anyone tried river sluice for sapphires, zircons etc?

[blayke]

ok so I'm going up to mums claim in sapphire early may and want to do some more digging however only having a week again means I'm looking for more ways to process more dirt....I just saw on ice cold gold their modification for the river sluice into a ruby sluice and seemed to work....what I'm thinking is the same thing but for sapphires.

my question is has anyone tried? it would be perfect as it's portable, light (will be flying up to sapphire and back) and even with the lack of water should work fine with a recirculating system.

I'm going to give it a go anyway but if anyone's done it and has some pointers would be great.

highbankers aren't legal in qld and ideally with this cyclone coming there should be running water where I want to dig so would allow a lot more dirt processing

 

[user 1769]

Hi blayke,

In NE Tasmania, people used to collect the sapphires from the tin sluices, so yes, they catch. The trick would be to get a good recovery, and you'd be best off designing a purpose-made sluice. Wal's highbanker design catches gemstones very well, by all reports, so a sluice with similar design might work well.

In Tasmania particularly, and this may not apply where you are, there is a truckload more tin than sapphires. Since tin is almost twice as heavy, it will always displace the lighter gemstones if the riffles are allowed to fill up. This makes it inconvenient, as you have to keep cleaning your sluice much more often than practical.

Another think to keep in mind is that larger stones provide more sail effect, and are thus more likely to get pushed free of the sluice by the water flow. It would be worthwhile to classify your material to avoid this.

Just some thoughts.

 

[Twapster]

I would 100% agree that you will work more material....make sure you shove your sieve at the end of the sluice. The sluice will effectively wash rocks quickly for you and thats the time saving component. The down side is you may end up concentrating in one spot. I found a nice gem just walking, test panning, walking, test panning, walking, test panning. When I found the gem I set up the banker and worked that spot. No more cutters were found.

So moral of that story was I found my stone by wandering, not working one spot. While I washed a lot more rocks with the banker....it was the test panning that gave me the result.

Something to consider.

 

[blayke]

ok yeh unfortunately I'm looking for something with slightly lower water pressure than the banker...o refer ably a small bilge pump at the most hopefully just river slow to med speed

 

[Twapster]

My opinion not worth it. I love my little recirculating sluice but if I was in a race to get the first gem...id take the two sieves, a shovel, my backpack and thats about it. I would only consider the sluice if ur stuck in one spot. Obviously access to wash your rocks is important! If you are flying in you really dont need the hassle of so much equipment. I would be willing to bet if two blokes of the same calibre went out in the gem fields...one with all the sluices/highbankers, another with just pans and shovel....the shovel and pan guy is more likely to find the best gem, unless you are working a specific spot and dont have access to some areas.

 

[Heatho]

A sluice is pretty much a waste of time in my opinion unless you're going to build a Walbanker. Gold sluices are designed to clear most material except the heavies, considering gold has an S.G. of about 19 and Sapphire 4, the larger Sapphs will most likely not get caught. I've only ever found tiny stones in my sluice.

Though if you did see one that worked for rubies it will work on Sapphires too as they both have the same SG.

On a lease I'd hire an excavator for the day and dig out a stockpile of wash to go through.

 

[user 1769]

Hey guys, the question is will a sluice work, not will a GOLD sluice work. IMO a tin sluice as used by the old timers is guaranteed to work (it worked for them). But you'd have to build it yourself, there are no off-the-shelf ones.

 

[blayke]

twapster the problem is there is no water out there at the moment...not even puddles....so i have to dig the dirt, take it back to the claim and then process it....

heatho unfortunately your not aloud to use excavators etc even on the claims up there....the only thing u can do is get a shaft dug underground and go from there....half the claims dont have any wash and the other half have wash 50 ft down lol

 

[Heatho]

Fair enough, how do most people mine up there? Must be allowed to use more than hand tools. Drill a shaft and use kangos or the like? I don't know much about the Qld deposits.

 

[richo966]

hey heato what is the name of the machine you use at billabong blue that would work in dry area

 

[Heatho]

Willoughby, saves the back for sure, only ever seen them, never used one Richo. Great for dry areas only need 100 litres or less of water a day.

 

[blayke]

yeh they do use willoughbys....its difficult in qld no highbankers allowed basically on the good claims they dig the shaft and underground....once underground they do whatever.....i believe they arent supposed to use anything but picks shovels but most use small jackhammer style power tools anyway....

i just wanted something to move more dirt....i figured a small sluice like the recon easily fits in my luggage and if it processes more dirt im all for it on a short time constraint but oh well....might just head out further see what happens

 

[Twapster]

Fair enuff, if you are digging dirt and carrying back to process in one spot then by all means you will wash your paydirt faster.

 

[blayke]

ok kool.... basically its just to catch the small stuff under a carat....i have plans to make a glass table with small pinhead to .5ct rough sapphires, zircons, garnets etc all glued underneath with a light box underneath to reflect the colour of the stones.....work in progress but need alot more of the small stones only got about a lunchbag full need about 5 more lol

 

[cormorant]

That's a great idea blake ! can you send us a pic of the finished product-love to see it eh.
Cheers

 

[blayke]

will do but its more than likely still months/years away...i only get a couple weeks a year holidays up at sapphire for fossicking and sometimes i find a handful of small stuff.....sometimes ZERO.....im still new to prospecting and still learning where best to find them....still have basically no clue other than inside the corners of creeks and the rest is luck lol

 

[Littledog]

Hi fellas,
Sorry to dig up an old post, i have a custom built river sluice/highbanker which is based on the mckirk drop riffle sluices. It is close to 1500 long 300 wide and 100 deep with three deep nugget traps at the start, a number of different deep drop riffles through the middle and a wide deep nugget trap at the bottom. It is very effective on gold including flour gold and ,as i found out this weekend, it collects sapphire and zircone very effectively too. So i would say the answer is yes but water and the size of your sluice is going to be your problems. A small mckirk will pack out with black sand too quickly. The area we sampled in yesterday in victoria, produced more black sands and heavies in a couple of hours than what i would see at eldorado in several days of digging. Elbowgrease was with me and he said it looked a lot like nz as far as how much black sand there was. We had to clean out the sluice avery 20 shovels or so (when the riffles started to pack out) we found a fair number of sapphire bigger than 1/8" and shitloads of smaller than 1/8" including s bit of gold.

Here is my sluice.

Ld