Recirculating Mini Fine Gold Sluice
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.พ. 2015
- I built this little sluice as an experiment to test some Gold Stop matting and see if I could capture extremely small gold. It turned out way better than I had hoped. So far it has totally stripped all gold and black sand out of anything I run through it. I am recovering gold that I need 10x magnification to see. It will handle -20 on down. I have been using my Miller Table to get the gold out of the cons or I have a miller table insert shown in the video that I use when on the road.
UPDATE:
This little unit has turned out to be a very handy small and portable unit that I have been taking camping and exploring the back country and it takes up very little room. I have since made a small PVC stand for this so that it can be used in a stream or on the bank of one as a recirculating set up. This takes a lot of the hassle out of trying to find adequate water flow for stream sluicing. I also have a 3 gallon tote that works with the stand so that I can use it on the tailgate of my truck when out driving around the back country and happen to run across some interesting material that I want to run. This has also been handy for running in the desert where water is very hard to come by.
A side note: a 500 GPH or 600 GPH pump seems to work just right for this.
I have just finished making a larger sluice that also runs on the same stand and totes so that if a batch of material tests out well with the little one, I can run much larger amounts of materials at a time. You can find the video here if interested: • RECIRCULATING VORTEX M... - กีฬา
That's exactly what I want... compact, quick change, and easy to operate. Thanks for making this video.
Hi Aron and thanks for watching. I carried this in the back of my truck for several years to test dirt I ran across while driving around. It really worked well and found a lot of gold. I now carry my Deep Well Miller sluice but I still have this one I bring out several times a year.
This is the kind of stuff i keep watching TH-cam for.
Excellent video. Excellent build.
Thanks mate. This will be very helpful for my hobby and my budget
Hi and thanks for watching. Yes, this is a fun little sluice. It’s simple and easy to build and works very well. I use it a lot for Urban prospecting. I can put it in the truck and run small samples of dirt I run across as I travel around town.if this comes up with gold, I run bigger samples.
Love it.i love how you simply explained no unnecessary blabbering. Wer do I order or how to make matt
Hi Johnny and thanks for watching. The mat is called Vortex mat and you can buy it on Ebay.
Great build, you have inspired me to make one like it, and I completed it yesterday and works great!
+Samuel Rochon Glad you like it. This has ended up being one of my handier tools and I like the fact that it catches all the gold and black sand. I usually crush the black sand to recover any micro gold that may be hiding in it. Thanks for watching.
Another great build! The performance of your equipment speaks for itself. Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing.
Thank you John. You are the one who got the idea and this build going. Thanks it is really working well. Way beyond what I had hoped for.
Very nice build. It is intelligently thought out and the description of its workings was intelligent. Thanks for showing us.
Thank you Gort. I appreciate you watching. I have made 3 other versions of this sluice and I keep coming back to this design because it works so well.
utahavalanch
I've panned a little bit (very small experience) but I'd like to build a sluice box, and if I may, I'd like to copy yours.
You are more than welcome to copy it. I put these videos up here in hopes that they will help others in building theirs. I have another video I'm currently working on showing how to build a larger drop riffle sluice with a minimal number of tools that you may be interested in. So you might want to check back on my channel or subscribe so you will be notified when it comes out.
Subscribed and thank you.
Thank You. I have part 1 of my Drop Riffle Sluice video done and hope to have the second finished soon so I can put them both up. You may be interested in building one of these as well. Have a Merry Christmas.
Great Build and Video!! I really like the idea of using Gold Cube matting and showing that you don't really need to spend a small fortune on a gold cube.
Rich.
Thank you Greenerlumber. Actually trying to decide on whether or not to buy a Cube was the reason behind this and it has worked every bit as well as a cube. It has totally stripped all black sand and gold out of every thing I have run through it. I spent 4 hours running tailings to check it. Thanks for watching.
Very nice set up, thank you for posting it. Learned a lot from it.
Thank you Donald and thanks for watching. These are very easy to build and this mat really catches the fine gold very well.
Very good video,,,this is the finest in wood working,,am getting all prime up and ready to start building .Thank you
Thank You Lou. I think you will really like one of these. They really catch the fine gold well. I have been using my easy build fine gold sluice almost every day this summer. I really like them.
Another great video! Back to my garage to build your creation!
Thank you and thanks for watching
Very nicely done...... Kudos to you.
Thank you. This is a very easy to build and a handy item to have for processing cons or small batches of dirt. Thanks for watching.
