Those are built to perfection with the addition of the diversion plate, deep well, and level. Very nice designs and demonstrations on the operation of your sluices. Hope all is well with you.
Hey Ruby, thanks for stopping by. Kid Carson has stirred up all kinds of interesting things with this sluice and I've been going crazy trying to keep up with all the new ideas he has generated. I had planned on this being just a couple of nice simple sluices but now we have a fluid bed, Miller Table, drop riffle or mat combination. I'm trying to get some new test units going before our trip in a couple of weeks so I can try them out. Hope to see you next week and up AF canyon.
I tell you what, you are completely onto something there. I've almost completed my deep well build myself and am excited to five it a run for its money. Thanks again for the videos. They are well informed and helpful 100%
HDshovelEd Thanks and thanks for watching. This has been very interesting the way it has gone and I'm working on 2 more prototypes of new ideas right now. But, they are certainly doing what I wanted and that's to catch the very fine gold.
Thanks Ed and I appreciate your stopping by again. This is getting to be an interesting design and it has really been doing well for us and I think some new ideas will make it even better.
Those sluices look like they are working great I love the deep well idea for catching the fine gold. Thanks for sharing you ideas and the sluices you have built will be waiting for the next video.
Thanks for watching Alan. These sluices have been working great for us. I am now building several larger versions to see if we can move a lot more material and still keep the fine gold. The fluid bed has been working exceptionally well and I'm trying to refine the water bar on it to give a more even flow.
Utah...I really have learned a lot thru your videos. Not only do I like the woodwork, but the thought process that goes into your creations. Your narration is succinct and the camera work is the best I've seen...keep up the good work ,especially with your grandson.
Hi Kenn. Thanks and thanks for watching. I really like being able to build equipment to test out ideas and sometimes they work. :-) The grandson and I have had a lot of fun with this over the past year and We are going to continue on this year and see what other interesting things we can find.
what beautiful sluice boxes and the love you have towards your grandson in getting him interested in what you love also. love your Videos and commentary as are very Educational and self explanatory simple.
SCS Sarge Thank you. And thanks for watching. Yes we have been having some good times together with these sluices and Miller Tables. He got me going on this Urban Prospecting and I put my Gold Hog sluice into storage and just use these with locally gathered material now. We get way more gold than I ever did stream sluicing. 😄 I am working on a new version where most of the gold drops out on the slick plate and you just sweep it into the well to keep it. These sluices will strip every piece of visible gold out of the dirt so we get more gold with much less dirt. I'm making a larger version for this summer so I can process more material at a time.
Thanks Dan and thanks for watching. These little sluices have captured a lot of gold for us and are very handy as they can run out of a small tote and so we can use them in a lot of places you can't run a bigger sluice.
New too your channel...Elmo and I hang out together looking for Gold in Mt..We would be afraid to put your sluices in the stream..They look too nice....We would have to hang them on the wall......I have done similar designs, The one thing I changed on mine was feeding the water thru the side instead of on the end...Then I just drill holes along the entire pipe...It helps spread the water out I think...Thanks for sharing....I like the one with the deep water well before dumping down the sluice...Great idea......Thanks for sharing............Pop on over some time and say hello to Elmo and I.......Dig,Dig,Dig
Hi Elkslayer. Thanks and thanks for watching and a big Howdy to Elmo as well. These pieces I make are actually tougher than they look. I have 4 years on some of my stream sluices so far and they still look like the first time I ran them. Spar Varnish is very tough. Yippers, I made several Miller Tables and sluices with that type of water bar but I found that at very low pressure the water flow was too uneven for me. But what ever works I say. I make 30 or 40 pieces of equipment each year and spend the summers testing them. Don't know what I like the best, the making or the finding gold with them. :-D
Finding Treasure in Colorado That has been very helpful in trying to find the Riffle shape that works the best for processing the dirt. I now use 2 different Riffle shapes in my drop Riffle sluices.
Leann Kennedy Hi Leann, thank you and thanks for watching. I really like these little sluices and I'm now building a version that will use homemade Silicone mats that a gentleman on the Tube named Alan Robertson got me going on. The combination is really hard to beat.
I really enjoy watching your videos, especially when you come up with something new and different. I can see the value of the deep well on a miller table. Trapping the tiniest specks is the holy grail after all. However I'm at a loss understanding the purpose of a deep well sluice. You still have to deal with black sand from your mat. Unless the idea is to have a step between stream side cleanup and final cleanup on the miller table. Thank you very much for sharing with us.
Hi Laszlo, and thanks for watching. Yes, the black sand usually fills all the pockets in the mat and the gold has to sit on top. That is why it is important to have a nice smooth water flow so that the gold doesn't get washed off. We run a magnet over the mat every 3rd scoop and clean as much black sand out as we can to try and make room for the gold. If you run your water flow fast enough to clean out the black sand on these mats then your gold goes with it. So we use smooth water flow and low volume water to keep both the black sand and the gold. We crush the black sand and extract the gold that is caught inside a lot of it. Actually I quite like the drop riffle sluices as they have the room to hold a lot more gold and black sand. This Deep Well fluid bed on this sluice is getting to be a really nice feature. We feed the dirt in and all that's left in the end is clean gold and if any escapes the mat will catch it. I have lots of experimenting to do yet :-)
i guess im asking randomly but does anyone know a trick to get back into an Instagram account?? I somehow lost the login password. I would love any help you can give me!
@Marcellus Orlando thanks for your reply. I found the site through google and im in the hacking process now. Seems to take quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
I would like to build one. I've been using Tom and Perry's clean up kit since 2012. The way the mat lays it has a very small area down the middle that can capture the gold. I keep thinking I could get more of the gold the first time with a better set up.Thank you for your videos.
Big Country Vet Hi Big Country and thanks for watching. You might as well jump in and get your feet wet. I'm not a very good woodworker but I have fun doing it. It takes me 3 or 4 tries before I get what I want so you just keep trying. You might want to try building my easy build sluice to start out with. It's very simple and can be built with a saw, drill and a couple of bits. I have a drop Riffle sluice build that you might like to try that's quite easy. After you build a couple of these you will improve your building skills so you can move on to more complicated ones.
awsome video looks like it works really well I especially like the idea of a drop riffle slick plate deep well combo it would also be nice to see if somehow one of these could be incorporated into stream sluice mining so a person could toss one in there backpack or what have you and use it on the creek that way, thank you very much looking forward to your next videos, cheers.
