Gold Prospecting in Pennsylvania - The Sluice Box.

in nature •  7 years ago 

   Hi everybody.  A couple of days ago, I made a post about the gold prospecting I've been doing in my home state of Pennsylvania.  It mainly introduced you all to my peculiar hobby and talked a little bit about panning for gold.  If you'd like to check it out and catch up, the post can be found here: Gold Prospecting in Pennsylvania - Panning for Gold.


^^^My grandfather "feeding the sluice"!

  Now that I had my panning technique down pretty well, it was time to look into getting a sluice.  Gold prospecting, no matter which way you cut it, boils down to digging up a lot of dirt then refining down to smaller and smaller particles in a series of steps, until you're left with the smallest and heaviest stuff at the very end.  Until this point, all I had to use to sort the soil was a series of sifting screens.  Basically, a big hoop with screen on the bottom.  The first one would have 1/2" holes, the next one would have 1/4" holes, the last would have 1/8" holes.  You would put the largest size screen on a bucket, shove some dirt from a creek bed onto it, then shake and pour water over it until all the smaller stuff falls through the screen.  Then repeat the process several times until you're left with the 1/8" or smaller particles in a bucket.  THEN I would pan that material, one scoop at a time.  A sluice, however, would cut out a lot of that back-breaking work.

   Around the same time of me getting into gold prospecting, my birthday rolled around in early May.  Kylene asked what I wanted as a gift, and viola, a perfect opportunity to get a sluice!  I found one I wanted on Amazon and two days later it was at our door.  Look at this beaut':

^^^My folding 50" sluice box by Royal.  It folds down to fit in a 5 gallon bucket!

   In a nutshell, a sluice is a device made to to process a lot of soil quickly.  You position the sluice into an area of the stream with decent current, or attach a hose and pump to pump water down it's length.  You really just need to sift your dirt with only the 1/2" sifter size now, just to get rid of any large stones that the water can't move.  Once your sluice is set up in a creek with water flowing over, you dump one scoop of soil at a time onto that black area right bellow the "V" shaped top (look at the photo above for reference).  The black stuff is a rubber pad with ribs going across.  Being that gold is the heaviest natural object you'd find in your dirt, the larger pieces will settle into these ribs and you'll see it right away!  After that, the soil gets washed over the series of metal bars running across the sluice; these are called "riffles".  They are basically little ramps that shoot the flowing water and soil into the air for a split second... but again, with gold being so heavy, it will want to just tumble over the metal ramps and fall straight down.  Under the metal bars is expanded metal, which acts like a thousand even tinier little ramps that do the same thing.  Finally, under the metal lathe, there is an artificial carpeting material that captures even the smallest specs of gold in it's mesh.  


^^^An ideal setup for the sluice.  Notice how ripply and choppy the water is going over the metal bars.  That's exactly what you want.

    Now it's important to say that you don't want your water to be TOO strong/fast running down your sluice.  If that happens, all of your material AND gold will just get blown down your sluice and out the bottom.  On the other hand, if the water is moving too slow, ALL of your soil and pebbles will just sit where you pour it and jam things up.  You just want a nice even flow that washes your scoop of dirt away in about 2 or 3 seconds.  Two other tips is to have your sluice be as level as possible in the left to right direct, so you get a relatively even layer of water, and to also have the exit end of the box above the stream's water level.  If the exit of your sluice is IN the water, it will create a bit of an eddy there and slow down your material from leaving.  

^^^I gave my grandfather a bad case of "gold fever".  His job was to feed the sluice.  He loved it. :)

   So after running a bucket of soil through the sluice, you put something like a 5 gallon bucket over it's end and start to take the layers of parts off.  First you rinse it all to wash any loose, heavy material (hopefully gold!) into the bucket.  Then take off the metal bar riffles and rinse them.  Then the metal lathe and rinse, then finally the carpeting material and rinse and squeeze.  After all parts have been rinsed, everything that the sluice caught is now in the bottom of your bucket.  This material is called your "cons", short for "concentrates".  This is what you pan.  If you want to practice panning, or just want to pan for gold without all the digging and hard work, some companies from gold-rich states sell bags of these cons... but you never know what you're going to get.  Sometimes a ton of gold, sometimes nothing.  

    So how well does a sluice box work?  If it's set up properly it works great!  As an example, here is a piece of gold I found in a Pennsylvania creek that was trapped in my sluice.  To give you an idea of it's size, it's photographed through a microscope and those fibers around it are the PAPER TOWEL it's sitting on! lol

   In closing on the topic of sluicing.... as cool as it is, it STILL comes down to panning.  I did not know that before I got into the hobby.  Even on those Discovery Channel shows you see, where the guys have backhoes and earth movers, and machines the size of buildings... all they are doing really is dumping soil over a giant sluice like you see here.  Then, the crew takes the concentrates from that sluice and pan it out by hand.  Panning is the only way to get the gold out with out losing a bunch of it, AND the only way to get the tinies bits of gold that is pretty much dust, known as "flour gold".  It always comes down to panning.  