This is amazing and I loved it. My husband and I used to mine and prospect on our claim, but because of my health I am now housebound and I miss it horribly, so I have been ordering pay dirt online and sometimes one of my family members will bring me a bucket of dirt that I can pan at my kitchen table. This would be perfect for my needs so I am going to see if my husband or one of my boys can build it for me. I would be thrilled with this. Thank you so much for showing us this!
Hi Lynn and thanks for watching. This little sluice is very easy to make with off the shelf items found in your local Home Depot. They have precut 1/2" thick woods of all kinds. The mat is a precut 6" x 24" Vortex mat that I bought on Amazon and cut it down to 18". Even though I have larger commercial sluices, this is the one I use the most as it does the best job with the fine gold we have here. I build new bodies for it occasionally and just move the mat over to them. I just finished a new one yesterday and will test it today. I hope you will be able to get someone to build you one and I think you will enjoy it.
Pretty cool mat
Hi Robert and thanks for watching. Yes, it’s a piece of conveyor belt with small pockets that catch the gold quite well.
Thank you for posting this.
+Kenny x Thank you Kenny for watching. Out of all my many sluices, this one is my favorite.
thanks great ideas and good to see
Thank you, and thanks for watching. I use these little sluices several times a week to process my concentrates and they are a handy tool to have.
Great video new to prospecting much appreciated
Wesley Felts
Hi Wesley and thanks for watching. I have a couple of new videos I'm currently working on you may be interested in. Also I have videos on how to make stream sluices for those folks who want to try their hand at building one. It's a fun hobby.
enjoyed your video
Nice build !
Thanks MrLodak for stopping by. I think that one of these little units will really help with where you are digging. Works as a portable unit you can take with you. Also if you want to check your sluice tailings from your other sluice for the micro gold.
That was a great video
Thank you Joseph. It was a fun little sluice to play with. I still run it once in awhile but my newer versions are some real gold catchers.
PERFECT !! Great job on the simplistic setup, and clean looking as well. This design size will be a great addition to fitting into the back of my Jeep Cherokee's hatch back area. I can't wait to get started on this. I really like the wood frame, as per the wood look, but, due to my little experience in the hunt for gold, you wouldn't think there would be an issue if my frame was machined & formed out of aluminum plate, beings the insert (rubber composite mat) is what is doing the work, right? Thanks for the input, and again, great job!
this is a great idea
Thanks and thanks for watching. Yippers, this has been a great little cleanup sluice and it gets a lot of use.
well done
Andrew Elsworthy
Thank you Andrew. It was a nice little sluice and it caught a lot of gold for me. I still use it on occasion but I have some newer designed ones that I use mostly now, but they are still based on this little sluice.
I really think your head is in the right place it looks like a good fine gold operation. I would like to see how it would work on beach gold like Washington state or Alaska gold beach's if it were longer and wider.I think you would have a excellent recovery system. Nice work .Fine gold recovery system. I like it alot.
Cool build
Thank you for stopping by. I have enjoyed yours as well. This started out to be a small sluice to test different mats and this mat turned out to work far better than I had expected. Now on to the bigger version.
Good video grandpa
Thank you. Dakota. Glad you liked it.
Wow that looks great awesome job.
Thank you Jay and thanks for watching. It’s a simple design and a quick and easy little sluice to build and it works very well. Lately I’ve put one of Alan Robertsons hi-lo V silicone mats in it and that made it even better. The gold sticks to the silicone and doesn’t wash off like with rubber mats. I really like my Deep Well sluices but this little one is a fun one to bring out and play with off and on.
@@utahavalanch I have some videos out from some of my DIY projects Jay's gold trommal, Jay's gold bowl and a few others. It's nice to here good comments that's why I leave mine. Happy hunting.
Thank you for the nice comment. I checked out you channel. You have some good stuff. Will check back often to see what’s new.
All right I love that combo...nicely done are you adopting...lol...great video
Thank you, I love them as well. I got bored and had a small scrap of vortex mat left over from making my larger one and so I just made me a 3" version of this that I can use in the kitchen sink using the faucet water to run. Great for running a pound or two of material when I don't want to set this one up, especially in the winter.
Love it!
Stephen Fuller
Thanks Steve and thanks for watching. This is a simple little sluice that works very well. A piece of pine, a cedar fence slat, mat and some PVC is all you need. Oh, and some Minwax Helmsman Spar Varnish. If you paint the bottom with Rustoleum Chalkboard paint, and remove the mat, you can use it as a small Miller Table to process the cons from your mat.
good vid
Andrew Calp Thank you Andrew and thanks for watching.
might I suggest a second stream of water that sprays back towards towards the first nozzle. gold hog has a design like this that steers the water up and makes floating gold sink. Other than that it's a great design.
