Long Toms

Although the name mentions these are long, they actually consist of a short sluice. This is a device that used to be used in the early days of the California Gold Rush and there are still some miners that like using them when they are working on a small claim. These can be utilized in places where there is not a lot of water to work a normal sluice, but you will need to use even more water than normal in order to make the rocker work.

The Long Tom used to consist of two parts, both of which are sluices. These two parts are connected together with a drop. The first, or the upside sluice was usually around two times the length of the second sluice.

At first it might seem that this is simply just another illustration of boxes put together, however there is quite a difference. In the longer sluice all the material was run through the sluices that caught gold, in the Long Tom the sluice on the top was used as a place to break up the material so that it could get concentrated easily in the second sluice that was on the bottom. The riffles in these were designed to only do these jobs and nothing else. For that reason, the riffles on the sluice on the top of the Long Tom often ran lengthwise of the sluice where the lower sluice has normal or the more typical riffles placed at right angles.

On the lower end of the sluice on the top there was sorting out device and this was normally run by a grizzly or just by a steel plate that had holes that had been drilled into it. After the gravel had been broken up it kept the bigger pebbles and rocks from going into the recovery area of the gold.

One feature that was different about the Long Tom was the slope of the sluice on the top. In most cases it is one inch per every foot or one foot in twelve. The slope of the sluice on the bottom was adjusted along the angles of a conventional sluice. This let the water to flow quicker in the first operation and helped a lot in breaking the gravel up.

Long Toms used to be operated by one person but a couple men were able to work as much as six yards a day in material that was loosely cemented. One person would have to shovel the gravel or clay into the top sluice while the other used a rake or a fork to break it up and would maintain the grizzly free of the material that was larger.