Here is a idea i tossed around for awhile then i saw a post on eastern us prospectors forum by Astroboucer so i desided to go ahead and try it. I took a 1x10 36" long marked off a 10" slick plate then spaced my drop riffles out. some were at 1 1/2" some at 2" between each riffle. I used my router and a 1/2" bit to cut them out they are 1/2 " wide by 1/2 " deep. Marked the side where to screw it so the screws would`nt go in a riffle, predrilled the holes then used 1 5/8 " drywall screws to put it together. I sprayed it with black truck bed liner and put four braces on top.
I tryed it out last week and it seemed to work great. You could watch the riffles fill up and clean the lighter stuff out untill the riffles fill up with black sands. I watched a couple small flakes of gold work there way down the slick plate and into the first riffle where they stayed. Clean up is very easy i just turn it to one side and in a angle over a bucket and wash it out. I have paned through very litle of my consontrates from my trip so far but i know this thing catches fine gold because what litle i have paned through i found about 20 or so very fine specks about the size of a needle point and a few larger.Not shure what size that is i don`t have a classifier that small. I`ll try to post some pictures after i finish my clean up.
Thanks for reading
COWBOY
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I thought I would add some shots of my riffle shapes. They were cut with a router and table saw.
Nice looking unit there John, I like the idea of the wheels shure makes things easyer. I was thinking about building a highbanker myself. I figured i would try making the sluice first and see how it turned out. I really like my drop riffle, i`ve only used it onece but i was really empressed how well these things work and as cheap as they are to build. I got somewhere around $16.00 in it and had to to buy everything.
You will love the drop riffle sluice. I have built several sluice and two highbankers with drop riffles and wouldnt use anything else now. Here is a shot of the sluice in creek mode and one of it in highbanker mode.
Cowboy it looks good and it turned out well. The amount of riffles you make determine how many heavies you capture, and also the more riffles you have they act as insurance against losing any gold. Also you can feed it for longer periods of time with more riffles with less worry about losing gold. On some of my newer sluices I have the riffles half an inch or less apart, but keep in mind this will slow velocity somewhat so you compensate with either more flow or drop. Also, whatever riffle width you cut you can run rocks a little bigger then the sluice width size because the velocity of the water current will keep the bigger rocks from dropping in unless they are very heavy, like a large chunk of magnetite or something.
For instance a sluice with 1/2 inch width drops you can save time and classify it at an inch and not worry about the big rocks dropping in, they will just roll on by. But you don't want to go too big unless you have a back cut under your riffles because a large enough size rock will stop and most likely wash out the material underneath it.
Anyway, good luck and would love to see some videos or pics of you using it somewhere.