Hello: Very sorry to hear of your health issues, I hope you are able to put it behind you very soon. My plan is to make a deep well miller table combination, with the lower table, also painted, with the chalkboard paint, but with a removable silicone riffle insert.
Hi Gordon, thank you. I hope I can too. If you have an email you could put up here for a short time, I can send you some pictures to maybe give you some ideas. I’ll delete it as soon as I get it.
This is great, very fine micro gold is all I find in ohio. this will mark my 2nd season trying to find gold. I will ATTEMPT to make one ( I'm not great with tools haha ) thanks for sharing!
+Zack McPherson Hi Zack. Thanks for watching. Yes this mat will catch the very fine gold you have very easily. These don't need to be fancy and so you can make one with only a saw and a drill. You can buy a piece of Martin Goldstop Mat or Vortex mat from Ebay that is 6"x24" or a larger piece if you want one that is wider.
You can buy a piece of 1x6 pine board for the bottom and 1 piece of 1x3 lumber and cut the top board and sides out of it. You can cut the lumber to the full size of the mat if you wish but you only need to go about 16 - 18 inches. If you use screws on the header board where the water bar is you can remove that and use the sluice as an in stream sluice and it will work very well with a small slow stream. Then If you bring some material home to run you can put the board with the water bar on and run it with a 500 gph pump as a recirculating sluice like I'm doing here. These are very versatile little units. I am currently making a small Highbanker unit to mount on this so I can just shovel straight into it without having to classify. Normally you should run all your material through a 20 screen before running. That is about the size of a kitchen strainer and that's what I use. Makes it easier to catch the small gold.
awesome
I agree. It has been a very good one. I have since made a highbanker attachment for it so that If I don't feel like classifying, I can just shovel into it and it will screen the material to the proper size for me. This Vortex mat is some good stuff. I am currently making a larger highbanker version of this so I can process more material at a time.
Thanks for watching.
Just found u m8, liked and subbed. Cheers, Heidi n Conan Gold Prospecting Across the Pond Paydirt
Conans Reviews
Hi Heidi and thank you for watching and subscribing. I hope I have some projects that will be of interest to you. I’m currently working on some new ones so stay tuned.👍
I found your Channel tonight. I am excited to build a recovery system on your principles. Have you ever built the base as a Martin Table, and just added a mat over the top of it?
Liberty Cave
Hi Liberty, appreciate your stopping by. Yes, you can use the base as a Miller Table. Just paint it with Rustoleum Chalkboard Paint. Do this before you put on the sides. The pint can is the best and apply it with a small 3" foam roller. Put about 6 Coates on as it dries very thin. They have to tint the paint for you and the green or the teal are the best colors. I like the teal quite well. I love these little sluices especially this time of year as they let me work indoors as well during the winter. I have a new one coming out soon.
Do you think it would work to make the vial insert on the Mini and would it work to just chalk board the bottom board of the sluice rather than make the insert? Thanks for the video, your detailed instructions are great, especially since I am a rookie, it's taken 3 days to get everything cut out and the water bar made but things are starting to come together.
Hi Jayden, a good question. The answer is yes it would work to put the vial in the bottom and also paint the bottom with the chalkboard paint. I only thought about painting the bottom after I had this one put together and I decided to try the insert to see if it could be used as a miller table which it can quite well. You need to have a valve on the water hose to cut the water flow back to about 150 GPH but it will work.
I made a new body for this mat with a slick plate in it and gave it to a friend to use on his gold claim and it is getting heavy usage every day and he loves it. I think you will really like your sluice. Don't go very strong on the water supply. A 500 GPH pump from Walmart will work just about right on this one.
I have another sluice similar to this one with an unusual feature. Stay tuned. You will be able to use the mat from this one if you want to build it as well. If you get ideas to build other sluice bodies, build them so you can use this same mat and just swap it back and forth between bodies. That's what I do.
good video much liked have a build im working on now
Thanks for watching kevin. I have built several more of these with a slick plate but I have come back to this design as it is more compact and when you drop a spoonful of dirt on the mat the gold is forced down to the mat by the impact where it stays. The slick plate allows the fine gold to get caught up in the current and can ride it out of the sluice.
