MacGurks Sluices

Has anyone had any experience with the MacGurks range of sluices?
A Highbanker is out of the question for me as there is no room in our camper for something so bulky.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Cheers, Keith.

My little highbanker fits into one of those old fashioned walk around shopping bags on wheels that the old dears used to drag around behind them. Everything fits in there except the 12v battery.
The whole things comes apart, including the legs come off and fit down the side of the shopper.

These highbankers can be bough in many sizes ... just depends on whether you want to shovel it in, of use a smaller spade to just run it through.

I'm not trying to put you off of buying a sluice, by any means ... I'm just suggesting that you explore the differing sizes etc that are available both here in Australia, and from overseas (don't forget to add your postage fees) if you have previously been considering a highbanker.

Here's mine: (it can be used as recirculating or direct from stream/dam etc)

Nice sluices provided you have a river flow. I've used a few out of the range & have had some really good results with the boss & foreman. Yeah vans don't leave a lot of room for Highbankers unfortunately. But for the traveler there's a few options

The Boss


The foreman


The Grubbstake


The Adventurer


All of which will store easily in your van.

MacKirk sluices are well respected for there gold recovery, but you need to classify heavily, and you need to clean up when you see black sand at the third riffle!

If you can handle the classifying and frequent clean ups, they work well!

Thank you for your replies.
I am looking at a Grubbstake unit for price and size reasons.
Classifying is no problem & I feel confident excitement would have me checking regularly.

checken regularly through excitement, is a lot different than checken through necessity!

Most of the gold in the rivers we pick up today, is what the oldtimers lost and didn't care about!!

Best of luck!

Cheers
Chris

someday wrote: MacKirk sluices are well respected for there gold recovery, but you need to classify heavily, and you need to clean up when you see black sand at the third riffle! If you can handle the classifying and frequent clean ups, they work well!

Spot on. D.

getascripter wrote:My little highbanker fits into one of those old fashioned walk around shopping bags on wheels that the old dears used to drag around behind them. Everything fits in there except the 12v battery.
The whole things comes apart, including the legs come off and fit down the side of the shopper.

These highbankers can be bough in many sizes ... just depends on whether you want to shovel it in, of use a smaller spade to just run it through.

I'm not trying to put you off of buying a sluice, by any means ... I'm just suggesting that you explore the differing sizes etc that are available both here in Australia, and from overseas (don't forget to add your postage fees) if you have previously been considering a highbanker.

Here's mine: (it can be used as recirculating or direct from stream/dam etc)

Looks good have you given it a run yet. D.

Hi drift. Yep! Sure have, and works a treat, both in re-circulating mode, and also using pump mode.

I suggest that in recycle mode, that a couple of buckets be set up ... one to collect the 'rubbish', linked to a second one to capture the overflow water and utilize the recirculating pump.

I was not happy with the little pump that came with it ... looks like a fish-pond pump, and blocks up really easily when used in a muddy dam!! So I bought a little petrol (suitable for 'dirty' water) pump. I won't be able to give that a go until early in the new year, but suspect that it will be more than enough to run this highbanker.

Hi, here is a little tip I have picked up from this site and it works a treat. That is to make a sock out of shade cloth and or nylon fly screen to go over your pumps pickup strainer. The strainer should also be placed in a bucket this will stop any fine junk getting into your pump. If you are using a 12v bilge pump make the sock to go right over the whole pump.
D.

I have seen a lot of sluices on flea bay ! A lot of them from USA. and they look fine but in sure given a few sketches a potential sluicer could make one them selvs ? If you think that's above your skills by all means buy a commercial one , I think there are some built here in OZ ! Just for a laugh though I did see someone selling a flared type sluice and claiming they were the first to such a thing!!!!!! Omg ! The longer I live the more I see again ! Really !!!!

Some of the drop type riffle sluices are great for rivers or creeks that don't have a lot of clay ! I find they work great for getting gold from sandy wash but clog with a lot of clay.
Some of the imported sluices have miners moss under the riffles and do catch the gold well ! But again they can clog with clay or black sands ,so be careful when using these with expanded metal on top .
Them we have the miners moss with expand metal on top of the mat and then Riffles on top of that as well !!!! Hhhhhhmmmm me thinks these want to be every thing to everyone ! And end up not being gold friendly to anyone lol!
Then we have sluice lengths !!!! A common ask is " How long should my sluice be ?" Well the old timers had sluices of many lengths ! It would depend on the type of gold they were getting and how much fines were there as well. I think the rule of thumb was that in a given stream or river say in Vic the ratio of nuggets was 20% and80% fines so the sluices were of a length to catch the fines !!! Any sluice will catch the lumps but catching the fines was a different matter so the medium of the day was hessian laid in the bottom of the sluice and 1 inch sq riffles across the trough at regular intervals to catch as much fine gold as possible , and then at say the end of the week or month they would take out the hessian and burn it and the pan the ashes !
So having learnt what the old timers did what do we have today ? Well we have a lot of science on our side on how to catch gold !!! We have a lot of catching mediums such as miners moss ect. To catch the fines so the lengths of the sluices can be a lot shorter !!!!!! So a small sampling sluice can be 600 mm in length but needs to have classified material spooned onto it ! Then we have those sluices that are say 900 mm to 1 m in length these are more robust in the way they can be used again I see better results of some classifying as you load this kind of sluice . So then we come to a,production sluice !! These are usually 1200 mm to 2 m in length and can handle material shovelled directly into them ! Ideally used by 2 people as these sluices are set up for serious dirt handling ! Not for your day or weekend trip !
There are of course many variables to what I've written and I'm sure there will be those who dispute my post ! All I ask is that you challenge me with your personal opinions in a constructive scientific way !