     Thanks for reading, everyone!  The next installment on my gold prospecting will be about finding where the gold is hiding in a stream or river.  I hope you catch it!

     Thanks for reading! I post a nature/travel-themed blog every day. Please upvote if you enjoyed it and be sure to follow me @customnature so you'll never miss one!  See you next time.  - Adam

***These daily blogs showcase the natural world.  It is all original content using photos, stories, and experiences from my own travels.***

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Hi@customnature Very nice post of you .. your grandfather looks like he enjoy that so lovely , that good, hopefully you get a gift, and viola, soon , This work is very cool , and feeling Reshing, and the water is look very clean make i would like go there for swimming lol thank you for sharing, Follow and upvote, should be nice if you follow and upvote me too..hahaha
Greeting for Thailand ^_^

This post received a 1.6% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @annsita! For more information, click here!

Thank you @annasita. I do think that creek is the most beautiful in our entire state. I do swim in it from time to time. I look forward to taking a trip to your country as well! My fiancé has been to Thailand and said it's beautiful. I'll check out your blog now.

you're welcome .. so glad to hear for your friend said that .. Thailand it's beautiful country it truth , and more of beautiful lady same like me too haha Thank you for come visit my blog you will nice and funny girl there hopefully you enjoy my blog.. Have a nice day ^_^

My son did this a couple of years back at the F.U.N. show in Orlando got a nice little nugget from it. Of course that was inside a convention center, but same idea. I would love to try this out in the wild one day! Have a great night and good luck!!!!!

Thats awesome! Believe me, I'm sure he did much better at the show than anyone doing it in the wilds of Pennsylvania ever would. Haha

Nice sluice, trap those nuggets 🤑

↑ This guy knows what I'm talking about!

Dude, I've been watching Gold Rush and Yukon Gold for years. I've seen all sorts of sluicing hehe.

It's crazy to think that all their operations still comes down to doing panning. With all that stuff, you'd think they'd have some kind of machine to find the gold. Nope. Still have to pan it out by hand.
I have mixed feelings about those shows too. I'm a nature fanatic. These guys go out into some natural paradise areas... and completely buttfuck it trying to find gold. I would like to see what the sites look like have they expire. I sure hope everything is filled back in and replanted.

dang!! that's really cool Custom...I dig it :P haha

Dude, you need to have a meet up out in your neck of the woods. Supposed to be some good gold out that way. I'll bring all my gear! haha Also, your painting should go out tomorrow. 😎

Yeah, I'm thinking about! We got more gold mines than grocery stores out here. Lol, most of them are MASSIVE and horrifying terrible to the surround landscapes though :P I believe Montana has more top ten superfund sites than any other state. You can come whenever you want, I'll take you on a tour of my dad's microbrewery.

Thanks much, I'm really excited..!

Yeah, I feel ya. Like I said in a reply just above... it tears me up seeing those gold prospecting shows and how they destroy the most serene natural landscapes for a quick buck. I hope they repair the sites once the gold is exhausted. I freaking love Montana though. My wife and I talk about possible moving there when we're older.

Yeah, it's a gorgeous place! The modern gold mining companies have it down to a science...you go in boasting loud about all the jobs, and how ecologically safe your process is. Extract everything you can possibly get while sentiments are high, and then go bankrupt..no matter that god knows how much profit got siphoned away to switzerland, or wherever. They don't clean up shit. They can't. It costs too much, they'd never be competitive. Or maybe they're just greedy, I really have no idea, all I know is that there aren't any environmentally (or socially) responsible mining companies in Montana. It's unfortunate. But lucky for us, they mostly go to third world countries now! And rape their ecological and social capital :P

I'm a real upper tonight. Anyway, have you been up here before? Any places you particularly enjoyed?

hey custom! My good friend Lily just made her intro post as LadyLunasi, Would you go say hi?!!! THANKYOU!!!!

Wow always wanted to do that ! ...and I live in PA !

Oh yeah? What part of the state are you in??

Millheim, Penn's Valley -16854

That is so cool!!!!!

Thats great! I learned gold panning while camping in Nothern California. These two grizzly guys were panning a creek at the camp. They were more than happy to share what they knew.
I live in southern New York and have tried here as well, no luck yet , but you have re inspired me. So much fun. I'll let you know if I come across any. Keep trying, its there somewhere.C2

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