Basic equipment use and setup isn't hard unless you don't have an instruction manual or someone to show you how. Several pieces of equipment will be covered on this page, so scroll down until you get to the one you are intersted in. When we have more pages to work with, these will all be put on separate pages for you to view. Until the new site is built and ready to go, we will put them all here. First up is setting up a sluice box. __
One of the first pieces of equipment most people have after they have their gold pan is a hand sluice box. Now, setting up a hand sluice box correctly will mean the difference between keeping gold and running it off the end. Water speed is the most important thing to get right when using any sluice box. Every other water type of equipment uses a sluice box in one way or another, and learning how a sluice box works is important to every other piece of prospecting equipment. A dredge, highbanker or dry washer will be set up in the environment they work the best in, so these instructions will deal specifically with the hand sluice.
After you have done your testing to find a likely spot to find gold at, you will need to find a spot in the water that is running enough water to move material down the sluice box. Not too fast, or you will be chasing the box down the river! Not too slow, or you will be building rock diversions to get more water into the sluice box. (When water is limited, you can do this). A place between two large boulders can work, or along a river or creek's edge will do nicely most of the time. How to tell if your water is too fast or too slow? That will take a bit of practice, but really isn't too hard to learn very quickly when you get the sluice box in the water. BEFORE you put the sluice box in the water, find a large rock that can be placed across the box to help weight it down so the water does not carry it away.
The slope of the sluice box is the next thing you will need to adjust. Experts recommend beginning with a slope of 1 inch of drop for each foot the box is long. This can be adjusted to help the speed of the water going down the sluice box, but worry about that later and get your basic setup done first. Place the sluice box into the water, adjust it so that you have the proper slope and place the large rock across the top of the box. Next you will want to throw a couple of handsful of material into the sluice box to see how fast the material runs through the box. If it is not moving too well, you will need to increase the amount of water going down the box by slightly increasing the slope of the box or increasing the amount of water coming into the box. Likewise, if the material moves too quickly and does not catch black sand and the pebbles are zipping along, you will need to decrease the amount of water coming into the box, or decrease the slope of the box. The ideal is when the material classifies down the box keeping the black sand and some blonde sand, but eliminating most rocks and sand. Flat rocks will hang up in the box no mater what the water speed, so watch the rounded ones more. Getting this right will take some practice, but there is a lot of room for error. You can adjust the box any time you want to achieve the desired catching ability.
Another item to consider is depth of the water in the box. This needs to be watched as too much water running into the box can increase the depth of water in the box. Also placing the sluice box too deeply in the water to begin with will do the same thing. You want a depth where you can see the water slightly jumping over the riffles. It should not be a smooth stream of water, but hopping some. That's about it. Practice makes perfect, and always test the material running off the end of the box with your gold pan to see if you are losing much gold. If you are, readjust your sluice box by decreasing the slope or slowing down the water so that you keep more matierial.
Equipment needed to run your sluice box: Shovel, hand spade, 2 buckets (one can always be a seat), classifier, leather gloves, gold pan, vial, pipette or sucker bottle, first aid kit, lunch, drinking water.
One last thought about using your hand sluice. Resist feeding too much material into the sluice and overloading it. If you do not allow the water to classify the material by complely mixing together, the heavier material will run out of the box and your gold with it. Specific gravity works if you give it a chance to do the work. This is true with any type of water prospecting equipment you may use. Now go out there and FIND SOME GOLD!
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Dredging the Arkansas
If you are new to suction dredging for gold or an experienced prospector there are some basics that are good to know and keep in mind while you are out dredging for gold. Most prospectors want to run a dredge to be able to get more gold. Dredges are great for moving more material, but unless you are operating it correctly you won’t keep all the gold that is going through them. Dredges are made to pick up gold bearing material from under the water level like an under water vacuum. They do that by pumping water into a nozzle or jet to create the suction. That material is carried through a hose onto a sluice to capture the gold. Sounds easy right? Here are some items to keep in mind.
