Hi Guys, Here is a portable highbanker/banjo I made out of my first ever sluice box that I made & used. Here is a pic of the sluice box in action quite a few years ago. Made straight out of the book "Gold In Your Bottle"
I cut the box in half width ways to give me the top hopper & bottom sluice box. Here is the box just prior to getting the chop with a set of riffles that I made & welded up for the set up.
Bottom slick plate & chute added to the top hopper & propped up in it general configuration over the bottom box.
Classifyer screen, pressure pipework & adjustable legs attached
Riffles in
Motor/pump, hose, fits nicely in the hopper for transporting
Set up & in business
Shoveling in material to the hopper & the spray jets doing the work of breaking up the material & washing it through the classifyer screen to the bottom sluice. The biger material falls out the front. The top hopper angle is adjustable depending on what type of material you are processing. If it is clay then you need the hopper pretty flat so the water jets can really nail it & break it up. Or for stony rocky material, steeper so the bigger stuff can fall out the front
Bottom box & riffles doing there work.
Fine gold recovered from a Coromandel river after half an hour of shoveling into it on its maiden run.
The bonus of these are that you can set them up away from water, like on a higher river terrace , & pump water to it & work material that is a distance away from water. Or you can set it up right by the water. Runs on very low revs of the motor/pump so a tank of gas lasts for ages.
I have adapted my one so it can also take a 2" suction suction nozzle for cleaning out bed rock cracks & crevices. It runs a lot more aggresive with the larger amount of water going down it that is needed for the pressure to run the nozzle than when just shoveling in to it.
Result from this little area was just over half an ounce for a couple of hours work.
Happy golding
JW :)
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