rib matting

hey guys, which matting should i get for my sluice box... big rib or fine rib or just both?
cheers
stoppsy

Hi Stoppsy, I use a smallish ribbed matting in my sluices. It works great as an indicator to see if there is any gold going down your box. Fine gold gets caught up in it & of course the bigger gold just sits at the head of your box. Unless you have a torrent running down your box. Not recomended. If you arent seeing any colours of gold getting caught up in it or any flecks slowly going over it, then chances are there isnt gold in the material you are putting down it & you need to dig else where.

Here is my latest little box I made. You will notice the strip of ribbed matting before the riffles.



I taped some builders polythene plastic to the flare so I could totaly seal off any water from escaping from going down the box.



I needed every bit of H2o going down the box as there was bugger all in this little creek.





Result from this session. Even a nice little specimen piece.



Here I have a bucket of pre classified material ready to put down the box



Feeding the sluice



Here we have a few specks caught up in the matting that I am sucking out with a little snuffer bottle



Result from this session





Here is a close up of the matting



Happy hunting

JW

thanks heaps for the pix and all kiwijw that's awesome, i love the pix off the findings well done...
cheers
stoppsy

G'day Stoppsy, You are welcome mate & thanks. I love your little adventures that you share through your video footage. You are doing boody well & vey consistent & it all adds up.

Happy hunting

Regards

John

stoppsy wrote:hey guys, which matting should i get for my sluice box... big rib or fine rib or just both?
cheers
stoppsy

The most important matting is a fine-synthetic mesh type carpet. If you want to add some ribbed sheets of rubber, just keep them up the front/top of your sluice but not more than say the first two riffles. You can get this stuff by cutting up rubber car floor mats from CheapAuto etc. I'd suggest just the first riffle before your mesh. You want the bulk of your sluice to be laid with carpeting. Too much diamond mesh in your sluice may impact in the capture of your gold if the little diamonds are not turned up properly in the corners and if they are too excessive. Most of the gold will be trapped by the Hungarian Riffles which are the large metal struts. And most of the gold should be captured in the first two riffles.

The best carpet matting to use (and far better than the old Miners Moss of the 70s) is Marine Matting (see pic above). You can get it in three colors from any marine and boating store. Buy it by the meter and cut it horizontally as there is a natural horizontal riffle-groove in it. Comes in Yellow, Blue and Green. Blue is favored at the moment and yellow is too bright. MUCH cheaper than the older alternatives and is said by most sluice makers to be superior in every way. Dries fast too... in about 2 minutes.

thanks heaps nero, i have the carpet that it come with, i thought it would be good just to have the rib matting as well placed in there as well......

hey kiwijw, i love doing the little videos. i love watching the other propectors digging up gold so why not share my findings and hope people like the videos . one day i hope to get a bigger one on video, as you said they all add up...
cheers
stoppsy

I've seen a few people with the same sluice you have and they cut a strip from rubber car mats (the floor mats with a FINE riffle in them). They placed this at the top of their sluice just ahead of the first riffle... or, in one case between the first riffle and the second. All seemed to do very well with this combo although I'd be surprised if the gold wasn't caught in the front of the sluice with just the carpet and the Hungarian riffles. Plenty of configurations out there. Most are great. Some home-made jobs are bad if the angle of the riffles isn't right or if they don't use some sort of carpet etc. like the old timers made using hand cut planks and rocks for riffles (yes, rocks are a legitimate riffle in those old long-box models from the 1800s. They were so inefficient that longer sluices were necessary).

Don't forget your pan!

nowing my luck i would forget the pans as i forget my pick how do you recon it would go with some rib matting on the top tray as well? just a thought...
cheers
stoppsy

That will bring up some response stoppsy! Flat non obstructed areas are needed to let the materials settle out according to their weight! Then you grab the buggers!

I agree with Nero about having more (marine) matting than rubber matting.
That being said, there is an interesting new and I hear, very good, matting that is out here.
Don't know if you can get it where you are, but take a look and see what you think - it's the third photo down.

http://www.billandlindaprospecting.com/rubbermat.html

nero_design wrote: Most are great. Some home-made jobs are bad if the angle of the riffles isn't right or if they don't use some sort of carpet etc. like the old timers made using hand cut planks and rocks for riffles (yes, rocks are a legitimate riffle in those old long-box models from the 1800s. They were so inefficient that longer sluices were necessary). Don't forget your pan!

Nero with all due respect I disagree in part with your statement in regards to the use of carpet. I use a rubber mate without carpet without gold loss. Mind the mat has been changed slightly to the one which you can buy.