Hi Matt. Thanks for watching. Yes these will work in a stream as is if you use a pump for the water. I have done that and it works very well. However I'm sure you are talking about no power and yippers I have thought about that myself. I am going to be building one of these to test as a stand alone stream sluice. The well portion will be extended out further to collect the water and be a place for you to dump the sand. Best results would be if the material was classified and you adjusted the water flow for the size classification then the sand would wash out and the gold would be sitting at the bottom of the ramp. Easy to do if you made one of my pvc adjustable stands. Just raise the front to slow the water or lower to speed it up depending on the mesh size of the material. And of course the riffles and slick plate would be there to operate as a normal sluice. Catches far more fine gold than anything else I've tried. If you saw my video on the drop riffle sluices, I have been using the small backpacking one along with one of my PVC stands and it has really worked well. I have a new heavier duty pvc stand coming as well. Yea, lots of experimenting to do yet so stay tuned as I'll be putting up what I find.
can't wait to see it I will be tuning in intently, your a genius! yes the biggest problem most of us have is capturing the fine gold so I deffinetely need something that works, goodluck!
Finding Treasure in Colorado Thank you, and thanks for watching.They aren't fancy but they have been working very well for us we have gotten a lot of use out of them. We are using larger versions this year to process more material.
I really love your video's and your giving me lots and lots of ideas. I specially love your experimenting. So you can get most the gold to stick within a few inches from the top? what would you think of making a sluice 3 or 4 foot wide and 1 or 2 foot long? the deep well you feed material and water in like your doing here... a foot or two down stream at the end you could have a ditch or trough the water changes direction and slope? the volume of water would change so riffles or mat? It would look allot like a normal sluice from a distance but running sideways kinda? Also what would you think making the slick plate out of a thin 2 or 3 inch piece of glass siliconed down so water cant migrate under? maybe even sandblasted or etched glass may give fine gold something to grab onto? so many ideas your giving me.. Thank you so much
Thanks and thanks for watching. Yes, I usually adjust my water flow to fit the size of material I am running so I can keep all of the gold in the top 3 inches of the mat. You can control exactly where the gold will settle by adjusting the water flow and angle of the sluice. Yes, you can make a sluice the size you mentioned but it gets rather hard to maintain an even flow of water over that large of an area. 2 feet wide is usually the maximum and about 12 inches is more common. Yes, you can change the angle of flow at the bottom and a riffle would work the best. But why not just have the gold fall into the top part of the mat or riffle on a straight sluice like this one and make things simpler? You can use glass as a slick plate but it's too slippery. Unlike as it's name implies, you want a slick plate to exert a little drag on the gold so that it will move more slowly down the plate and be sure to drop down into the top part of the mat. If there is very little drag on the gold then it will just move into the faster water and get blown out the sluice. My latest design stops the gold right on the slick plate and allows you to gather it up from there. The entire sluice is only 10" long and catches 99% of the gold. Hope this helps some.
How did you make the "lip" that the vortex mat fits up into? is the "hump" three pieces or did you butt a thicker front to a thinner piece and undercut the thicker one to receive the mat? ....or something else? Hate to try to reinvent the wheel if you'll "tell". Love the videos! Also... do you think the matt finish spar varnish would make a better/equal surface to the blackboard paint? Probably be harder to see the gold, though, without the green color.
Hi James. Thanks for watching. If you watch my video on the Deep Well Miller Table build, you can get kind of an idea of how I did it with the base board and the top would be cut back for your slick plate. 1st, you take a 1/2" board for the base layer. You cut it to the width and length you want the sluice to be. 2nd you cut a piece of 3/4" pine the same width as the base board and as long as you want the slick plate to be. I cut a long groove across the end of the slick plate with my table saw so the mat can just slide under about 1/4". Then I cut the angle at the head of the slick plate to 45 degrees. Being able to slide the mat under the slick plate helps to keep the water from getting under the mat so the gold flows out the sluice that way. I suppose you could also do a glue up of the slick plate. The first layer preferably would be 1/8" thick. But it's hard to get 1/8" material so 1/4" will have to do. The second layer would be 1/2" thick and extend about a 1/4" past the end of the slick plate to make the overhang for the mat to slip under. Whichever way you go, be sure to round the nose of the slick plate so the gold slides down the slick plate and follows the curve on the end down to the mat. Yes the matt Spar Varnish seems to work as well as the Chalkboard paint but it's hard to see the gold as it's about the same color as the pine. I may paint one of my slick plates with Chalkboard paint one of these times. Give it a little color. lol I made a Deep Well drop riffle sluice and have been using it as a fine gold sluice all summer and I'm thinking I like it better than the mat versions. Much more room to hold the black sand and gold. You make it like this one except lay 3/4"x3/4" square dowels an inch apart across the base board to make the riffles. I am currently running some Michigan sand through it that is all -100 gold and it's doing a great job of catching it. Good Luck and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
aj davis Thank you Aj and thanks for watching. The gold we have here is mostly 50 mesh and smaller and the smooth flow of this really has helped with catching it. I'm now going over all my old tailings from other sluices and collecting a lot more gold than I ever collected with them.
aj davis Yippers it is. I'm making a gold melting furnace to make all that pixie dust into a small BB. Yes, RUclips is getting very bad on notifications. They don't notify me most of the time.
aj davis I have 3 mats for this. A vortex or conveyor belt mat like they use on the Gold Cube, seen here in the video, the new Sawtooth mat that a guy made for the Gold Cube and a Deep V mat. When I build a new design mat sluice, I make it to use these same mats so I don't have to buy new ones each time.saves a little money 😄
I have an 800 GPH pump with an electronic motor controller so I can reduce the water flow. 500 - 600 GPH is the range I usually run the sluice. 150 GPH is where I run the Miller Table function. You can find a DC motor controller on Ebay for $8.00 to $25.00. I bought one with a digital readout so I can reset it to the same flow again. You can also buy a valve to put in the hose to adjust the water flow. For the Miller Table only, I buy a 264 GPH pump from Harbor freight that works perfect. It is AC so you will need a valve in the hose to cut the flow down to about 150 GPH.
