I really can't figure this out. First let me list my gear:
10" x 48" Keene Sluice with miners moss & green carpet, 10" x 12" homemade hopper w/ 1" spray bar, 2" in/outlet 6 hp water pump.
I have operated my setup 3 times now at 3 different locations (all high output of flower gold deposits) and every time I am left upon clean out with hardly any gold. My brother ran his sluice box five feet from my high banker and had 10 times as much then me. It should have been the other way around. I run my box at about 10 - 13 degrees pitch and water flow around low (just over riffle bars). I add my material by the bucket but somewhat slowly. A bucket takes about 1 minute or so to clean out. My tailings are clean.
What the heck could I be doing differently for a better gold bearing clean out? Feed more slowly? More water flow?
Advice.... Tips..... would be greatly appreciated! Thank you
Replies
YOU KNOW THE RIFFLES IN A HIGHBANKER ARE DIFFERENT THEN THOSE INA SLUICE??????
First you might have your sluice at to steep an angle. second you may bee running to much water. Third your fine gold will find its way through the minors moss and go out the end. put 1/8 inch rubber matting under your miners moss, this will catch the fine gold. your truly Woodrow Weitzeil
You said your "tailings are clean" You mean there is no gold in the tailings?
If that's the case then you aren't losing gold, you just aren't puttin any in! ;)
mike it depends on the aera the material and the water flow
Thank you all for your great advice! I will post a picture of my setup. It sounds like my problem is a lot of trial and error. I will try all of your methods for a better run. Thank you again
Adam1.jpg
Just my two cents on the matter. Keene suggests a drop of 1" per foot of sluice box. That works out to a 5 degree slope. I have come up with my own bubble level that has a 6 degree slope on it. I use it to set up my Jobe high banker. When the bubble is in the middle, I know my slope is right. You may want to lower your box a tad.
Are you using a punch plate under your header box? I made a switch to Gold Hog mats, and started catching gold that must be -200 or so. I still run a punch plat under the grizzly.
Just a thought or two for you: I had to redesign a highbanker I purchased:
Do you have dredge riffles in the keene sluice?
When running, does the water flow or move down the riffles in a very erratic pattern? For my machine the erratic pattern works best. I do not use expanded metal, only miners moss and Deep-V matting.
The best way to figure the problem out is to make up some test material with sand, gravel, flattened lead shot, BB's, some small lead sinkers, and anything small with some weight to it (I even used pieces of copper wire). The hard part is you need to count the pieces of each thing you mix up in your test dirt! Next, set the thing up and run the batch of test dirt --but only changing one variable at a time. Feed rate, water speed, angle will all need to be addressed. The following is the pic of my machine when I was doing my test runs. I hope someone can tell you an easier way, but this it what I did and I got sick and tired of panning out the runs, counting and logging results, remixing, change one thing, repeat. (But it did work for me)
I think they already touched on it on several points. Here is another one to consider. No matter how much you sample the ground and even if you cover it perfectly, every 4th or 5th time the dig wont match the samples. Sometimes the sample holes just happen to be where a majority of flakes are vs the ground that they indicate you should dig which is far less. It just happens that way sometimes, and the guy digging right next to you or even in the same hole gets more gold in his shovelfuls than you do. so keep that in mind as well.
Key points the guys already said:
Keene isnt for fine gold without some modding. Catches chunky stuff great.
Your running way to fast. Just because you can flush that volume doesnt mean your box can capture that fast.
If your running that volume of material and its not plugging up, there is enough water to flush fine right out.
Miners moss has to be fed at a steady continual rate. If you have time gaps in the feed it will self clean on you.
If your MM fills with black the fine bounces on through.
That keen box stops working for any fine or med flake when you classify at anything larger than 1/8".
A quick fix is to add vortex to at least the first 2 riffles and cut the carpet and dremel the screen to size for the rest.
It would help to see a picture of the rig running, and then to see a pan of the leftover cons.
Sounds like a giant problem but its really not.
Just fine tuning to get dialed in and some small mods to tweak things to match your gold.
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