New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

I am new to this forum, so I am sorry if this is the wrong place..... and is a really dump question.

I am visiting my son who moved here, and we have been to a few of the public gold areas near Nelson. WE bring our 1 year old grandson, so have very limited time to play.

I know that in the public areas, you are limited to non motorized hand held devices..... I am thinking of something, that I think is streatching it, but want to check.


What if I took several hundred feet of lay flat hose up stream...... and used that water to feed into a small suction dredge. The output would be fed into a sluce boz. (1 meter by 200 mm).


I know it wold probably not work. (I would need to go pretty far upstream to get enough head). But if I did, would it be legal?


and along the same lines......
If there are two of us, I assume we can each have a sluce box....... what if one box was ged by the first with a gap between them?


In this case, I use a section of lay flat hose, going maybe 200 feet upstream, That provides water to a sluce box that is raised on legs. Just 4-5 inches off of the ground. (sorry, not converted to mm yet) This would be my box.

The second sluce box is on the ground, and catches the output from the first box.


I know that this is streatching things, but according to the liited definition and restrictions placed, I think thagt this meets the definaton..... it is not motorized. Slcue boxes are allowed......



If I waned to get an opinion on this, who would I ask?

Thanks.

Hi Ted, Welcome to the forum. No question is a dumb question.
Ok.....sounds like you are talking about a gravity siphon type suction dredge. Are you actually going to be using the lay flat to suck at the top end picking up & delivering material.....hopefully carrying a bit of gold..... down through to your sluice box? If so I doubt layflat will do it as it is soft walled & any suction will just cause it to collapse. I have done the same thing with 4" pvc pipe & it worked a treat. Same principle as siphoning petrol from a higher point to a lower point. In your case sucking out a hole at the top end & down to your box at the bottom end. You need to be carefull & not over load the the siphon suction with too much material or you will just choke it off & lose your suction & you will have to re prime the whole system to get your suction & water flow back.

Here are some pics of one of my 2" gravity dredge operations.

This is the top end hole that I am sucking out. The pvc pipe work heads off down the steep little creek to my sluice box that has a little wooden header box with a classifyer screen that spills out any material bigger than about 1". That way the smaller stuff that gets through to the sluice box wont get blocked up & I dont have to keep coming down to check on it.



Sluice box end.



The water discharge after getting the siphone happening. Then just a matter of sticking it in to the header box. Go back up top & start sucking out the hole.



This shows the classifyer screen. In the left pic there is two bits of gold in the bottom. Hard to see but they are each side of the pliers & either side of the third white bar from the left
.
.

Pan on the left was first clean out at morning smoko time & pan on the right was lunch time clean out



Pan on the left was the end result sucking out that hole



So it does work.

As to your question to it being allowed in a public fossicking area.....I would just go for it as like you say it isnt motorised.

Good luck out there

JW :)