# finished my new sluice box!



## mls26cwru (Oct 14, 2016)

Just finished building the new sluice box... kinda snazzy looking 

I finally decided I was sick of rebuilding the one with the wooden base every few months and finally sprung the money to make one out of 3/8" aluminum plate and increase the width a bit. This design has worked amazingly well for me and I cant wait to ue the new (and bigger) one!


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## Barren Realms 007 (Oct 14, 2016)

Nice looking.

But why put a screen in the bottom then seal it up? 

Why not just put a rubber mat with riffles in the bottom of it that you can take out and clean?


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## mls26cwru (Oct 14, 2016)

Barren Realms 007 said:


> Nice looking.
> 
> But why put a screen in the bottom then seal it up?
> 
> Why not just put a rubber mat with riffles in the bottom of it that you can take out and clean?



I never really found a rubber mat that I was satisfied with, so when i built my first one, I used bug netting...then rubberized spray paint to give the gold a surface to 'stick' to. It was cheap and worked really well, so i stuck with it. Basically at the end of my run, I just put the sluice on its end and spray water to flush all the concentrates into a container.

this works great for recovering the bonding wires from BGA chips, but i think would have problems if I was trying to recover larger gold particles from a creek or the like. I am actually experimenting with a bigger set of riffles that I can set into the box... I ordered some flattened expanded aluminum sheet and am going to be doing some runs to see if it helps or not.


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## patnor1011 (Oct 14, 2016)

I bought from this person:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/prospectorsupplyllc/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=
I am quite happy with mat and it work fine on IC material. You can still use mat in your sluice just cut out appropriate piece and put it on top of your surface.


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## jason_recliner (Oct 14, 2016)

> I used bug netting...then rubberized spray paint to give the gold a surface to 'stick' to.


:idea: That has to be idea of the week. Genius simplicity for a dedicated bonding wire jig. 

The only concern I would have had is that 'catch' might be easier than 'release' with so many separate compartments, compared to long riffles. Though you said it works a treat.

Thank you for sharing.


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## mls26cwru (Oct 14, 2016)

patnor1011 said:


> I bought from this person:
> http://www.ebay.com/sch/prospectorsupplyllc/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=
> I am quite happy with mat and it work fine on IC material. You can still use mat in your sluice just cut out appropriate piece and put it on top of your surface.



thank you for that link Pat! That is what I was looking for early on, but couldn't find. I will give this stuff a try if my other experiment doesnt work so well.



jason_recliner said:


> The only concern I would have had is that 'catch' might be easier than 'release' with so many separate compartments, compared to long riffles. Though you said it works a treat.
> Thank you for sharing.



the compartments are really tiny, 1/32" at most... they give just enough for the gold wires to clump onto and accumulate. Increase the incline and use a sprayer, and concentrates just roll right off the sluice. I can was the box clean within 60 seconds.


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## anachronism (Oct 14, 2016)

Well done on the build. I think it's great when people to put the effort into building their own gear. I bet you feel good looking at your own creation and working out how to make it even better


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## 4metals (Oct 14, 2016)

> I never really found a rubber mat that I was satisfied with



When I was in South America they used artificial grass carpeting with a rubberized bottom. They passed crushed ore over it and the gold collected in the mat. Maybe this is common the world over but it was in South America that I saw it used effectively. At the end of the day they removed the carpet from their sluice box and washed it into a pan and panned the values. 

The down side is you really cannot see a gold line like you can on a rubberized mat with grooves, but it seemed to work for their application.


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## Shark (Oct 14, 2016)

I got my rubber mat from Lowe's. I finally found it in the tile department as a hallway runner rug. Seems like 3' x 2' was around $3.


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