Building my First Sluice

Hi all,

I am building my first sluice box, It will be 300 mm wide and 900 mm long. I have rubber V-mat for the bottom then Miners moss then expanded metal for the top. I was wondering if I should also build some riffles or will setup be ok with out ?

James

Hi Jamesrww I'm no techie expert but I do run a GoldHog stacker highbanker. I have two top sections which I can choose from. One has expanded metal, the other doesn't. I don't use metal riffles at all because of the design of the GoldHog mats.

If you are going to use riffles in one section of your sluice, then I think you will need to make sure of your size/angles etc. I reckon there's a post or two on just that subject somewhere in here. Use the "Search" box in the top R corner to see if you can locate the appropriate discussion.

Good luck with it ... hope you find bucket loads!   

Where's ARK???
I miss him!   

Gee Ark you always had good info to tell about sluices

Hi James  , when I  made  my first  river  sluice , I did the rubber mat ,  rifles , mesh and  not  having  any  miners moss I used a very coarse scouring sheet , off an industrial cleaner (brillant), and  several years later  and  another  version  made  without  rifles have pretty  much decided the riffles  were not necessary.
I would say just go  with what ever  combination  takes  your  fancy  , run it   and  take notice  of how well it works ,  and modify accordingly .  If you  use sections of moss  instead of one large bit  you can  see how much gold is trapped in each  
But  the biggest  help I found  is to run it as  slow as   possible ,  no  rifles helps to run with less flow .

Good luck

Test, adjust, make changes where necessary, test, adjust, make changes where necessary!

So much will depend on your want's?

To me, what your describing, your gonna have a lot of material that will need panning, which ain't a bad thing providing
there's no hard packing that will inhibit gold from working through the heavies!!??

There seems to be a lot of talk about discarding riffles "all together" There seems to be a lot of talk about discarding riffles   
My view on this concept, there is always gold in the upper portion of the water flow, more so when you dump a shovel of dirty muck in the mix,
and the water level rises substantially for around maybe 5 seconds'ish? No riffles