U think some thing like this will work
_lh3.googleusercontent.com/AP4ja5ldz46gIufLX0ECotyziRNpEZdIRQrTR0BZyBmxGF4musPtQdH-BxpxoEww6IS52UkySw_
Sorry Kevin, the link doesn't seem to want to work for me.
It was a photo do u have facebook
Sorry I don't have a facebook account or access to it.
On all of your home made sluice boxes do you use a 500 or 600 GPH pump
Hi Michael and thanks for watching. I have used both. For the smaller sluices up to 8" the 500 works very well. I am currently using an 800 GPH pump with a valve in the hose. The key is to get about 6 feet of 3/4" Bilge Pump hose and I found a really nice 3/4" brass gas valve at Home Depot to put in line with it so I can use larger pumps and then dial down the flow for the size gold I'm trying to recover. The thing is to put the valve at least a foot away from the sluice as when you turn down the flow at the valve, it pressurizes the water like when you put your thumb over a garden hose to make it spray. That really can mess up a smooth flow. If you have at least a foot of hose in front, then that absorbs any turbulence. I have been using this hose with a 10" sluice all summer and when I put on one of my smaller sluices, I can dial back the water so I don't blow them out.
your thoughts on a a slight modification having a chalk board bottom (scarlet red...) then the only insert needed would be vortex mat:thank you for the creative inspiration !
Hi and thanks for watching. Yes painting the bottom with the Chalkboard paint works much better. I got to thinking about that after I made the video but by then it was already up. 😝. I have a newer design I’m making for a group of scouts that I did that with and it works very well.
@@utahavalanch i am working a variation with the painted bottom and dream mat 6 x 16....i only mentioned ,scarlet red because it seemed a interesting option with both black sands & gold except i have never seen either nor touch a gold pan.best wishes with your builds and thanks again for taking such time & effort with your channel...
@@SuperJupiter33 that is the beauty of these projects. We are free to do what we want with them. If we don’t like something, it’s easy to change. If you decide to change the color, it only takes a few swipes of the roller. Or you can get different colors and paint a design. If you watched my videos on my Miller Tables and sluices, that color is the Teal green which I found I like the best. But they can mix the paint in a number of colors. The dream mat should work very well for you. The very best of luck to you and hope you get a lot of gold. 👍
would you be willing to try gold hog mother mat. I am not being paid by gold hog I use that mat for beach sand hard to get the gold out of the sand mother load mat makes it easer less work.great looking sluice
Hi Preston and thanks for watching. I have already tried Gold Hog mats as I have a Gold Hog sluice and several different mat combinations. The main problem with them is that if you run them like in the videos, you will lose lots of fine gold. If you cut the water flow back to 800-1100 GPH they work pretty well. If you have watched my videos on my other sluices, I am running about 600-800 GPH on a 10” sluice. I find that is about max for fine gold. Beach sand as you know is very light weight and easy to blow out. I usually use my Miller Table for it.
Materials list? Where can I source some of that matting?? I wanna make one exactly like this! Been running my bucket sluice, with limited success.. 8) Hope you're doing good.
Todd Kleinert Hi Todd, sorry so slow getting back. I have been out camping in the high country for a week and using this little guy. This matting still amazes me at how well it works. It really catches everything. Especially the very fine micro gold. I have made a small 3 gallon recirculating set up for it that I can run out of the back of my truck or set up on a picnic table. When I'm driving the back country and see some interesting material I can just stop and run a few gallons through to test it and then swap the mat for the miller table insert to see if there is any gold. Or if I want to pan the material instead I can do that as well.
The matting is called Gold Stop mat and you can find it on Ebay. This looks just like the Vortex mat that they use on the Gold Cube and it works just as well. You can also buy the Vortex mat on Ebay and try it also. I bought some of the Deep V Ribbed mat and it works very well but you have to really slow the water flow down. You can use it with the 200 gallon Harbor Freight pump that I use for the Miller Tables.
I bought the 6" x 24" mat on Ebay and made the sluice interior 6" wide by 18" long. All of my sluices and Miller Tables are that long in order to fit both of my recirculation systems. You can make it the full 24" but all of the gold is caught in the top 4 inches of the mat so anything over 12" is unnecessary. You can buy a 12" x 12" piece of mat on Ebay as well and cut it in half if you want to make a shorter sluice. I recently bought a 12" X 24" and made a larger 9" x 22" sluice for running larger batches of material.
Materials:
The wood is a piece of 5 1/2" Cedar fencing sanded smooth. It's very cheap and lightweight. You can use Plywood or pine as well.