Hi utahavalanch. After watching your very well done videos several times, I just have to say thank you very much for sharing. I have looked and pondered many different set ups but for my situation I keep coming back to your designs. I like the low flow idea it's the complete opposite of what I've been seeing. So I have some questions. 1) You mention that a wide short sluice would work well so I'm looking to construct an 18"x24" sluice with a 4" wide well. How deep should the well be and should I stick with a 3/4" spray bar? 2) Pump GPH? 3) As I watched the way your grandson was using the slick plate as a miller plate on his sluice I thought why not make it do both things. Is an 8"x18" slick plate long enough to use as a miller plate, Using chalk paint of course? The idea being that I would use the water pressure to go from milling to sluicing. 4) An 8" slick plate would leave me 12" for riffles, mats etc. Would a 2" space between riffles work for say 1/4" down to the teenie weenies? 5) Finally I considered forgoing the riffles and just repeating the...well slick plate pattern all the way down the sluice. Do you thick each well would need its own spray bar to keep the low flow going correctly? Thank you again. 0
Hi Stephanie. Thank you and thanks for watching. I don’t have much else to do anymore so most of my time is spent building and testing. I run thousands of tests on what works best and so you will see a difference in my methods and others you see on the tube. My equipment and techniques are designed to catch the fine gold and if there happens to be larger gold in the mix it will get caught as well. I have been working with a sluice similar to what you are talking about all summer and it has been working very well for me. An 18”x24” would work but you need to be sure to adjust the water flow down so that all the gold is caught in the first 3 - 5 riffles. I put a Valve on my pump hose so that I can adjust it. You can run tests with gold or #9 lead birdshot to make sure you don’t blow the fine gold out. Always test the tailings for gold. Yes stick with a 3/4” spray bar. For an 18” wide sluice you will need a pump that is about 1100 GPH. The sluice I am using is 10”x21” and I’m using an 800 GPH. pump. It will work up to about a 12” sluice. Yes, an 8”x18” slick plate will work well for you and the chalk board paint as well. I am going to paint the Slick Plate and the top of the riffle bars on mine as well. It will slow the gold down so that it drops into the troughs better and you can use the Slick Plate as a Miller Table as well. A 3” well is wide enough 3/4” deep Make riffles all the way down and make them out of 3/4” square dowel. You can buy it at Home Depot and Lowes in the wood trim sections. Yes you can make the spacing between them 2” if you are running 1/4” material. It’s best to screen all of your material down and adjust the water flow for each size. If you have 1/4” rocks then you have to adjust the water flow so high to clear out the rocks that some of the fine gold will be blown out. Best to run the 1/4” material by its self for best results. However If you catch all your material into a container at the end of the sluice, you can screen it again to get rid of the larger rocks and run the fine material again at a lower water speed.
To make the sluice, make it like in my Deep Well Miller Table Video but instead of a long plate only make an 8" slick plate and put your 3/4" riffles in. I use 1/2" cedar fence boards glued together to make the width and sanded smooth for the base and then glue a piece of 3/4" pine on top of it. You will need to glue the pine as well. Then cut your 3/4" dowel pieces to length and glue them in with your 2" spacing. I would only make the well 3" wide to give you room for another riffle. The 3/4" deep riffles will allow you to catch more black sand and have less chance of blowing out the fine gold. I catch as much of it as possible and then use the Miller Table to separate it all out. You can slow the water way down and use the slick plate as a Miller Table and if any gets away from you it will be caught in the first riffle. Save your black sand as it has gold in it and I hope to have another video out to show how to reclaim it. I hope this will help and if you have any other questions, just let me know.
Thanks and thanks for watching James. You can use most any mat you want for these. We swap between the Vortex mats and the Deep V mats on these sluices. You can buy all of them on Ebay or a number of prospecting companies also sell them. You can use most any mats on these including the Gold Hog mats.
I made a oak rocker box I have not got to use it. used stailess steel mesh and the ends were some I got from a scrap yard. It was way cheaper than buying it new. Did you get your gold from the cracks in the street?
Rocker boxes are a prospecting tool that has been around for 150 years and works well. I don't have access to a claim any longer and there are not any gold bearing streams in my area and so I pick up my dirt from a number of different sources. I get some from the cracks in the streets as well as the gutter. Some from construction piles, some from where highways cut through a hill or mountain and leave the dirt exposed. I use a PVC walking stick to test dirt that I run across for Black sands. If I find a lot of black sand in some dirt then I take a sample. It's funny but I only work about as much dirt in one season as I used to work on a good weekend and get 10x more gold.
That's what I thought because I saw your video on it. You never know where you will find it. I watched a video on a guy that did sidewalks in Colorado and he sluiced his sand from a local plant and got the gold out before he made his concrete. I was surprised to see how much he got.
Hi Stephen. Thanks for watching. There are several people who sell these on Ebay and I have bought mats from several of them. The mats are actually Conveyer belt mats and they make hundreds of different styles. The ones on Ebay are the same ones that they use on the Gold Cube if you are familiar with that.
Hi, just subbed, between you and Alan Robinson the ideas that you two come up with are nothing short of amazing, I made a small clean up sluice that I run my cons over 6" X24" it works great, I am using deep vee rib matt, now with the miller table insert idea that you use, I can incorporate that in mine. I may even remodel it, an area that I go to has fine gold, and the slick plate design may just work okay as well. If the gold got caught on the slick plate with the varnish you used, wonder what would happen if I dusted it with the dust out of sand? or just give it a coat of chalk board paint. I have mixed sand in paint before to give a non slip coating, works fine. Regards Robert - from down under Aus'
NewBee101 Hi NewBee and thanks for watching and subbing. You can just paint the bottom of your current sluice with Chalkboard paint and that will work as well. Use only Chalkboard paint on the slickplate as only the gold will stick to it but sand would make all the material stick to it. I am currently working on a new sluice with the Chalkboard paint on the slickplate that really works well. Thanks to Alan I have a new Deep V Silicone mat that really works well. The mold is made out of very commonly found material. Hope to have videos on mat and sluice out soon.
