Leaf Mining

Sluice boxes of the 1800's conjure up images of long wooden sluice (long toms) that went for 15 feet or more. Pioneer miners that would wash entire hillsides through these water chutes extracting hundreds of ounces of gold per season (and that was with 1800's know how).

Well we've progressed a lot through time and sluice box technology has made some incredible advances. We still use a variety of gravity separation techniques combined with common sense tricks and proven practices to extract 95% of all gold we put through our sluices. Since 70 - 80% of all easy gold has been recovered from surface and subsurface gravels, efficiency and fine gold recovery are the focus of most gold miners. The beautiful part about this is entire gold areas can be "rewashed" through our efficient fine gold sluice boxes for some very nice recoveries of fine gold.

Even most of our modern sluices currently available won't trap this finer material. It is only in the last 10 - 12 years that under water classification has become practical so as to create new gold traps for ultra fine gold. While testing one of the later prototypes of the "Fine Gold Master" an older gentleman told me not to bother working the ground there as it was all "mined out". I patiently explained that I was refining my Fine Gold Master sluice box and was actually looking for well worked ground so I could extract the remaining fine and ultra fine gold that was missed from all the other miners. The gentleman said that fine stuff looks good in a gold pan but you can't trap it with any sluice box he had ever seen. All you will do is make a big jam of gravel if you slow the water flow down too much. I thanked him for his advice and carried on setting up my sluice. After tuning and adjusting the angle I recovered over a quarter ounce in just under 4 1/2 hours. That's worth about $375! Not bad for a "well worked" area after only a half a day.

The key to recovering fine gold is classification. The amount of water flow and pressure it takes to keep lighter material moving on and the fine gold to stay is quite low. By classifying down to 1/8" minus you can reduce your water flow to this "sweet spot" and concentrate fine gold into micro riffles in the bottom of your sluice box.

A lot of miners know how important classification is before washing materials through their sluices which is why trommels are so popular. But, I am talking about very fine material classification for the bottom riffle section not the cruder sizing for the entire sluice. You have heard me go on about fine gold and how to trap it when we take a focused approach on fast efficient fine gold recovery. Anything else is easy.

The moment our gold particle size increases from ultra fine the gold becomes much easier to capture. Its weight and density causes it to drop out of the glow sooner rather than later which is why the top sections of our sluices can turn a gold hue after some hours of operation, when properly tuned.

I think the greatest fear of most miners is loosing that one big nugget they accidentally wash through their operation. I agree, but not to the point where we constantly flush fine gold out the bottom of our sluices. Better to keep the fine gold in a hydrated bottom section and catch any larger gold in the extended riffle section near the end where it won't plug off or cause you to lose any ultra fine gold.

So I have come up with a layered classification method that separates the "fines" and still catches larger gold as well. The bulk of the sluice deals with separation and capture of fine gold. The extended riffle system near the end catches anything larger.

I have videos coming soon on the family of sluice boxes I will offer. It is just a matter of time in the field (with a camera) to show you how well these operate.

Please stay tuned for videos and helpful instructions on sluice box operations.

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Hoping you bring home nuggets (gold not chicken!).

See you soon.