Hi Friends,
If you read my last post, then you know I tried to run some gold-bearing dirt (I hope) that I dug out of the Arizona desert a couple of months ago. The dirt is from an area near an old gold mining town, Oatman, Arizona.
I spent the long weekend at the Colorado River and brought my 3-foot river sluice box to try and run my material. Here is my sluice in the river:
If you have any experience running a river sluice, you might be laughing at me at this point. I was hoping I could get it to work in a faster section of the river, and by potentially putting in a rock funnel (in addition to my flare) so there would be enough water force to run the material over the riffles – I was wrong. Trail and error I suppose.
To run properly, I would need about a 4 inch drop from the top of the sluice to the bottom of the sluice with the water not running over the sides. That is not really possible on a flat moving river like I was on. I need to troubleshoot to see if there is anyway to do make it work somehow, but really, I think my only option is to come with a high banker type pumped water system outside of the river or go to a different river/stream where there are elevation changes.
Any experienced people out there have any suggestions?
Hopefully I can get this figured out, but at least I am having fun…
Brian