Whether you’re working a high bench in the spring fed river or taking advantage of low winter water levels, the River Master is the sluice box for the job. Designed for maximum gold recovery.  The extended Gold Rake capture fingers are “tuned” to recover fine, flake and micro nugget gold.

The number one problem with other sluices is that they try to do everything at the cost of losing the bulk of small gold. I appreciate the no minors want to lose any gold nuggets... Ever! But when you’re working a sand or gravel bar you'll know quickly if any large gold is there just by digging test holes for sampling. Odds are extremely good that there will be bands of flood gold throughout the sandbar as you dig down. This is almost always flour, flake and micro nugget sizes or 1/8" minus size. Exceptions can occur when you hit bedrock or hand pan where nuggets can get trapped. Exceptions can occur when you hit bedrock or hand pan where nuggets can get trapped. 98% of your placer mining will still be high benches and gravel bars where the bulk of 1/8 inch minus gold will be found.

What I haven’t talked about is floating gold or more correctly micro nuggets held in suspension.

I'll clarify;

•          Floating gold is incredibly fine flakes actually floating on the water surface; which unfortunately beats a hasty exit out of the bottom of your sluice – – the cause is usually due to adding dry gold concentrates to the top of your box or reusing recirculated water too much. In otherwords you're pushing dirty water through the system. Water viscosity is too high and won't allow small gold to “mix” with the wash water properly.

•          Small flakes held in suspension. This is gold that has been ground down so fine that, by mass, it’s actually lighter than surrounding materials in the flow.

Remedy...

Some people like racecars. I like getting ALL the gold so I tend to play with some unusual recovery methods all of the time. Unfortunately, I’m never satisfied [we all have our faults]. What I’ve discovered that works is the Gold Rake capture fingers [no jokes please]. These extended fingers work in a number of ways:

1) They don’t “pack off” like normal riffles do [I hate that].

2) They capture even floating gold [the real small stuff][I like that].

3) Because they are extended up into the flow, the fingers break up laminar flow causing turnover in hydrated materials [more flour gold extraction].

4) Black sand. Ah yes a miner’s favorite. The river can keep the magnetite, I only want the gold.  Fine gold and black sand go together, one likes the other.

So the Gold Rake capture system works by getting both a portion of the black sand and the fine gold as a concentrate. Then by further refining your concentrates with the spiral wheel or fine gold recovery bowl you can extract all that ultra-small gold.

When you’re getting the heavier magnetite and flour gold together you will get 99.99% of all gold that goes through your sluice box, period.

5) The beautiful part of this system is that it takes a lot of captured material to “pack it off”. You're gold concentrates start to fill the front portion of the capture fingers and you'll see a slow growing mound.

This mound of gold/black sand will start to work its way back to the bottom of the box over time.

I test the captured materials “fullness” by sticking my finger into the concentrates in the box but as the front fingers disappear over a period of hours you can also see how full the box is.

Typically it takes many hours or days to completely fill the box and you can cleanup before gets completely full.

Partial Clean Up:

Super easy. Just wash the gold/black sand concentrates from the side of your box down to the bottom and catch it's material in a trough or large pipe and place it into a 5 gallon bucket. No pulling of riffles or capture media. Total time for partial cleanup is 4 to 5 minutes with no effort at all.

You can get up and running within 6 to 8 minutes with very little downtime My uncle used to say “you don’t get paid for down time, HUSTLE!” Our cleanup in Atlin, BC many years ago could take 1 to 1 ½ hours from start to finish.

Full Clean Up:

This should take about 8 to 12 minutes. It involves pulling the Gold Rake capture system and the carpet from the sluice, washing it and reassembling it.

A word about miners Moss... You don’t need it for this system.

The first thing that happens is the bottom of the box fills with a layer of black sand and gold. It’s the Gold Rake capture system that does all the work of pulling in the rich material.

The purpose of the bottom carpet is to stop “creep” of your gold concentrates out of your box. 

Miners Moss will work and is necessary in some systems but it’s harder to clean out and serves no purpose in The River Master Sluice Box besides putting the brakes on the captured gold which is already being handled by the Gold Rake capture system. (However if you would prefer the option it is available.)

My favorite part.

You walk off the claim was several buckets of heavy gold concentrate and other miners say “Ah what a bummer that your sluice isn’t working better. Those buckets look really heavy”. Then they learn how much gold you captured and it becomes “Wow! How did you do that?”

So it goes.

The whole idea is capture more gold. You’re shoveling and putting in the labor so why not wring out any last shreds of gold while you’re at it?
The raised finger system is especially suited to rivers and streams. Gold bearing sandbars become non-gold bearing sandbars when you’re done. Depending on the size of the area you are working this most often is in ounces of gold. That’s how much the gold adds up and this can be from well worked public areas. Everybody is doing the same thing... And placing the fine gold right back where it came from.

This is the River Master sluice box series, enjoy and I hope you get nuggets.

There are several sizes and various options to choose from.

Choose from the following options:

- Width - 10" (Niagara) or 12" (Cascade)(14", 16" and custom sizes coming soon).

- Length - 36" or 46" (Extended).

- Standard Ribbed Matting or Standard Ribbed Matting plus 12" of Miners Moss.

Please contact us @ admin@leafmining.com if you are interested in:

Flare Kit for the Niagara - $49.00*

Flare Kit for the Cascade - $59.00*

High Banker Leg Kit - $199.00* ($169.00* if purchased at the same time as the Sluice Box.

*extra shipping charges may apply.

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This is a pre-sale release. First release date is June 30th, 2015

(Video coming soon)

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