hey guys i took my dredge out over Easter for a play on one of my mates claims. and had a blast even took my younger brother and he just loved the out doors was awesome. felt great getting out amongst it. but i didnt get bugger all gold which was a shame because my younger brother whose 12 years old put so much effort into helping me out he was my we donkey helping me carry gear in and out of the bush :).. soo what i was thinking was that before i went out another mate of mine was telling me that when im setting up my dredge that i need to put quite a good angle on the box because it makes the riffles actually work properly. im using a keene 2 and a half inch dredge can any let me know the specs of what angle i should set the box at. and also any tips would be help full. exzample is it allright to start and stop the flow of water all though i tryed not to i had to a couple of times because of stones blocking the flow
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Joined: 19/07/2010(UTC) Posts: 473 Location: south of the black stump
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Hi Having ur bro there is ideal ...easiest thing to do is set up the sluice so there is little to no angle on the sluice get him to dredge as in plenty of gravel going over the sluice ul soon see that rocks will build up pretty quickly simply move the sluice back a little until the sluice starts to work properly u may have to adjust it a few times ul no it's set rite when the gravel just starts moving along nicely basically what u want is the gravel to wash off but not so much that the material behind the riffles is washing away if u can see the bigger rocks moving down and see a little bit of carpet now and again about 2" behind each riffle itl be fine...I bealeve the basic rule of thumb is for every meter of sluice u should have about 1" drop but that isn't very easy to gauge in a dredging situation much better to just watch it and adjust till its rite about the only thing that can throw a spanner in the works is when u have a lot of black sand in which case u may want a little more angle to move the black sand along its also important to make sure the gravel behind each riffle has some movement u can usually see the small stones swerling around a little bit ....if u worried ur blowing the gold out the back simply pan ur tailings now and again but with a 2" dredge u shouldn't have to worry to much about that as they don't have much flow anyway:)...good luck