Bottom: 6"W x 18"L
End piece for water bar: 6" W X 5"H. I now glue two pieces together so the end is about 1 - 1 1/4" thick. this supports
the pipe a little better.
Small strip of wood for front to keep the mat from sliding out: 6" W x 1 1/2"H
Sides: 5" high and what ever the total length from the back of the end block to the front of the small strip of wood in front.
Water bar: 1 - 3/4" PVC Tee,
2 - end caps,
2 - short pieces so that water bar extends to the sides,
1 - 3 1/2" long piece for the incoming water
1 - 3/4" garden hose slip fitting to go onto the incoming water line.
The holes on the water bar are 1/8" in diameter and spaced 1/2" apart.
I hope this will help get you started. If you have any questions, just let me know.
Here's a technical question would this be considered a highbanker which is illegal in some states of Australia or would it be a sluice box which is allowed?
Hi Kevin and thanks for watching. This is considered a sluice box here in America. The use of an electric pump may make it illegal in some areas. In my area, I can’t use a pump in the stream so I used this setup on the bank to process my stream material. I have a couple of videos on drop riffle sluices that would be legal. They can be used as a recirculating sluice as well as a stream sluice. I used to carry one in my back pack when hiking in areas with streams.
You sound very familiar. Do you have another channel?
Hi Richard. Yes I do. I have had a lot of account problems on TH-cam for some reason and I have another channel I can no longer get into to update. So this the only one that I post my new projects on now. Thanks for stopping by.
Hi there Utah, question for you, what type of battery is needed for recirculating sluice box? Right now I'm using an old car battery and it's almost dead and I need to get a replacement one so should I stay with a smaller size car battery or can I use a lawn mower battery? What's your take on this? I have a very limited budget for this. Thanks and hope all is good with you and the family.
Hi Michael. It depends on how big your pump is and how long you want to run it at a time. I’m into the fine gold and so I use a small 800 GPH pump that draws 2 amps. I run this on my 10” sluices. My 17ah lawnmower battery will run it for about 2 hours straight. I run my material in batches of about a gallon and I clean out after each run so the battery gets a bit of a rest. I can usually get 3 hours out of it that way.
The 500GPH that I used to run on this little sluice drew about 1 amp and would run for about 4 - 4-1/2 hours straight.
An 1100GPH runs at about 3.8 Amps and so would cut that down to about 1 hour. A 2200GPH will cut it down to about 30 minutes tops.
You can buy a 17ah lawnmower battery from Wallmart for around $25.00 - 40.00.
If you need a bigger battery, then you will need to get into a car battery for about twice the money.
I go with the smallest pump that will do the job so as to cut down on battery cost. An 800GPH pump is more than enough for a recirculating system and an 8 - 10” sluice. You can buy a DC 12 volt power controller on EBay for about $8.00 that will allow you to control the water flow for fine gold or running a smaller sluice.
I hope this helps.
Hey Utah thanks again for your help. What kind or type of controller is that you are referring about?
@@MichaelJohnson-ux7pe
It looks like the price has gone up since certain people got into office.😝 if you do a search on Ebay for 12 volt speed controllers, you will get quite a selection. This is the one I bought. I built a small box to put it in.
www.ebay.com/itm/DC6-60V-12V-24V-36V-48V-30A-PWM-Motor-Speed-Controller-Start-Stop-Switch-TE1256-/254742305473?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0
I like it because it has a digital readout so you can set it back to a preferred setting. With my new highbanker, a setting of 70 will ensure that it will strip out every little piece of gold in a batch of dirt. I only need 150GPH for my MillerTable and this lets me reduce the flow from my 800GPH down to that for collecting nano gold.
ok thank you sir and have a great 4th
@@MichaelJohnson-ux7pe 🎉💥🎈🎉👍🔹🍔🌭
i gotta get me one dem fine pocket mats .. from acme mat company out of altoona , AZ...
Excellent video - good points and good coverage - you have a nice set up and system put together that does a fine job of recovery .. all very time consuming with a yield in pieces of fine color -- which prob. each weight about 0.1 mg (~-100#) - so .. about 10k pieces yield a $55 gram ....
Sounds good.
@@robertshappenings5481
Well, they say that 80% of all the worlds gold is in the minus 30 mesh range and that’s what I’m after.😁👍
@@utahavalanch I'd be happy to get a 40# piece,,, not. Very often in these parts,,,
Can't seen to find the green material you refer to as the MIller Table. Where can I buy this stuff?
