Sluice Box

Make sure you always look at the slant of the sluice box. The accurate laying down slant of the sluice box over which the water and material discharges is one of the most vital of all the factors involved in operating it efficiently. Water will go into the sluice box at its upper end and flow downward over the riffle traps, leaving the sluice idle. If you do not give it enough of a downward slant, it will cause the riffle traps to get full and totally covered, allowing the heavy gold to slide over the traps and out the other end, which you do not want to do. Something you should always keep in mind is to begin the downward slant of the sluice box at around one inch of height for each foot of box.

Around one third of the riffle tops need to be showing all the time. You should try and practice in your specific area to establish the adequate slant that will allow this. Check the vortex that is caused under the riffle when the dredge is working. If the riffle is working the right way, material should be suspended and loose so that the gold that is heavier is allowed to settle on the bottom. If the material is packed, it means that the riffle is not working the right way and you will need to adjust it.

Having a synchronized flow of water is very important, and a slow, completely even flow of water over a long set of riffles will always recover more fine gold than any other type of dredge recovery. It is very hard to save and recuperate flour gold in any type of sluice, no matter what the slant is like or the length since the extremely thin flat flakes have a tendency of floating in the water instead of sinking. In the past the prospectors were sometimes successful with recovering fine gold due to the fact that their sluices had a lot of length and the hand operated methods were slow and with a perfect control of the flow of the water. This problem is compounded by the fact that all streams, no matter where they are at, have impurities in them like sewage, vegetation, agricultural chemicals and a lot more. These types of impurities however have a tendency of coating the very fine flour gold and cause it to float more.