Sluicing For Gold

A sluice box is an apparatus used for recovering gold; it has the shape of a box with an inclined canal that has a series of obstructions called riffles. While a calm creek is directed to go through a sluice box, shovels of material from the creek bed is thrown into the upper part of the box. The flux of water washes the materials across the canal (sluice) and over the riffles which trap the gold within the materials.

The reason why a sluice box works is due to gold, which is extremely heavy and thus it is quickly located under the other materials that are being washed in the box. Gold then stays trapped behind the riffles because there is not enough water power behind the riffles to make gold go back to the main flux of water.

A sluicing operation, when built properly, can process gold in the other materials within the box. This could be more than 10 to 200 times more material than when working with a gold pan, but as efficient in recovering gold.

The amount of material that can be shoveled into the box will depend on the consistency and hardness the material has in the bed and that it is easy to break to get it out.

A sluice requires a stable flux that can run through the box to make a more efficient operation. The majority of the times the box is put in the creek or brook where the flux of water is moderate, locating the sluice in such a way that waters from a creek can be directed towards the box.

In locations where there is water, but the flux cannot move fast enough so as to be canalized through the box to sluice it, water can be pumped or siphoned into the box with excellent results. How much water is there available, or if it will or will not be necessary to take it to the sluice box that is something that has to be considered during the planning stage of a sluicing operation.

Due to the plenty material that can be processed in a sluice, in comparison to a gold pan, materials from a creek bed keeping less gold can be exploited with much more benefits for you. Therefore, if a bed had materials with a certain value in its gold contents so as to result being satisfactory for you to work it in a pan, gravel containing 1/100 of the value in gold could be worked with a sluice getting from it a similar result. This is an important factor that one must understand because it means that the modern sluice boxes puts in the open lots of land that could be interesting to exploit by a single man.

If material is located on the bed and it can be worked correctly with a gold pan, working that same material with a sluice box would increase much more the gold contents to be recovered I the same lapse of time. Currently, sluice boxes are the most commonly used recovering system in the gold mining industry. They come in a wide variety of sizes, from a miniature sluice box to medium-sized boxes that re many times found in the suction dredges, and up to bigger sluices that are used in large scale mining operations where sluices are fueled by heavy equipment such as bulldozers, caterpillars and other. For a sluicing operation of one or two people, one can build a medium-sized sluice box or can be bought from someone in the mining gear business.