New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Could also be a good time to buy with the Kiwi so strong at the moment. Im thinking of stocking up on the pump... and both sizes of the plastic California sluice box....

With the plastic sluices you need to weight them down and keep them straight as they are not rigid.

I have added a PVC pipe on each side into which I can add gravel at the site, after checking for nuggets... of course. I use cable ties to hold them on. They can be cut off for packing and are cheap to replace.

Using PVC adds some weight so a backpacker may want to use a canvas bag or similar instead. Anyway you are all a resourceful bunch so I am sure you'll find a better way. :-)

Phil

G'day Graeme, I couldnt agree with you more. No one sluice box is going to be 100% efficient in all situations. As well as the variables you mention it also depends on the size & shape of the gold in the material being worked & the material itself. Is it clayey, fine, course, granular, sandy, a mix of all & is there lots of black sands. Big, small, fine?? etc.

The only sluice box I bought was the one that came with my dredge. All my other boxs & gear I have made myself. Half the fun is making your own gear & putting it to the test out in the field. That is how you learn what works & what doesnt & what works better, & why.
A sluice box really isnt difficult to throw together. Even a drop riffle one. All you need is a router or the means of ripping a series of grooves or channels in to a ply base in a sluice box. You can space them at what ever distance you want & what ever depth.

JW :)

There is only ONE reason that you are hopeless at making things and that is because YOU THINK YOU ARE as stated above. NOT RIGHT - you can do anything you want if you merely decide to do it. You can take inspiration for a design from any one of hundreds on the various forums, look at how they are made, scrounge around for materials, adopt your size and shape to the materials at hand whilst keeping in with the dimensions of the ones on the forums - an intermediate size is all good and a safe bet. If you go to the hardware shop they will have all the screws and nails you want - Stainless steel is best but most expensive common fastener. Pop rivets etc.

I have never ever in my life built cupboards, hung doors, put in door snibs and handles or put up shelves, Gib board or Gib stopped but I did it and all my builder friends say I have done well - its just a matter of thinking of each step as you go. I bought tools I had never used and taught myself to use routers, skilsaws, electric planers - at the end of the day you surprise yourself and feel so good at the end product.

As for your gold mining gear - if you have home made items then you fit into the part of the old sourdough, the experienced miner but the tenderfoot is always readily apparent by the latest 'mods cons' and in my opinion the old saying 'mod cons' is rather quizzical because you are conned into buying modern gear when home made at one tenth of the cost is every bit as good and sometimes better.

From now on believe in yourself and get out there and make it! The only reason I use a commercial snifter is because I found it in the river so it was a freebie but all but one of my snifters for forty years was made out of vintage brass car tyre pumps!

It all sounds fine and dandy a plastic sluice box with legs - how long is it going to last?

Edited by user Thursday, 6 October 2011 9:26:08 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Rather than clutter the place with a new thread, this one seems to be on the same subject..

any thoughts on this?

http://www.trademe.co.nz...er/auction-444006909.htm

"The sluices are made from polyetheline
which is the same stuff your wheelie bin is made from,
Extremley Rugged and durable.
The whole length of the sluice is covered in a saw tooth profile to collect fine alluvial gold. "




your opinions gentlemen..?

i notice again that the topic of sluicebox size has come up. i take it there are some size restrictions that must be listed on a doc website somewhere?

i have never come across this and can't be bothered wasting my time looking at a doc website.

what i can say is that no doc person has ever measured my box. matter of fact doc public access sites around here carry no signage whatsoever. i am wondering if this to to keep the use of the public sites as low as possible as i'm sure more would use them if they were signposted and mentioned the do's and don'ts of what can do used and done.

several times this weekend i have been talking to people who have no idea what the go is. a standard grey area is the disbelief that you can't use even a gold pan wherever you feel like it. when i go into more detail most people are dumbfounded.

at the end of the day i really doubt anyone has or will get in trouble with a box that is a little overlength. i'm sure boffins such as doc have more important things to do such as paperwork and catching guys with suction dredges where they are meant to be.

merry prospecting.

I just bought one of these which is my first sluice (and I add I have only been out prospecting once on my recent holiday). I tried it out today at home using a bucketful of panned sand and gravel. I knew there was still a few flakes in there. When I cleaned it out I first did the bottom 1/3rd and got about 1 small flake. Then I did the top two thirds and got about 50. I was delighted with that result. I then did 3 panfulls of the residue and found only one tiny speck.

By the way the inside measurement is about 195cm. The regulation I think is 200mm wide. Of course the outside is more than this. Anyhow I got this because I was was interested in rib rubber matting for lightweight travel (by bicycle). I intend to cut off 1/3rd of it and some of the outside material to get the weight down to 1kg. The remainder I will use to build a more sophisticated one maybe with carpet and riffles for car travel. The actual texture is a bit different from the upright angle of ribbed rubber matting. Its kind of flat then a sharp drop, then the next riffle begins after a shallow groove. I think thats similar to (but obviously smaller than) the plastic sluice boxes.

Using the garden hose I probably had 1/2cm water depth and ended up increasing the height from 10cm to about 13cm (length 1m) to get the small pebbles moving better. I wedged in some sticks to control the water flow from the hose. I realise this idea could have potential for bigger riffles (as I have read).

Hi Falcon. Not sure quite what to say to help you.
There have been quite a few sold down that way so it must be possible to set them up to handle local material. They work well up here.
They aren't really designed to sluice unclassified material - not sure if you have processed your material at all?

Not sure. I have only really used them to run the concentrates from a dredge or sluice box.
I would have thought you would get away with 1/4 inch without any problem.