1. Before you set up a dredge, test the area you are going to work. It is a major job in most areas to carry the dredge and other equipment to the place you want to work. Have you checked or test panned to find out if there is any gold? I have heard of people running a dredge all day without checking to see if they were getting gold and got nothing. 2. Set up your machine correctly. Every machine works a little differently. Yes, you do have to adjust the angle of the box along with the water flow. You want enough water to carry the rocks off of the box. But you DO NOT want to run the motor full throttle if you are capturing fine gold. If big gold is all you will be finding, the throttle set can be higher. However, you will lose most of the fine gold if the throttle is set too fast. Set the angle of the box as close to 1” drop per foot as possible then adjust the throttle on the pump to get the right amount of water going over it to make the riffles work. 3. Check the box frequently while running. Someone needs to tend the sluice while in operation. You need to watch for rocks building up in the box and watch that the box does not get overloaded. If the carpet/miners moss gets completely covered with material the sluice box will not work efficiently and you will be washing gold off the end into the tailings. 4. Test the head of the box After an hour or so of running stop the machine and check the top foot of carpet. I have a foot long section of carpet I can pull out of the box to test pan to give me an idea of the recovery I am getting, or at least see visually what is in the head of the box. I also test the tailings to find out if I am overfeeding. I hate to loose gold out the tailings. 5. If all of your checks look good, then keep the machine running. You want to collect as much black sand concentrate as possible while you are set up and getting gold. If your tests are not very good look the area over again for where the pay streaks might be. Learn to read the area to make it easier to find the gold. Always- Test, Test, Test. By testing with your pan you can save a lot of time and gas for the pump by being in a better spot. If you run for much time at all you will end up with a lot of concentrates which are very heavy to carry back to your vehicle. One way to cut down the amount you have to carry out is to remove the larger rocks. I have a bucket screen that has window screen in it. I put all the concentrates through it. Any gold larger then the window screen mesh is easy to pan out. This will cut the amount you carry out by half or better. This screen will also catch all the lead that needs to be removed from the water. Please help us clean up the water by removing all the lead and mercury fouled gold you find. We need to do our part for the environment. Now that you have all that black sand, you will need a way to separate it! Our CORRUGATED MINI SLUICE is a fast, economical way to do that. Get yours HERE! I will be working on getting my dredge/highbanker out to you this year, so watch the website for that item. That covers the basics. Contact me if you would like more specific information at hookedongold@msn.com Check out my panning instructions page and let me know which type of panning you would like to know more about, or if you have any other questions you want answered. Happy Hunting! Copyright 2006. www.hookedongold.com Larry Weilnau HIGHBANKING A highbanker is just a fancier sluice box, as is the dredge. The difference between the hand sluice and the highbanker, besides the size of the equipment, is that it is able to move more material faster than the hand sluice. It also uses a sluice box, but it mixes the water and material together before they reach the sluice. Now, that doesn't mean you can't overload a highbanker, because it is easy to do so. Not allowing the material enough time to classify down the sluice and overloading the sluice with material is the biggest problem with keeping gold in the highbanker. Watch the slope of the box and adjust it for the size and type of gold you are keeping. One inch of drop for every foot of box, is also the rule here. Set up of the highbanker is more complicated, what with it's hoses and pump and all, but the same principals apply to it that apply to the hand sluice. Highbanker dredge combinations also have the same cautions as the highbanker and hand sluice. The combo is a good solution for anyone not wanting to dive, and allows you to have one piece of equipment that does the work of two. We have used a combo for many years, and find it suits us just fine. Nozzle size is up to you, but we have run a 2 1/2 for many years and pulled out our fair share of gold with it. We can have the little one up and running while the guys with the 4-inchers are still trying to drag all the hoses down to the river. Yeah, they get more gold than we do, but it only takes the two of us to haul the smaller version down, and we don't have to split with 4 guys, either. LOL! Anyway, we always wanted to have fun with our prospecting, and so opted long ago for smaller equipment we could take almost anywhere. While volume IS the name of the game, how many days you can do the volume counts too. Equipment you will need: shovel, hand spade, leather gloves, 2 buckets, gold pan, classifier, first aid kit, lunch, drinking water DRY WASHER Dry washers are a special breed of the sluice box. Since they do not use water to help get the heavier gold down to the bottom, they use a shaking motion to move the gold down to the riffles. A blower blows through cloth to keep the material stirred up and the riffles from clogging up with dirt, keeping the gold from finding it's way down. The slope on the dry washer is much steeper to allow the sand to move off, and overloading the sluice on a dry washer is even more critical than with water equipment. Only simple gravity is at work here, but used properly, the dry washer can catch pretty small gold. Bring a dust mask whe you use the dry washer or you will be choking on dust before you know it. You will need a shovel, hand spade, leather gloves, two buckets, a gold pan, classifier, first aid kit, lunch, and drinking water. You can put the concentrate in the gold pan and dry pan the nuggets out if there are any. You can also swirl it around to se if you see anything bigger to pick out. Two buckets are used; one to shovel matrial into and the other to put the concentrate in. A classifier can also be used if your cobble is larger. The pictures and information contained in this webiste are copywrited and cannot be used by anyone else without the referencing lines. All lines must be included with any reproduction of these pages, whether print or web based. Shirley Weilnau www.hookedongold.com Prospecting information, mini sluice, gold nuggets, panning concentrates, free panning tips and bucket classifier DIY instructions. Get our newsletter for information on prospecting and answer the question of the week for a chance at winning gold. |
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