Underwater Mining and
Mining Equipment

Sluices are usually defined as artificial channels from which controlled quantities of water flow through. When gold placering is done a slice can include a tool known as a sluice box that takes care of collecting the gold through the use of riffles, mats, corrugations, etc., all of which have the objective of trapping the heavier gold particles and allow the waste to flow through. In general a mining operation can be done more effectively in areas where water is available and this is an important part to any sluicing operation. In areas where there is not a great amount of water though, it is possible to use pumps, pipelines, or dams. In ground sluicing, which is in most cases more efficient, almost all of the excavation is done by the action of water that flows openly over the materials that are going to be mined. In both cases, the materials go through a sluice and the gold collects behind riffles. There is also another variation of sluicing which is known as booming and this method consists of storing and releasing water against or across the materials from time to time. 

Dredges
There are many types of dredges according to what the dredger is interested in, some dredges are lightweight, capable and do not cost a fortune. Most of them are made so the ejector rapidly removes from the pressure box so that modifications to another suction nozzle can be made in the future. Some of them have their ejectors right above the water level though the most known ones are those that have the base of the jet around one foot or more under the surface. These can be found in different sizes and have different pump capacities. At the bottom end of the range there are the 1and ½ and two inch models. There are other ones that are lightweight and they can be taken to remote areas by one or two people that are backpacking. There are a lot of experienced gold dredgers that utilize them as prospecting tools and they dredge spots along the stream and mark the areas that they believe are probable so they can then take in the heavier equipment. The middle range of the dredges is the ones that are in 2 and ½, three and four inch sizes. What one decides to get depends on how much he is willing to spend evidently, as well as on the type of operations that are going to be done and on the amount of space one has at hand for transporting everything, so keep all those things in mind. The ones that are smaller can usually fit inside of the trunk of a car and the larger ones can fit inside a station wagon.

Floats
There have been some problems associated with floats. There are plastic ones that can be transported if you have a roof rack on your vehicle and the inner tube type allows you to save a good amount of space because they can be deflated when they need to be transported. For the professionals there are fixed, six and eight-inch versions, bigger ones are available as well but they need to be specifically ordered. These kinds are for the people that are really into placering and that are doing so for a living, or dedicating all his time into it. The individuals that purchase these types frequently have a deposit they are interested in cleaning out. There are eight-inch versions that have two centrifugal pumps placing two jets into the ejector. These have a suction that is very powerful and a lot of them have been used in depths ranging of fifty feet or more.