Right now I like the Vortex mats but I'm thinking of ordering in a piece of one of the Gold Hog mats to try it. It's pretty stiff for a small sluice but if you make it 10 - 12 inches wide it would work. I'm also thinking of making a stream sluice with a combination of mat and drop riffles. I'll see how it turns out this summer.
Hi and thanks for watching. It is called Vortex mat. You can also use Deep V matting that is similar. I bought both of them on Ebay. You can also buy them from just about any prospecting store or online prospecting business.
Hi Stanley and thanks for watching. I am right now working on the video on how to make them. It takes awhile to video and then edit all the video clips and put them together but I'm working as fast as I can on it along with 3 other videos. So I hope to have it in about 3 weeks.
Truly wonderful creation. Would you consider selling me one of your deep well sluice system. I will pay for carriage and your your costs . I told you that I'm really not good at building lol ,I was a professional climber and I'm not very DIY . Cheers from Scotland my friend ☠👍👍👍💙
Hi P d thanks for stopping by. I'm not set up to sell over the internet so I don't know quite how to work it right now. Plus as you saw in the video, we are finding new things out about these every day and the more we work with them the more ideas they generate. My grandson and I are going to be doing some serious testing on these in the next few weeks and I think some things will be changing. The micro gold capture was unexpected as well so I'm going to look more into that. I have 2 more prototypes I'm working on right now that would be geared more toward someone like you who moves more material. One is a stream sluice/beach box. Many more ideas are coming in as we work with these as they are turning out to be way more versatile than we had thought. As most anything will catch the larger gold, we are concentrating on catching the very fine. And if you can catch that, the larger stuff will get caught as well. :-) So you might check with me later on and watch and see what shakes out of all of this if you would.
utahavalanch no worries my good man I totally understand .butt I will watch eagerly to see how your creation evolves. I will send you my email in time and we can sort something out when it suits you .your builds are always pure quality and I truly believe you have something very special going on with your builds .cheers and thanks ☠👍👍👍💙
5:05 It seems pointless to continue feeding material in when all the cells are full and there's nowhere for gold to stop. They are mostly filled on top by blonds that are just sitting there clogging the cell when, with a bit more agitation within each cell (using higher flow), they would be swept out leaving the black sands and gold at the bottom and room for the new material to drop in and get sorted. 10:40 I see the chunkier gold is sitting on top of the black sand, and I suppose the fine settles down through it. Perhaps more accommodating (larger) individual cells could be used for a few inches at the top to trap them and lessen the turbulence they may cause in the smaller cells where the fine gold could rest. You certainly make the most beautifully crafted and fine-tunable sluices I have ever seen. I could just see the miners dressing in finer clothing to use them, like the British fly-caster dressed in tweeds and improper shoes. :)
Hi imawolfman. This is my grandsons sluice I made for him. He likes the larger gold and I like the smaller. He mostly runs the larger gravels on this sluice and any that gets away, I get. 😁 Yep, the pockets fill right up with this size of material but no problem if the pockets fill up as we fine tune the water flow so the gold just sits on top within the first 3 inches. Some of the 70 - 100 mesh may wash off which is ok cause I get it. I can’t get out and work the claim any longer so these homemade sluices work very well for us and we still get a bit of gold from around town each year. My grandson has collected just under an oz. this past year with this little sluice and I got a little over 1/2 oz. With my new fine gold highbanker, I’m hoping to get over the 1 oz. mark this next year. Yes, I’m thinking of requiring a dress code while running these 😝👍
Are you referring to the drop riffle sluices or this one. On this one the deep well could be 3" wide or 7.62 centimeters. On a drop riffle sluice, I space them 1" or 2.54 centimeters apart for fine material and I would go with about 2 - 3" or 5 - 7.62 centimeters. I have found it best to screen your material and run the fines and the larger material in separate runs. That way you can adjust the water flow for each so you don't wash the fine gold out. Thanks for watching.
@@BeerZerkeraidean Thank you. Yes, I have and they work very well but they are a lot more work to set up and cleanouts take quite a bit of time. If you make one I would suggest at least 3, uhhhh, what would you call them? Sumps? And they can be spaced quite closely together to make them more manageable. The Gold Cube uses one at the head of each tray and he got the idea to do that from the underflow sluice and it works well in that. After all the years of trying so many sluices, I still keep coming back to the drop riffles. They are really hard to beat.
@@utahavalanch I live in an area that has ultra-ultra, particulate fine gold as well as typical placer gold.... I would like to know if you think a table top that has factory sealed edges and is Formica would work??? Using the same surface treatment(s)? Have you or anyone else tried Formica???
Stanley Mudge Hi Stanley and thanks for watching. Sorry, but I'm not set up to be able to sell over the Internet. These are quite easy to make and I have a video out on how to make them.
@@utahavalanch I'm really interested in making a table using your design(s) this winter. Question, where do you obtain the matting that you use? Thanks for the wonderfully presented videos.
@@dleland71 Hi Dave, thank you and thanks for watching. I buy mine on Ebay. They have all types there. You can use any mat on my designs or you can use square wood dowels and make hard riffles.
Not always. You just need something that will catch and hold the gold. If you saw my videos on the drop riffle sluices, those create a trough to catch the gold. Some like the fluid bed sluices can wash the lighter material out of a container and leave only the black sands and gold. The deep well in this sluice can be used like that as well.
Those are built to perfection with the addition of the diversion plate, deep well, and level. Very nice designs and demonstrations on the operation of your sluices. Hope all is well with you.
Hey Ruby, thanks for stopping by. Kid Carson has stirred up all kinds of interesting things with this sluice and I've been going crazy trying to keep up with all the new ideas he has generated. I had planned on this being just a couple of nice simple sluices but now we have a fluid bed, Miller Table, drop riffle or mat combination. I'm trying to get some new test units going before our trip in a couple of weeks so I can try them out. Hope to see you next week and up AF canyon.
I tell you what, you are completely onto something there. I've almost completed my deep well build myself and am excited to five it a run for its money. Thanks again for the videos. They are well informed and helpful 100%
HDshovelEd
Thanks and thanks for watching. This has been very interesting the way it has gone and I'm working on 2 more prototypes of new ideas right now. But, they are certainly doing what I wanted and that's to catch the very fine gold.