+jimmy changa Hi Jimmy, Thanks for watching. The mini miller table Insert I am using in the video is a piece of 1/8" plywood cut to fit in the bottom of the sluice and painted with Chalkboard paint. The chalkboard paint has a slight "tooth" to it which helps the gold to stay where it is dropped and allow the sand around it to move on down and off the table leaving nice clean gold. Usually I prefer to use one of my regular miller tables but if I am just testing a small amount of material then I can slip this insert into the bottom of the sluice to separate the gold from the sand.
I am confused. At the beginning you state that you want to recover the very fine gold most sluices kick out... So where did your concentrates come from that your running in the little sluice/table? Don't you mean that you want to clean up the fines without loosing them? I just don't understand what it is your are running here on the equipment you are showing.
Hi Man and thanks for watching. I build and test 3 or 4 different sluices a month. The material used here is some that had been run through about 4 different sluices a number of times in testing already. This was one of the first tests of this new mat and so the gold shown here is gold that those other sluices had lost and it was a bit of a surprise to me that there was that much. So when that much showed up I decided to make the video to show folks how well this mat does at catching the fine gold. I now have a couple of friends who bring me some of their tailings to run through this to recover the very fine gold that their equipment has lost.
Most people would use a sluice this size to reduce the concentrates from a larger sluice down to the couple of oz’s this one gives you. I have since built several larger sluices with this mat for my normal prospecting as it keeps the very fine gold that many of the others lose. Living in an area where the gold is mostly very fine flour gold, that is important.
Is the Stop Mat 6" Wide?
+C Barker Hi and thanks for watching. Yes, on this one it is 6" wide. It makes a very handy finishing sluice. I bought a 6" x 18" inch piece of Gold stop mat from EBay and made the sluice to fit. In one of my other videos I made a 9 inch version with the same mat for running larger quantities of material. I had a 3" strip left over from that and I just made a small 3 inch table top unit with it. So you can make your sluice box any size you want and then just buy a piece of mat and cut it to fit or you can buy a piece of mat and build the sluice box to fit.
if you use a blue bowl it would save you so much trouble and time!
Heinz Hubbuch
Thanks for watching Heinz. Actually I built this because the Blue Bowl loses a lot of the finer gold and I put this underneath it to catch it. Later on I found that this worked better and much faster than the blue Bowl and so I sold the Bowl and stayed with the Mini sluices. Since this one, I've built and tested about 50 different sluice designs and 5 different mats. Although I now use a much larger of my Deep Well version of this it's still a good simple design that is easy to build for people who don't have a lot of tools. I also like the small size of this so I can run it in the house when it's too cold to work outside. :-) it's also ideal for handicapped people to set up in a kitchen to run paydirt through once in awhile.
hi buddy new channel same pirate cheers
Hello Again: Is the paint you use chalk "board" paint or just chalk paint, and is there a difference. Thanks
again. Gord Forster
Yes the paint is Rustoleum Chalkboard Paint. You can buy it in any paint store, Lowe’s, Home Depot, or Wallmart.. it comes in a quart can and you pick the color from the side of the can and they will mix it for you. I like to apply it with a small 3” paint roller. If you saw my other videos on my Deep Well sluices and Miller tables, that is the teal color which I like. Yes, there is a difference and you want the Above mentioned paint. Gold for some reason likes to stick to this pant and so that is why we use it.
@@utahavalanch Thanks so much for the reply and the information. I think I am ready to get started! I love all of your vids, and I plan to build almost all of your projects. I live in an area where the main river has no nuggets, only fine gold. All of your tables and sluices fit right in with this.
@@gordonforster6898
Gordon, all of the gold we have in this area is very tiny. 50 mesh is a big nugget. That’s why I started trying to find something that would catch that size gold. Right now my Deep well sluices and Miller tables do that very easily. If you can learn to make a silicone mat like the ones in my videos, they work extremely well as the gold sticks to the silicone almost like flypaper. My combination sluice is the best gold catcher as far as the sluices. The Miller Table deck to slow the gold down to make sure it gets caught in the mat plus the silicone mat makes it pretty much impossible to lose any gold. The best of luck on your builds and if you need any help, just ask.
@@utahavalanch Hi: I found some of the right chalkboard paint today, some tite bond glue and some really nice clear lumber, so I am off to the races now. The paint is very hard to find here, but good old home depot had a couple of cans. I think I have seen most of your vids, but I haven't decided which way I want to go with the riffles on the mold for the silicone mat. And I agree, I think the combination sluice will be my first build.