Stoppsy mate you have received some top advice in your last two threads in regards to your sluice. But here is a bit that was missed. You must wash the sluice before use from top to bottom and all the bits in-between with biodegradable detergent. This will get rid of any oils which may have been picked up during construction and storage. You must repeat this at least once a year get a paint brush and paint the unit with the detergent then wash it off.
Second before you add to or mod your unit in any way, use it first. Get to know it see how it works try different angles for the gold your finding make sure your pump is completely under water this helps to keep the motor cool. Just like when you first got your detector take it out and have a play first learn your equipment and not much will go wrong.
Cheers
James 101

thanks guys for your input... James 101, thanks mate i have had a little play around with it but just wont to make sure everything is right and done correct before i use it out on the grounds. i don't wont to take it out and find out i done this and that wrong and had lost a good amount off good gold.
cheers
stoppsy

stoppsy wrote:thanks guys for your input... James 101, thanks mate i have had a little play around with it but just wont to make sure everything is right and done correct before i use it out on the grounds. i don't wont to take it out and find out i done this and that wrong and had lost a good amount off good gold.
cheers stoppsy

Mate you will have a ball with that unit, it will work just fine the way it is. as i said play with it first get to know it and all will be fine. cheers {I know you will do well with that unit.}

Stoppsy one mod you can't forget mate is a mounting for "sluice cam" to keep those vids comeing!!

My sluice mod, Ive only used the matting on very suspect ground so I dont know if it works, probably not.
The water squirter was done ages ago and seems to work well.

hey FK, i'll have to work something out so i get some videos for you..
cheers
stoppsy

Hi, to everyone who uses a sluice looking for gold. I can run my sluice for 3 to 4 hrs and on the final clean up only get a few fine specs on the matting but have recovered a few gms of gold. Are you confused yet? I will try to put up some photos next week when i run the sluice to show it in action. Here is a brief description of how it works. The top tray is about 1mt long, the top half of the tray where the water sprays has no holes. Where we mostly work the creek is muddy with lots of clay so i use a window washing brush to work the dirt/gravel under the water spray. The lower part of the tray is full of about 10mm holes for all the fines and gold to fall through. When the fines fall through they drop into a removable tray about 20cm square and about 4cm deep with fine mesh on top, this tray recovers about 90% of the gold. If i want to sample the gravel where im working i will put 5 or 6 spade fulls through then empty the draw into my gold pan and check the results or i can work for an hour and then empty the draw. As i said, i recover 90% of the gold from the draw. The draw only holds all the fine sand and gold and the small stones/gravel then drop into the bottom tray of the sluice. At the top of the bottem tray is a sump which holds about half a pan full of material. This sump has a screw on cap so you can empty the contents into a pan while the water is still running to flush it out. When we empty the sump it will usually only have about 10% the amount of gold compared to the top draw. On wednesday we got 3.9gms of fine gold and on the final clean up of the sluice i only found 4 very small specs of gold on the rubber mat. All this may sound hard to believe but we have been running 2 sluices of this design for about 2yrs and if we put a pan under the bottem tray the only gold we lose will be a few specs of gold as fine as pepper. I would love to catch up with other sluicers one day to share ideas and designs. HAPPY HUNTING. Cheers Grumpy.

Grumpy check this section out. cheers

https://golddetecting.forumotion.net/f36-sluicing-panning-history

Has anyone tried using the keenes Miracle mat!!

keenes Miracle mat ….. Gold hog mat …… Sorry mate I do not use them from what I have been told they do not preform very well in our mineralised conditions. And you must part with big $$$ to get very much the same result as the other type of matting been used here in Australia. But as I said I have never used that type of matting and only relaying what I have been told by people who know what there on about.
Cheers
James 101

Whiskers wrote:keenes Miracle mat ….. Gold hog mat …… Sorry mate I do not use them from what I have been told they do not preform very well in our mineralised conditions. And you must part with big $$$ to get very much the same result as the other type of matting been used here in Australia. But as I said I have never used that type of matting and only relaying what I have been told by people who know what there on about.
Cheers
James 101

Fair call James,
I was just thinking of using it for between the top part of the sluice extension under my home made washplant/hopper style thingy to the first rifle!!lol
I wonder how Getascipter(Kate) is going with that Gold hog..   
My Frankenstein of a machine should be out for its first trial this weekend around Peawah area i think. Vids and photos coming soon for all too critique for me

Mate throw a photo up of your plant, I am a great believer in slick areas within a working wet plat. Cheers mate

Whiskers wrote:Mate throw a photo up of your plant, I am a great believer in slick areas within a working wet plat. Cheers mate

Just gotta sort out this photo buket thingy!!  Not very tech savvy:lol!:  

This shows a slick plate



Don't worry about the matting ,it was an experiment ! But the slick plate remains .

Hey stoppsy Clark rubber have some matting that is 2mm apart and 2mm tall I have caught gold in it that i needed a magnifying glass to see

Ben

You don't need any more than this !! You will notice the holes under the riffles are all filled with silicone so the water dosent wash out the cons !

Ark mate I don’t know how to tell you this    … But I have just read that the Black diamond rubber door mats and the rubber honeycomb mats that we have been using now for quite a number of years just dose not work! All that gold we have found oz’s of it must have been a fluke.   I am shattered at a loss to say any more sorry to break this bad news to you mate.   Our mistake was not making U-Tube videos then we could have been gurus.    

Whiskers as you said " I'm shattered " maybe I'll take to the  or take up this pastime  



Would that mean that the old timers who drilled round holes in their rockers and long toms were wrong as well?

Ark wrote: Would that mean that the old timers who drilled round holes in their rockers and long toms were wrong as well?

They must have got it wrong too, there was no one around to tell them any better! I'm shattered mate shattered.   

I'm just as shattered   I've got shares in the door matt industry, well I should have  

Come on Whiskers, spill the beans    where'd ya read/see this in/unvaluable info