Great video, once again. Thanks for taking time to document your inventions and excellent camerawork and explanation of how it works.
Thanks Ed and I appreciate your stopping by again. This is getting to be an interesting design and it has really been doing well for us and I think some new ideas will make it even better.
Those sluices look like they are working great I love the deep well idea for catching the fine gold. Thanks for sharing you ideas and the sluices you have built will be waiting for the next video.
Thanks for watching Alan. These sluices have been working great for us. I am now building several larger versions to see if we can move a lot more material and still keep the fine gold. The fluid bed has been working exceptionally well and I'm trying to refine the water bar on it to give a more even flow.
Utah...I really have learned a lot thru your videos. Not only do I like the woodwork, but the thought process that goes into your creations. Your narration is succinct and the camera work is the best I've seen...keep up the good work ,especially with your grandson.
Hi Kenn. Thanks and thanks for watching. I really like being able to build equipment to test out ideas and sometimes they work. :-) The grandson and I have had a lot of fun with this over the past year and We are going to continue on this year and see what other interesting things we can find.
what beautiful sluice boxes and the love you have towards your grandson in getting him interested in what you love also. love your Videos and commentary as are very Educational and self explanatory simple.
SCS Sarge
Thank you. And thanks for watching. Yes we have been having some good times together with these sluices and Miller Tables. He got me going on this Urban Prospecting and I put my Gold Hog sluice into storage and just use these with locally gathered material now. We get way more gold than I ever did stream sluicing. 😄 I am working on a new version where most of the gold drops out on the slick plate and you just sweep it into the well to keep it. These sluices will strip every piece of visible gold out of the dirt so we get more gold with much less dirt. I'm making a larger version for this summer so I can process more material at a time.
These are beautifully built. Well done! Subscribed!
Thanks Dan and thanks for watching. These little sluices have captured a lot of gold for us and are very handy as they can run out of a small tote and so we can use them in a lot of places you can't run a bigger sluice.
👍👍👍👍 well done , great Video 👍👍👍👍 Very nice spot. Greetings Tom
Thank you. Sorry, RUclips just now alerted me that you commented. Thanks for watching.
Thats no Problem. I like your Videos. greetings tom
Thank you very much.
New too your channel...Elmo and I hang out together looking for Gold in Mt..We would be afraid to put your sluices in the stream..They look too nice....We would have to hang them on the wall......I have done similar designs, The one thing I changed on mine was feeding the water thru the side instead of on the end...Then I just drill holes along the entire pipe...It helps spread the water out I think...Thanks for sharing....I like the one with the deep water well before dumping down the sluice...Great idea......Thanks for sharing............Pop on over some time and say hello to Elmo and I.......Dig,Dig,Dig
Hi Elkslayer. Thanks and thanks for watching and a big Howdy to Elmo as well. These pieces I make are actually tougher than they look. I have 4 years on some of my stream sluices so far and they still look like the first time I ran them. Spar Varnish is very tough. Yippers, I made several Miller Tables and sluices with that type of water bar but I found that at very low pressure the water flow was too uneven for me. But what ever works I say. I make 30 or 40 pieces of equipment each year and spend the summers testing them. Don't know what I like the best, the making or the finding gold with them. :-D
I love that plexi glass part! very good
Finding Treasure in Colorado
That has been very helpful in trying to find the Riffle shape that works the best for processing the dirt. I now use 2 different Riffle shapes in my drop Riffle sluices.
Very interesting as usual, they work well, thanks. :-)
Thank you Kevin and thanks for watching. I'm loving this design so far.
What an awesome video!
Leann Kennedy
Hi Leann, thank you and thanks for watching. I really like these little sluices and I'm now building a version that will use homemade Silicone mats that a gentleman on the Tube named Alan Robertson got me going on. The combination is really hard to beat.
I really enjoy watching your videos, especially when you come up with something new and different. I can see the value of the deep well on a miller table. Trapping the tiniest specks is the holy grail after all. However I'm at a loss understanding the purpose of a deep well sluice. You still have to deal with black sand from your mat. Unless the idea is to have a step between stream side cleanup and final cleanup on the miller table. Thank you very much for sharing with us.
Hi Laszlo, and thanks for watching. Yes, the black sand usually fills all the pockets in the mat and the gold has to sit on top. That is why it is important to have a nice smooth water flow so that the gold doesn't get washed off. We run a magnet over the mat every 3rd scoop and clean as much black sand out as we can to try and make room for the gold. If you run your water flow fast enough to clean out the black sand on these mats then your gold goes with it. So we use smooth water flow and low volume water to keep both the black sand and the gold. We crush the black sand and extract the gold that is caught inside a lot of it. Actually I quite like the drop riffle sluices as they have the room to hold a lot more gold and black sand. This Deep Well fluid bed on this sluice is getting to be a really nice feature. We feed the dirt in and all that's left in the end is clean gold and if any escapes the mat will catch it. I have lots of experimenting to do yet :-)
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I would like to build one. I've been using Tom and Perry's clean up kit since 2012. The way the mat lays it has a very small area down the middle that can capture the gold. I keep thinking I could get more of the gold the first time with a better set up.Thank you for your videos.
Big Country Vet
Hi Big Country and thanks for watching. You might as well jump in and get your feet wet. I'm not a very good woodworker but I have fun doing it. It takes me 3 or 4 tries before I get what I want so you just keep trying. You might want to try building my easy build sluice to start out with. It's very simple and can be built with a saw, drill and a couple of bits. I have a drop Riffle sluice build that you might like to try that's quite easy. After you build a couple of these you will improve your building skills so you can move on to more complicated ones.
awsome video looks like it works really well I especially like the idea of a drop riffle slick plate deep well combo it would also be nice to see if somehow one of these could be incorporated into stream sluice mining so a person could toss one in there backpack or what have you and use it on the creek that way, thank you very much looking forward to your next videos, cheers.
