saw tooth riffles

Has any body done any research on this type of sluice system?

this is where i used them but if you had clay you had to be careful of blocking the saw tooths

hi
that sorta looks like the one i have, but where that yellow part is on yours, mine has wire to let the smaller gravel fall thru
into a sample pot then overflow into a sluice and the bigger rocks go out the end. i run a detector over the bigger stone pile when finnished.

they are great but if the gold is in clay as it normally is, you will need to puddle it first.
even with baffles in your drum,small clay balls get thru

i think the sample pot is the best part cause you can get samples from differant parts of the creek and put them thru and just pan
the sample pot between each one, if theres no gold in the sample pot, you don't have to pan whats in the sluice
if there is gold in the sample pot you can continue to get clay/gravel from the same spot,checking every now and then to see your still
on the run of gold

these trommels are great fun i reckon
cheers fencejumper


sorry just noticed you were asking about the sawtooth system.....no idea about that..but it looks interesting though

fencejumper you can reply on anything you like its ok by me -- The trommel i made after i sold the Green Machine a few years ago and i called this one Son of Green Machine which i also sold some time back -- the sogm was run by a gen set /240v power to an inverter to a 24v variable speed motor driving on top of the barrel --had some good fun with this machine and the saw tooth riffles worked well but as ive said before you had to make sure the clay was fully suspended in the water or you would get riffle packing . We attempted to fix this problem by liquidizing the very bottoms of the V's by putting in small pipes which were connected to a water supply but this whole exercise became to complicated for a mobile machine .

hi Murachu
now that i can see it from differant angles and in action, it looks heaps better than mine,
looks like you did a fantastic job
did you find much with it?
thanks for sharing


took mine out today to a place not known for gold, but has a few oldtimer holes,
not one speck, but had a bit of fun though
cheers

I would only have gotten under 1/2 oz with it as the drought had started to set in and there wasn't the water needed!

good to hear you are getting out -a tip for tromells go to the dams !! these are where the old timers brought all the good stuff to wash!

Murachu,
Congratulations, well made machine.
Question: You mention a problem with clay, however it difficult to see whether it is a spiral fitted inside the trommel?
If not, you can extend retention time by fitting a reverse spiral to the inner tube. ie: If the trommel is turning clockwise have the spiral shaped anti-clockwise so the clay type material feeds back up hill, hopefully breaking up the clay before it feeds/drops through the mesh into the outer drum. The remaining oversize will spill over the spiral and feed down to your saw tooth.
Unfortunately our proposed experiement using a cyclone, fed using a venturi sucking the creek bed failed because of a lack of water in our region.

Cheers
Peter

thank nightjar for the reply and yes it did have retention rings in it but the red clay here is of a pottery class when it gets wet and you have to have a lot of water pressure to cope with it --i did this in the big machine and had no problems but the pump on this machine was a submersible /240v and didnt have a lot of head pressure . i like your idea on the creek bed //that kind of mining here in Victoria would get me an extended stay at one of Her Majesty's establishments

Bump. Good information in this line of post congratulations Murachu good post with good info.