Gord
@@gordonforster6898
Congratulations Gordon. I think once you get the first one built that it’s not that hard of a project and you will be making more of them. I had planned on having another video made by now on tricks to building them but I’ve been down with viral Covid pneumonia for 2-1/2 months and at least another month to go. So I guess it will have to wait for a bit. 😖 but I think you can get enough from my Miller Table build to get you going. You build both of them the same way.
How have you built this mat ???
Or where have you bought ?
Klaus Stacher keep up the mat you can get it on eBay or at the websites that sell it he mentions their name. also check out the gold hog mat it does really good at catching gold as well.
Rather than rerun the railings, I would rerun the concentrates to get rid of more black sand. Maybe with higher water flow?
Hi zenaguy01 and thanks for watching. I have found through extensive testing over the past 10 years that most sluices lose some of the gold. So I used to re-run my tailings again. I have since developed sluices that lose very little. Another thing I have found is that much of the fine gold goes where the black sand goes and so now I try to capture as much of it as possible and then recover the gold from it over the winter when things are slow. It’s surprising how much gold you can recover from it. Most of it is small but to me gold is gold. 👍
@@utahavalanch
I can see the sense in that. If you recover only 1/8 gram per bucket of tailings, that's not much. But if you have a hundred buckets of tailings, that makes up 1/3 - 1/2 oz of gold over the winter!
@@utahavalanch
I get that. My idea was that rerunning the black sand would super-concentrate the concentrates and eliminate much panning. But maybe that's not worth the time invested.
@@xenaguy01
Yippers Xenaguy, you have the right idea and you’re numbers are pretty close. The gold is small and not a lot of it per gallon but it all adds up fairly quickly. I crush the larger black sand and release the gold that’s trapped inside it. If you saw my video on the hand dredge, I have another one just like it with a cap on the end and a 2” 148 lb lift magnet inside on the end of the plunger. This thing will pick up a lot of black sand at a time and with that black sand is a lot of gold that gets trapped inside the mass. In a good gold bearing stream you may get 1/4 - 1/2 a gram of gold per gallon and it only takes a few minutes to get that gallon.
@@xenaguy01
Yes, you can concentrate it a little more that way. The gold and black sand are very close to being the same weight and so you have to be sure to screen them to as close to being the same size as you can so that they will separate in the sluice. This is where the Miller Table really comes in handy. It makes the job a piece of cake and will separate the black and from the gold very easily.
Im new to the sluice box, i am attempting the umpossible of northern michigan gild recovery. I would like to build one like yours. Would you maybe be interested in emailing me. I couldnt find a way to message you. Your ideas are genious.
chris osmundsen
Thanks Chris and thanks for watching. If you have an E-mail account I can reach you at, I would be happy to help if I can.
i would like to know about these mat you mention,which one are better and the cheapest one? thanks
Neutral God
Hi and thanks for watching. Sometime after I made this video I bought both mats to see which one I liked the best. Turned out that they were the same mat. It is also used on a very popular product called the Gold Cube. You can buy it on EBay in a number of different sizes and prices. Look for fine gold mat or Vortex mat. Another mat that is a little cheaper is called Deep V mat. These work best if you classify your material and run each classification separately with the water flow reduced for the finer classifications.
great! thank you and have a good summer
i look for Gold Cube,it's a hole machine but the mat/moss it self ,what is the company and the name of the mat/moss? thanks
They won't allow me to insert a link here to the one I bought on Ebay but here is the title to search for.
New Martin Fine Gold Sluice box mat 6"W x 24" long
Or you can go to: mjcoinstore.biz/accessories.html and go down towards the bottom. He has a number of different sizes listed down there and the prices.
Hope this helps.
perfect thank you very much
What angle do u run this at
+sharpie skiing Hi Sharpie, thanks for watching. I usually classify my material to -12 or -20 mesh and run it at about a 12 to 15 degree angle. Then I classify the tailings to -30 and run it at an 8 degree angle and reduce the water to about 400 GPH. This will usually catch down to about -100 mesh gold.
+utahavalanch How much did it cost to make your mini recirculation sluice? I have super fine material like grains of salt and being in a wheelchair I can't use a lot of the equipment that will help me get the fines and micro gold out.. I would like to try and find one to buy do you make them to sell at all? thanks. great job ...work's great!!