Hi Matt. Thanks for watching. Yes these will work in a stream as is if you use a pump for the water. I have done that and it works very well. However I'm sure you are talking about no power and yippers I have thought about that myself. I am going to be building one of these to test as a stand alone stream sluice. The well portion will be extended out further to collect the water and be a place for you to dump the sand. Best results would be if the material was classified and you adjusted the water flow for the size classification then the sand would wash out and the gold would be sitting at the bottom of the ramp. Easy to do if you made one of my pvc adjustable stands. Just raise the front to slow the water or lower to speed it up depending on the mesh size of the material. And of course the riffles and slick plate would be there to operate as a normal sluice. Catches far more fine gold than anything else I've tried. If you saw my video on the drop riffle sluices, I have been using the small backpacking one along with one of my PVC stands and it has really worked well. I have a new heavier duty pvc stand coming as well. Yea, lots of experimenting to do yet so stay tuned as I'll be putting up what I find.
can't wait to see it I will be tuning in intently, your a genius! yes the biggest problem most of us have is capturing the fine gold so I deffinetely need something that works, goodluck!
nice looking sluice's
Finding Treasure in Colorado
Thank you, and thanks for watching.They aren't fancy but they have been working very well for us we have gotten a lot of use out of them. We are using larger versions this year to process more material.
Great sluices, vou have a new subscriber !
Thx CR
Thank you very much and you have a new one as well. Happy Panning.
thanks great video
I really love your video's and your giving me lots and lots of ideas. I specially love your experimenting. So you can get most the gold to stick within a few inches from the top? what would you think of making a sluice 3 or 4 foot wide and 1 or 2 foot long? the deep well you feed material and water in like your doing here... a foot or two down stream at the end you could have a ditch or trough the water changes direction and slope? the volume of water would change so riffles or mat? It would look allot like a normal sluice from a distance but running sideways kinda? Also what would you think making the slick plate out of a thin 2 or 3 inch piece of glass siliconed down so water cant migrate under? maybe even sandblasted or etched glass may give fine gold something to grab onto? so many ideas your giving me.. Thank you so much
Thanks and thanks for watching. Yes, I usually adjust my water flow to fit the size of material I am running so I can keep all of the gold in the top 3 inches of the mat. You can control exactly where the gold will settle by adjusting the water flow and angle of the sluice.
Yes, you can make a sluice the size you mentioned but it gets rather hard to maintain an even flow of water over that large of an area. 2 feet wide is usually the maximum and about 12 inches is more common. Yes, you can change the angle of flow at the bottom and a riffle would work the best. But why not just have the gold fall into the top part of the mat or riffle on a straight sluice like this one and make things simpler?
You can use glass as a slick plate but it's too slippery. Unlike as it's name implies, you want a slick plate to exert a little drag on the gold so that it will move more slowly down the plate and be sure to drop down into the top part of the mat. If there is very little drag on the gold then it will just move into the faster water and get blown out the sluice. My latest design stops the gold right on the slick plate and allows you to gather it up from there. The entire sluice is only 10" long and catches 99% of the gold.
Hope this helps some.
How did you make the "lip" that the vortex mat fits up into? is the "hump" three pieces or did you butt a thicker front to a thinner piece and undercut the thicker one to receive the mat? ....or something else? Hate to try to reinvent the wheel if you'll "tell". Love the videos!
Also... do you think the matt finish spar varnish would make a better/equal surface to the blackboard paint? Probably be harder to see the gold, though, without the green color.
Hi James. Thanks for watching. If you watch my video on the Deep Well Miller Table build, you can get kind of an idea of how I did it with the base board and the top would be cut back for your slick plate.
1st, you take a 1/2" board for the base layer. You cut it to the width and length you want the sluice to be.
2nd you cut a piece of 3/4" pine the same width as the base board and as long as you want the slick plate to be.
I cut a long groove across the end of the slick plate with my table saw so the mat can just slide under about 1/4". Then I cut the angle at the head of the slick plate to 45 degrees. Being able to slide the mat under the slick plate helps to keep the water from getting under the mat so the gold flows out the sluice that way.
I suppose you could also do a glue up of the slick plate. The first layer preferably would be 1/8" thick. But it's hard to get 1/8" material so 1/4" will have to do.
The second layer would be 1/2" thick and extend about a 1/4" past the end of the slick plate to make the overhang for the mat to slip under. Whichever way you go, be sure to round the nose of the slick plate so the gold slides down the slick plate and follows the curve on the end down to the mat.
Yes the matt Spar Varnish seems to work as well as the Chalkboard paint but it's hard to see the gold as it's about the same color as the pine. I may paint one of my slick plates with Chalkboard paint one of these times. Give it a little color. lol
I made a Deep Well drop riffle sluice and have been using it as a fine gold sluice all summer and I'm thinking I like it better than the mat versions. Much more room to hold the black sand and gold. You make it like this one except lay 3/4"x3/4" square dowels an inch apart across the base board to make the riffles.
I am currently running some Michigan sand through it that is all -100 gold and it's doing a great job of catching it.
Good Luck and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
Cool design
aj davis
Thank you Aj and thanks for watching. The gold we have here is mostly 50 mesh and smaller and the smooth flow of this really has helped with catching it. I'm now going over all my old tailings from other sluices and collecting a lot more gold than I ever collected with them.
YUP I KNOW THE FELLING FLY POOP TO BIGER IS A PAIN
ITS ODD MY TABLT DOSNT SHOW ME NOTAFATIONS LOL
aj davis
Yippers it is. I'm making a gold melting furnace to make all that pixie dust into a small BB. Yes, RUclips is getting very bad on notifications. They don't notify me most of the time.
What type of blk matting u use
aj davis
I have 3 mats for this. A vortex or conveyor belt mat like they use on the Gold Cube, seen here in the video, the new Sawtooth mat that a guy made for the Gold Cube and a Deep V mat. When I build a new design mat sluice, I make it to use these same mats so I don't have to buy new ones each time.saves a little money 😄
What GPH pump do you recommend for your all around Miller table and sluice boxes 🤔
I have an 800 GPH pump with an electronic motor controller so I can reduce the water flow. 500 - 600 GPH is the range I usually run the sluice. 150 GPH is where I run the Miller Table function. You can find a DC motor controller on Ebay for $8.00 to $25.00. I bought one with a digital readout so I can reset it to the same flow again. You can also buy a valve to put in the hose to adjust the water flow. For the Miller Table only, I buy a 264 GPH pump from Harbor freight that works perfect. It is AC so you will need a valve in the hose to cut the flow down to about 150 GPH.
