocks I put a partically drilled floor over matting to create a extra 2 square feet of capture area. I know a steady feed of aluvium is best and have dreamed of a little convayer with a ground level hopper steadilly lifting material up to the highbanker so save lifting buckits but my budget causes me to try and apreciate the extra exersize.

out of the distruction chamber the slurry goes into my grizzly flume, foot wide and drilled with over a thousand 3/8 inch holes in the next 4 feet. thinking if I limit size to 3/8th less worry about having enough flow to move bigger rocks yet not blast out the gold with to fast water.

question one what if I redrill to 7/16 were spacing allows to cut down ocasional losses of unwashed stuff when the smaller holes get choaked. I use drilled in steed of bought punch plate or rods because of cost and the joy of drilling sheet metal. would the bigger material hurt recovery? requier steeper pitch ov the flumes ?

nested under the grizzley flume is my colection flume to catch all the water and fines. I put 12 by 40 inch mat here because why not? and it gives some intresting variations on flow rates also origionall was going to cut the upper part of grizley with smaller holes to create a sorta fines low flow catch area enviro but with smaller holes my oversized rock pile built up too fast and water and unwashed dirt went out the back. I prefer to work the materal back and forth in the grizzley with a hoe to get it clean as possable before pulling it out of the oversize shute hopefull into a wheel barrow to take it back to the site of ore colection for reclimation work.

as in most highbankers after the fines and water are colected they fall into the first sluice section and go the oppisite direction of the overs pile, turning 180 degrees; the slurry comming to a stop and then gaining speed again. this at of cost of 4 inch fall which is 4 extra inches buckits have to be lifted to the distruction chamber ( also 4 extra inches of raised center of gravits and flimseyer leg columes and bad word when the whole high banker falls on its side when some idiot ( me) tried to put a third buck in the top so I could go away and do something else while the water self got the aluvium moving)

second question insteed of a waterfall and stacked flumes what about making a 90 degree turn at the same level as to colection flume pours into the first sluice section? or even a U shaped ( square block U like sports jersey numbers or here in utah the letters on the mountians for towns citys schools and universities) conecter flume. you can see how sand bars would build after the corners, more catch area. also getting the matting out of that first sluice section is not my favorite torture i prefer dental visits. either tuning 90 to 180 degrees would leave the first sluice section over to axcess and monitering and tould help stableize the distruction chamber and grizzle flume so high up in the sky [ not to sound lazy but i can carry buckits all day. because they hang from the arms bones doing lot of the work. but when you start lifting them up to shoulder level they seem to get heavyer} is just me but i can go for miles and miles at walk but trying to s run i breakdown after a couple hundered yard with a side cramp. just the same carry half buckits seems no diferent than walking but try to carry to very full one or a beach ball size rock and 10 yards seems like infinity sometimes.

a friend today sugested I put raided ezpanded metal in the first sluse section to help finish tearing apart the solids and prevent packing of the mats lover down. I had liked the idea because getting the mat in and out from under the higher flumes was such a pain and slowed cleanup. if I offset the wirst section side ways this solves that problem but...

question three do you think the raised expanded mettle helps further freing gold breaking down clay cleening gravel ect?

my sluice last time measured at 35 feet overall and 42 square feet of catch area trying all kinds of matts I could find & aford or make. in flumes from 9 to 18 inches wide ( note to self 6 foot conveyer matting 18 inch wide is unwieldy ) I found gold all the way down to the end. partly because of uneven feeding, over feeding and so I could run day or two and not waste time cleaning out I had everything from carpet runner used conveyor matting, I saw or radial arm saw cut or strips of mat riffles glued on top of the used mat. even tried bare flume set dead level or slightly up hill to lengthen the run so the ground had more time to slope down hill and I could again properly slope my matt filled sluice flumes with out making the distruction chamber a second story job and still have room to put a tub under the very end for clean out with out having to shovel a huge er amount of tailings.

4question 4 i am thinking over the whole operation I had dedicated tubs to clean the matting. I know Doc makes it look easy. rolling the mat putting it in the buckit backrolling the mat in the buckit turn over repete. I like a 18 gakkon storage tote dedicated to each type of matt and swluice section so I can test to see what is working rather than doing each clean out seperately to try and figure where the good ground is. besides the mat under the distruction chamber us checked for sampling each runs richness. another great idea from Doc and his monster highbanker.

so how do you like cleaning out? if their is leak from the flumes i put a catch buckit and have caught gold that way do you put a security tote at the end of the suice durring clean out to catch stuff hiding under the mats. have you ever started up the run again tossing aluvium into hopper while your open pickers botle is in the flume and the security tote gets filled with tailings? I have.
thankyou for your thoughts

 

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[seafox]

oh also the value of a trommal over the distruction chamber/ header?

 

[Goldwasher]

35 ft sluice?

How much material are you running?

I know you said fie to ten gallons at a time. But how much per day?

 

[ratled]

Pictures or drawings are always helpful too

 

[CGC Miner]

Classifying can be a true bear...
Bank run material in a simple sluice or highbanker, I classify to 1". Speed vs. recovery seems like a happy medium for me.

Gold size plays a huge role in determining what size to cut to.

