Size DOES matter ... ?

[Anolphart]

Hi guys,
My names Zol and Ive just joined the forum today after having read a lot of older posts here which has edjumicated me a lot! I have only recently taken up panning and would like to take it to the next level and try my hand at using a sluice. After pottering around on the internet and looking at the options available, and taking note of what you guys have recommend, it seems that I would be hard pressed to get anything much better than the Gold Rat. At this stage I have gravitated to the 8 version as most of the places that I plan to visit are relatively not fast flowing creeks and I think it should be light and small enough so as not be too difficult to carry a few hundred meters from the car.

Would this be a suitable unit for a newby? And can this unit be used in faster flowing rivers perhaps with the flair not fitted?

All comments accepted gratefully
Cheers
Zol

 

[Jaros]

Welcome Zed.

 

[AussieChris]

Welcome to the forum Zol. Im not affiliated with Gold Rat sluices, however I believe they are very good quality and Dream Mat is exceptional. I use the 12" version and love it, had it about 3 months now. It took me a while to get the water flow right as the creeks and rivers are low and slow right now, a bit of engineering a rock dam with the right fall and I was sluicing. The 12" likes plenty of water, on my first use I would guess because of the river being low I prob had it dialed to 75% efficiency, don't worry though I still caught gold. Clean up is easy and your cons are very compact and easy to then pan out.

Have had better results everytime I take it out now, I'm guessing the 8" will like good flow as well so I doubt you would ever need run it without the flare, just raise and lower it accordingly. I'm actually considering grabbing the 8" or the smaller 6" backpack sluice as a counterpart to my larger one. Make sure you grab a classifier set, just wet classify your material onto a 20L bucket. If you fill the bucket with water and then wash your material in your classifier you will find it so much easier to sluice, especially if you need to bust up some clay and wash larger rocks. It's a bit slower than highbanking of course but if you set your sights on running say 8-10 buckets you should get good results.

Most of the time when I go out I take my family, my wife is a trooper and nearly always the first one to fill a bucket with material, then our 13yr old daughter runs the sluice, so yeah easy for anyone to use. We just have to keep the bucket line going for her

Dustin has a good option on his website to be able to pay via Afterpay, so if your budget is tight it takes the sting out.
Plus if you ever have any questions he always gets back to you really fast and is happy to help.

 

[Anolphart]

Thanks for the welcome guys. Jaros, is this is where old hams retire? Im ex VK2KLN, retired about 10 years ago. Now I just ham it up!

Chris, thank you for your input. Youre very fortunate to have family that share your interests, you must be very pleased. I do have a couple of classifiers, I think theyre and and use them for panning so I would expect similar results with the sluice. Would it be worthwhile to get something finer than "? I had wondered whether it would expedite the panning process somewhat by using a finer classifier, or would that just take away the simplicity of it all?

 

[AussieChris]

You would probably get away with " with optimum flow as I have seen people shovel directly into sluices running dream mat, would not imagine it to be very good on the cells though! I tend to use ".

Those aluminium Bushtracks sets come in inch gauge and inch gauge. Shop around because they vary in price HEAPS.

I got a couple of sets on eBay for $41.50 including postage, and I have seen them in stores for $65+. Bunnings (depending on the store) also have garden sieves and rainwater tank filter/sieves that you can get pretty cheap, around $20.

There is an awesome post on the forums here for D.I.Y bucket sieves too

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=541

I think most of the pics are gone and need to be re-uploaded due to Photobucket not allowing hosting anymore and Ag Man has gone afk for a year, but there are some scattered pics so you can get the idea.

 

[Anolphart]

Sorry, my bad. I had a brain hippocampus malfunction. I actually do have the and sieves so theyll just have to do for the time being and Ill keep a lookout for something finer to experiment with. Now its interesting you say that the dream mat may not be partial to processing unclassified material. Their website states: Composition: Hi Grade Urethane, impeccable tear and cut resistance, sand and abrasion resistant, water resistant.

It doesnt claim to be rock resistant per se but I guess heavy material could round the edges off after a while. Id be happy to replace the mat frequently if it was only gold that would abrade it!!!!

I did read that article about DIY bucket sieves and followed it up on other articles on Google as well. I may try that one day.

OK, Ive made up my mind and ordered the 8 and am now looking forward to some new challenges again. As Im getting older I noticed that I get quite motivated to learn new things. Why, a couple of weeks ago I tried to study how women think and that is how I ended up here learning about sluicing instead!

 

[AussieChris]

Yeah mate those two are kinda standard sizes, no need to go smaller for the sluice, even his 6" mini cell sluice is fine with 8 mesh classification.

The idea of classifying is not just to be considerate on the mats, it just allows riffles/moss/mat/cells to do their job easier and not clog up your sluice run with debris and large rocks, you just end up creating surface tension and eddies that will blow gold right out the end, like a mini flash flood in your sluice run.

No doubt that urethane is way stronger than the usual rubber by the way, but if you are paying $144 for the mat you might as well look after it. I'm sure Prospectors Dream in the US and Dustin (Gold Rat) Aus, have put the stuff to the test and probably tore up a few mats in the process by doing things out of the ordinary with it, but as a consumer that's not our job hehe.

Grat's on ordering your sluice, you are from the Northern Rivers yeah? give the river and creeks around Drake and Tabulam a shot when you get it, some nice gems up there too.

 

[Anolphart]

Thanks for your input Chris and yup, I live in Yamba but travel throughout Oz for about 6-9 months of the year pulling a van. Ive been researching the gold history of a local river feeding the Clarence and intend to sample and detect the area, but as is often the case, a lot of it is within National Park boundaries so I have to make full use of my GPS to avoid any problems with the ranger.