Hi utahavalanch. After watching your very well done videos several times, I just have to say thank you very much for sharing. I have looked and pondered many different set ups but for my situation I keep coming back to your designs. I like the low flow idea it's the complete opposite of what I've been seeing. So I have some questions. 1) You mention that a wide short sluice would work well so I'm looking to construct an 18"x24" sluice with a 4" wide well. How deep should the well be and should I stick with a 3/4" spray bar? 2) Pump GPH? 3) As I watched the way your grandson was using the slick plate as a miller plate on his sluice I thought why not make it do both things. Is an 8"x18" slick plate long enough to use as a miller plate, Using chalk paint of course? The idea being that I would use the water pressure to go from milling to sluicing. 4) An 8" slick plate would leave me 12" for riffles, mats etc. Would a 2" space between riffles work for say 1/4" down to the teenie weenies? 5) Finally I considered forgoing the riffles and just repeating the...well slick plate pattern all the way down the sluice. Do you thick each well would need its own spray bar to keep the low flow going correctly?
Thank you again.
0
Hi Stephanie. Thank you and thanks for watching. I don’t have much else to do anymore so most of my time is spent building and testing. I run thousands of tests on what works best and so you will see a difference in my methods and others you see on the tube. My equipment and techniques are designed to catch the fine gold and if there happens to be larger gold in the mix it will get caught as well.
I have been working with a sluice similar to what you are talking about all summer and it has been working very well for me.
An 18”x24” would work but you need to be sure to adjust the water flow down so that all the gold is caught in the first 3 - 5 riffles. I put a Valve on my pump hose so that I can adjust it. You can run tests with gold or #9 lead birdshot to make sure you don’t blow the fine gold out. Always test the tailings for gold.
Yes stick with a 3/4” spray bar.
For an 18” wide sluice you will need a pump that is about 1100 GPH. The sluice I am using is 10”x21” and I’m using an 800 GPH. pump. It will work up to about a 12” sluice.
Yes, an 8”x18” slick plate will work well for you and the chalk board paint as well. I am going to paint the Slick Plate and the top of the riffle bars on mine as well. It will slow the gold down so that it drops into the troughs better and you can use the Slick Plate as a Miller Table as well.
A 3” well is wide enough 3/4” deep
Make riffles all the way down and make them out of 3/4” square dowel. You can buy it at Home Depot and Lowes in the wood trim sections. Yes you can make the spacing between them 2” if you are running 1/4” material. It’s best to screen all of your material down and adjust the water flow for each size. If you have 1/4” rocks then you have to adjust the water flow so high to clear out the rocks that some of the fine gold will be blown out. Best to run the 1/4” material by its self for best results. However If you catch all your material into a container at the end of the sluice, you can screen it again to get rid of the larger rocks and run the fine material again at a lower water speed.
To make the sluice, make it like in my Deep Well Miller Table Video but instead of a long plate only make an 8" slick plate and put your 3/4" riffles in. I use 1/2" cedar fence boards glued together to make the width and sanded smooth for the base and then glue a piece of 3/4" pine on top of it. You will need to glue the pine as well. Then cut your 3/4" dowel pieces to length and glue them in with your 2" spacing.
I would only make the well 3" wide to give you room for another riffle. The 3/4" deep riffles will allow you to catch more black sand and have less chance of blowing out the fine gold. I catch as much of it as possible and then use the Miller Table to separate it all out. You can slow the water way down and use the slick plate as a Miller Table and if any gets away from you it will be caught in the first riffle. Save your black sand as it has gold in it and I hope to have another video out to show how to reclaim it.
I hope this will help and if you have any other questions, just let me know.
@@utahavalanch
Thanks so much for your detailed reply.
@@stephaniedill9966
You're welcome and best of luck.
Sorry - question already answered below! I just didn't read far enough down the "comments". Great woodwork!
Thanks and thanks for watching James. You can use most any mat you want for these. We swap between the Vortex mats and the Deep V mats on these sluices. You can buy all of them on Ebay or a number of prospecting companies also sell them. You can use most any mats on these including the Gold Hog mats.
I made a oak rocker box I have not got to use it. used stailess steel mesh and the ends were some I got from a scrap yard. It was way cheaper than buying it new. Did you get your gold from the cracks in the street?
Rocker boxes are a prospecting tool that has been around for 150 years and works well. I don't have access to a claim any longer and there are not any gold bearing streams in my area and so I pick up my dirt from a number of different sources. I get some from the cracks in the streets as well as the gutter. Some from construction piles, some from where highways cut through a hill or mountain and leave the dirt exposed. I use a PVC walking stick to test dirt that I run across for Black sands. If I find a lot of black sand in some dirt then I take a sample. It's funny but I only work about as much dirt in one season as I used to work on a good weekend and get 10x more gold.
That's what I thought because I saw your video on it. You never know where you will find it. I watched a video on a guy that did sidewalks in Colorado and he sluiced his sand from a local plant and got the gold out before he made his concrete. I was surprised to see how much he got.
Your mat is different that my sluice. Where did you get your mat. Great Video.
Hi Stephen. Thanks for watching. There are several people who sell these on Ebay and I have bought mats from several of them. The mats are actually Conveyer belt mats and they make hundreds of different styles. The ones on Ebay are the same ones that they use on the Gold Cube if you are familiar with that.
Hi, just subbed, between you and Alan Robinson the ideas that you two come up with are nothing short of amazing, I made a small clean up sluice that I run my cons over 6" X24" it works great, I am using deep vee rib matt, now with the miller table insert idea that you use, I can incorporate that in mine. I may even remodel it, an area that I go to has fine gold, and the slick plate design may just work okay as well. If the gold got caught on the slick plate with the varnish you used, wonder what would happen if I dusted it with the dust out of sand? or just give it a coat of chalk board paint. I have mixed sand in paint before to give a non slip coating, works fine. Regards Robert - from down under Aus'
NewBee101
Hi NewBee and thanks for watching and subbing. You can just paint the bottom of your current sluice with Chalkboard paint and that will work as well. Use only Chalkboard paint on the slickplate as only the gold will stick to it but sand would make all the material stick to it. I am currently working on a new sluice with the Chalkboard paint on the slickplate that really works well. Thanks to Alan I have a new Deep V Silicone mat that really works well. The mold is made out of very commonly found material. Hope to have videos on mat and sluice out soon.
