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Submersible Sluice Box Modifications


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Hello everyone on here.  

Im looking on upgrading my Subbie sluice box into a more efficient one.  

I have been looking into ideas of what others been doing on here and any suggestion of how should i design a larger Gold nugget trap. 

I see most sluice boxes with tiny riffles and i could just imagen a larger nugget go run straight out the back.  

I tested my sluice with a almost 300 gram copper nugget and i lost it.  

Now we are trying to upgrade the sluice because where we dredge we could find larger nuggets.  

Im thinking of placing a section with taller riffles like in the picture with the rails only going half way or 3/4 of the sluice and leaving the same size riffles or making it bit larger at the end of the box for the larger nuggets. 

post-10-0-28266400-1455410804.jpg

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Don't worry about the 300 GM nuggets getting passed thru the sluice, they never actually get passed the hand of the dredge operator to even have a chance of being sent to the tailing pile!!!!!

The grizzle bars did not work, they trapped the rocks under and would not release them. I did have success with a sump set up that fed to a small 2 inch dredge but let that go due to the fact it was complex and negated the benefit of a light weight sub surface dredge.

I don't believe I lost any gold that had size to it. All the nuggets got caught in the first or second riffle, the fines are another story. Basically the sub surface dredge is a poor choice for an area that has lots of fine gold. Salt gold or thin flat flakes etc. but can do really well on the chunky nugget stuff, bird shot on up. Just keep in mind not to hog the material and overload the riffle tray, that's where I get goofed up.

I did add a river sluice behind my box at one point and the extra box being wider did help but back to more complex.

My advice is to add miners moss over the ribbed matting and nothing more needs to be done. The rest is a diminishing return situation.

Keep us posted on what you end up with. Also would love to see a pic of your subbie🙂

 

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  • The title was changed to Submersible Sluice Box Modifications
10 hours ago, sjmpainter said:

The grizzle bars did not work, they trapped the rocks under and would not release them.

Grizzly bars are one of the most common, and least effective ways, of improvising recovery on a subsurface riffle. It eliminates riffle boil and contributes to riffle packing. Everything becomes a flat surface for gold, especially large nuggets, to slide out over. Older thread on this subject.

The only mod I would do on a subsurface box is replace the original carpet with miners moss.

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Thanks ya for the heads up.  

The only thing ima do is then putting in some Taller aluminum riffles system ima put into the sluice box.  

Hopefully im able to run it wide enough to make the sluice work properly. 

I have bought some 1 3/4 angle iron in aluminum and a piece of 2" x 1" angle iron which ima reduce the lip to about 1/2 "   .. 

Where we dredge we are normally hogging lots and lots of in hard packed material and we aint seeing everything we running up the hose.  So is not more like snipping is more like hoping more we find something in the sluicebox.  

The bedrock is normally soft and we are dredging up everything leaving the bedrock clean.  

I hope the higher riffles help the larger gold find a resting place.  

We also have lots of hot rocks.  . i mean lots of it.  Of all sizes.. 

But making the sluice longer with deeper riffles maybe i could make enough space for everything or atleast most of the heavies to settle. 

 

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On 9/10/2020 at 5:27 AM, sjmpainter said:

Don't worry about the 300 GM nuggets getting passed thru the sluice, they never actually get passed the hand of the dredge operator to even have a chance of being sent to the tailing pile!!!!!

The grizzle bars did not work, they trapped the rocks under and would not release them. I did have success with a sump set up that fed to a small 2 inch dredge but let that go due to the fact it was complex and negated the benefit of a light weight sub surface dredge.

I don't believe I lost any gold that had size to it. All the nuggets got caught in the first or second riffle, the fines are another story. Basically the sub surface dredge is a poor choice for an area that has lots of fine gold. Salt gold or thin flat flakes etc. but can do really well on the chunky nugget stuff, bird shot on up. Just keep in mind not to hog the material and overload the riffle tray, that's where I get goofed up.

I did add a river sluice behind my box at one point and the extra box being wider did help but back to more complex.

My advice is to add miners moss over the ribbed matting and nothing more needs to be done. The rest is a diminishing return situation.

Keep us posted on what you end up with. Also would love to see a pic of your subbie🙂

 

The 300G copper nugget i found it dredging with the same sluice box.. Found it in the gold pan.  

But we ran a test running the nugget first then dredging as usual but when we went to the sluice box it was gone. . 

A sluice box need to be made to trap everything that is metal.  Specially heavy items atleast.. 

Ima test these taller riffles to see if i could get it to work properly. 

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