+brandon scott Hi Brandon, thanks for watching. Yes, those super fine grains were what I built this for and it worked much better than I had hoped. This will catch gold that you need a magnifying glass to see. Being as small as it is, it's very easy to pack around. The mat is the same one that is used on the Gold Cube which works so very well on this fine gold as well. This box is only 6" x 18" but all the gold is caught in the first 3 or 4 inches. The cons from a clean out are only 1 1/2 oz which only takes a minute to run on a miller table or pan out. If you watched my other videos, you saw that I have a larger version of this but this one is my favorite for some reason. Since this video I have added a Highbanker box to it and made a mini highbanker designed just for catching the micro gold.
The box itself only cost me about $10.00 to make as I used a piece of pine for the bottom and used a cedar fence board for the sides and the Minwax spar varnish was about $8.00. About $5.00 for PVC tube and fittings. So around $23.00 total. The most expensive part was the mat which you can buy on Ebay for about $25 - $30.00 you can do a search for gold vortex mat or vortex sluice mat.
I'm sorry but I don't sell these. I have so many projects I'm working on that I don't have time for much else. You can buy some inexpensive aluminum sluices with and without mats on Ebay as well or you can put together a simple box like I did with a piece of pine for the bottom and a piece of 1x3 for the sides and a piece of 1x4 for the back. Home Depot also sells short pre cut pieces of 1/2" hardwoods that would make a very nice box for a reasonable price. Good Luck.
+utahavalanch Dang I don't have the means to build one myself I do have the metal 3ft sluice I bought online but I don't know how it would work with these ultra fines & micro pieces ...
More flow would help
Matthew McLean
Hi Matthew and thanks for watching. Yes, I could have gone a with a bit more flow but I like to keep as much of the gold in the top 3 inches as I can. On this Vortex mat, the black sands fill in all the pockets quickly and so as you can see, the only place for the gold to go is to sit on top. So you have to be careful not to get too much flow or you will wash it off. Especially with the lighter flat gold. So I tend to keep my flow a little lower as a safety feature. I used to screen to -8 mesh like here and then adjust the water flow for about the 20 mesh and smaller that is in the mix. Now I screen all my material down to 4 levels and run each one separately.
great information thank you! would you be interested in selling me a mini dredge sluice set uo?
Would like to but I'm afraid I'm not set up to sell over the internet. Sorry.
you put the valve before or after the pump ?
Hi Feisty Kitty and thanks for watching. You put the valve after the pump. Usually about 8” to a foot from where the hose plugs into the header spray bar on the sluice.
@@utahavalanch thanks --- what's the max % you can reduce witout f-n up the pump ?
@@1FeistyKitty I have turned the valve all the way off on mine without any problems. I now use a 12 volt DC motor controller on mine to adjust the pump speed. You can buy them on Ebay for $8.00 - 15.00. The one I have has a digital readout so I can set the water flow to a certain point each time. They really work well.
@@utahavalanch thanks ---- that's a clever convertible design --- i'm taking your word on that mat - what do you think of a slab of stone for a miller table ? i have a piece of granite couter and I was looking at the surface on the back. It's flat but not polished. It seems like stone you can easily adjust the texture by either sanding or polishing. You could try different scratch patterns in different areas.
@@1FeistyKitty thank you. I have since revised that design to simply painting the bottom of the sluice with Chalkboard paint. The Miller Table is my favorite tool for prospecting. Although it’s slow, it does the best job of catching the finer gold that I work with. If you have watched my other videos, I have designed and built a number of different ones. A newer design is a combination sluice and Miller table that works very well and what I currently use.
The original Miller tables were built using slate as the table top so the granite would be a good one to try. Myself and another individual spent a year testing about 100 different materials for a Miller table and we found that the Rustoleum Chalkboard Paint was the best material next to the slate to make the Miller table out of. Gold has a tendency to stick to the Chalkboard paint while the other sands tend to slide off. I use it in my newer designs to slow the gold down when going down the sluice to enable better capture.
Would you b interested in selling one
Roxanne Johnson. Hi Roxanne, thanks for watching. I'm sorry, but at this time I don't have anything set up so that I can sell over the Internet. These are quite easy to build and I'm currently working on a how to video that you only need a hand saw and drill and some inexpensive lumber to make one of these.
You must be in my Neighborhood, every 5 minutes a stupid Subaru with unnecessarily loud pipes drives through and revs for no no reason.
Yea, sorry you have to put up with him too. 😝 the noise pollution in my neighborhood is terrible 20 hrs a day so it’s hard to not get it in my videos.