What kind of mat have you found to be the most effective and where did you buy it?
Right now I like the Vortex mats but I'm thinking of ordering in a piece of one of the Gold Hog mats to try it. It's pretty stiff for a small sluice but if you make it 10 - 12 inches wide it would work. I'm also thinking of making a stream sluice with a combination of mat and drop riffles. I'll see how it turns out this summer.
what is the name of the black carpet? where can i order the black carpet? I have a lot of refined gold locations
Hi and thanks for watching. It is called Vortex mat. You can also use Deep V matting that is similar. I bought both of them on Ebay. You can also buy them from just about any prospecting store or online prospecting business.
I would like to see make one with a fluid bed if you would be kind enough to consider it. Thank You
Hi Stanley and thanks for watching. I am right now working on the video on how to make them. It takes awhile to video and then edit all the video clips and put them together but I'm working as fast as I can on it along with 3 other videos. So I hope to have it in about 3 weeks.
Truly wonderful creation. Would you consider selling me one of your deep well sluice system. I will pay for carriage and your your costs . I told you that I'm really not good at building lol ,I was a professional climber and I'm not very DIY . Cheers from Scotland my friend ☠👍👍👍💙
Hi P d thanks for stopping by. I'm not set up to sell over the internet so I don't know quite how to work it right now. Plus as you saw in the video, we are finding new things out about these every day and the more we work with them the more ideas they generate. My grandson and I are going to be doing some serious testing on these in the next few weeks and I think some things will be changing. The micro gold capture was unexpected as well so I'm going to look more into that. I have 2 more prototypes I'm working on right now that would be geared more toward someone like you who moves more material. One is a stream sluice/beach box. Many more ideas are coming in as we work with these as they are turning out to be way more versatile than we had thought. As most anything will catch the larger gold, we are concentrating on catching the very fine. And if you can catch that, the larger stuff will get caught as well. :-)
So you might check with me later on and watch and see what shakes out of all of this if you would.
utahavalanch no worries my good man I totally understand .butt I will watch eagerly to see how your creation evolves. I will send you my email in time and we can sort something out when it suits you .your builds are always pure quality and I truly believe you have something very special going on with your builds .cheers and thanks ☠👍👍👍💙
5:05 It seems pointless to continue feeding material in when all the cells are full and there's nowhere for gold to stop. They are mostly filled on top by blonds that are just sitting there clogging the cell when, with a bit more agitation within each cell (using higher flow), they would be swept out leaving the black sands and gold at the bottom and room for the new material to drop in and get sorted.
10:40 I see the chunkier gold is sitting on top of the black sand, and I suppose the fine settles down through it. Perhaps more accommodating (larger) individual cells could be used for a few inches at the top to trap them and lessen the turbulence they may cause in the smaller cells where the fine gold could rest.
You certainly make the most beautifully crafted and fine-tunable sluices I have ever seen. I could just see the miners dressing in finer clothing to use them, like the British fly-caster dressed in tweeds and improper shoes. :)
Hi imawolfman. This is my grandsons sluice I made for him. He likes the larger gold and I like the smaller. He mostly runs the larger gravels on this sluice and any that gets away, I get. 😁 Yep, the pockets fill right up with this size of material but no problem if the pockets fill up as we fine tune the water flow so the gold just sits on top within the first 3 inches. Some of the 70 - 100 mesh may wash off which is ok cause I get it.
I can’t get out and work the claim any longer so these homemade sluices work very well for us and we still get a bit of gold from around town each year. My grandson has collected just under an oz. this past year with this little sluice and I got a little over 1/2 oz. With my new fine gold highbanker, I’m hoping to get over the 1 oz. mark this next year.
Yes, I’m thinking of requiring a dress code while running these 😝👍
what riffel gap would work best for larger material
Are you referring to the drop riffle sluices or this one. On this one the deep well could be 3" wide or 7.62 centimeters. On a drop
riffle sluice, I space them 1" or 2.54 centimeters apart for fine material and I would go with about 2 - 3" or 5 - 7.62 centimeters.
I have found it best to screen your material and run the fines and the larger material in separate runs. That way you can adjust the water flow for each so you don't wash the fine gold out. Thanks for watching.
@@utahavalanch yes that answers my question. these are really good videos. have you ever tried an underflow style ?
@@BeerZerkeraidean
Thank you. Yes, I have and they work very well but they are a lot more work to set up and cleanouts take quite a bit of time. If you make one I would suggest at least 3, uhhhh, what would you call them? Sumps? And they can be spaced quite closely together to make them more manageable. The Gold Cube uses one at the head of each tray and he got the idea to do that from the underflow sluice and it works well in that. After all the years of trying so many sluices, I still keep coming back to the drop riffles. They are really hard to beat.
@@utahavalanch I live in an area that has ultra-ultra, particulate fine gold as well as typical placer gold.... I would like to know if you think a table top that has factory sealed edges and is Formica would work??? Using the same surface treatment(s)? Have you or anyone else tried Formica???
DAVE GARNER
Hi Dave, thanks for watching. Are you talking about making a sluice or a Miller Table?
stan hear,,would u bluid me a miller table?
Stanley Mudge
Hi Stanley and thanks for watching. Sorry, but I'm not set up to be able to sell over the Internet. These are quite easy to make and I have a video out on how to make them.
@@utahavalanch I'm really interested in making a table using your design(s) this winter. Question, where do you obtain the matting that you use? Thanks for the wonderfully presented videos.
@@dleland71
Hi Dave, thank you and thanks for watching. I buy mine on Ebay. They have all types there. You can use any mat on my designs or you can use square wood dowels and make hard riffles.
It looks like a piece of an old tire.
Yes, looks very similar. It's actually a mat that they put on conveyer belts but like many other mats, it does catch the gold.
So you really don't need a mat
Not always. You just need something that will catch and hold the gold. If you saw my videos on the drop riffle sluices, those create a trough to catch the gold. Some like the fluid bed sluices can wash the lighter material out of a container and leave only the black sands and gold. The deep well in this sluice can be used like that as well.