Washplant, we classify to 1/2"

 

[seafox]

only gone twice and first time was my snafu and the friend I went with wanted to get back sooner than I did so after getting it finally running after 3 days I could of been if id been ready ovly ran a yard and a half.

then I went up for 19 days straight think 16 of that ran and moved 8 yards (est by measuring hole) . the owner is a Keene Man and so far has not decited to take mine but optomism over experience I hope to convince him this year (spring and btw by demistrating it working at home arrive at the mine with everything ready to go and working)

when I go with the owner we used to do 4 runs a day 2/3s of a yard each time think the best day I pushed to get 8 runs done so likely went through 4 yards that day.

 

[seafox]

only gone twice and first time was my snafu and the friend I went with wanted to get back sooner than I did so after getting it finally running after 3 days I could of been if id been ready ovly ran a yard and a half.

then I went up for 19 days straight think 16 of that ran and moved 8 yards (est by measuring hole) . the owner is a Keene Man and so far has not decited to take mine but optomism over experience I hope to convince him this year (spring and btw by demistrating it working at home arrive at the mine with everything ready to go and working)

when I go with the owner we used to do 4 runs a day 2/3s of a yard each time think the best day I pushed to get 8 runs done so likely went through 4 yards that day.

the 35 foot was extream length including a one foot flume shaped shelf above the distruction chamber/header box thatcould cradle a full 5 gallon buckit or have the pay dirt poured on it. then the distruction chamber was 2 feet long then measuring down the colector flume and 6 or 8 sluice mat flumes ranging aboout 42 inch to 6 feet each. Part of the purpose of the trip was to test out all the home made mats I could with the gold hog mats as standard they actually were in the second to last flume.

 

[seafox]

only found two pea sized nuggets owner many years up there ... actually the one the boss found was last day as I cleaned the bed rock after he had told me to knock it off and load up grin. everything else is pickers and smaller. yesterday I asked a long time miner that worked with us last year how much he thought we would run ( he would have only cleaned once or twice a day but the owner is thinking prospecting not mining and wants to clean out every hour to see how we are doing) the local said a third to 2/3 yards depending how many grape fruit size we had to pick out before shoveling into the keene highbanker. fiberglass header. I've tried to get the overs portal cut higher but no luck with the owner. with my distruction box and sheet metal grizzley I am willing to wash rocks up to 11 inch dia. but mostly stay below 9 inch.

mu hope is using the highland dredge I can run all day every day insteed of digging and packing pay material to the highbanker for one or two day and then running the next .

aids to speed digging ideas include the dryland dredge nozzel, a 6 foot digging bar to breakup the cemented gravels thet are about as good as 1500 psi concrete. A come along and a electric winch to move those pesky basketball size boulders out of the way insteed of rolling them by hand

the local said his testing indicated the lowest 4 feet was $18/ yrd my trip I estimated 25$/yrd the owner hires a backhoe to stack the pay mater I was all by hand, that trip; but thought maybe a tiller sized digger and or a garden tractor would be a great help ( would love a kabota or small john deer with back hoe) just like the dream of a ground height hopper that material could be raked into and have it steadly fed to the header box with a conveyor. one other idea I saw on youtube a guy built a say one foot gage wooded railroad and little ore cars he could push on a flat top tressel to dump into the header. since where he dug the pay was the height of the highbanker set up lower down the hill. the place were we are our " work floor" is 4 feet above bedrock as the owner to keep the state lands people fills in our trench every time

looking back I wish we had started out farthest out from the west side of the valley bench we are mining and trenched our way to the west. had we not had the backhoe fill in the last trench before digging the next trench the runs north to south, we could have been sure to get all the bed rock clean but rear we missed about half [ eg trench would be 4 deep 8 wide and say 50 feet north to south. our tailings went south as we would run and used to move the owners highbanker every day or so finally convinced him to have the pay put in tall as possable round piles down hill of the trench so it would not flood. because have to have room to pick out all the base ball size plus rock. me I just run ut to 11 inch rocks have nothing in the way over the griz flume so could pull them out with a hoe and stay dry.road already comes wodn a 30 foot high steep hill to get to the work floor would have bother no one I think to have extended it down four more vertical feet./ stack the tailing to the east aaaand pluss I think if we could have seen say a 50 by 50 foot piece of the bedrock slean maybe we would have found the source vein.the local still feels the south end was the richest though I was impressed early on that the north end had more pickers.. owner of claims leases from the stater endowment lands and so worryed they would freek out of we left a 4 foot trench but the work floor is already 14 feet lower than the west side wqe were working to ( we've got to say 8 feet over burdan and 8 feet of gravel with the bottom 4 richer) really would like to start underground tunnel because wecan't cut the trees and with the 45 degree slope they want us to mine at open are between trees might give us one foot wide bedrock at the bottom .thus doubling the overburdan for half the amount of pay gravel triangle with point dowm]

 

[seafox]

I do not have the virtue of brevity ment to say hope to mine a yard of pay per hour and think I can safely tunnel bottom richest 4 feet . say 4 to 8 yards a day

 

[seafox]

cgc miner I ended up classifieing to half inch with a flat expanded metal screen suspended like a kids plaground swing from a double trypod conected by a horozontal beam. actually on my swingset their was a two kid thing where they could sit on benched inside facing each other is more like the screen because it had thrw wooded sides to keep iot flat and the forth had an underscreen brace to finish the rectangle and let the over size rock out do out I would aultermately put a wheel barrow under to catch the fines or sets of buckits and then haul two or three at a time on hand truck of simplist just carry two each trip sice the weight on each side balances

I will try and post pictures but am not great with digital tech