Quote:
Originally Posted by Darth Racer
Sorry to hear about your loss goldstryker. My condolences to you, your cleanup sluice, and your vials. Hopefully you were able to get most of it back in the buckets. It's a travesty to lose a days worth of sweat and digging.
Haven't heard any good stories that involve putting a lot of weight on the back rack of a China ATV. Just keep tow straps, oil, water, and other light odds and ends in my milk crates. I built a trailer for hauling the dredge gear and cons. After seeing your trommel build I'm sure you have that covered.
That trommel looks like it will run lots of material. Don't waste the cash on the Gold Hogg mats, you will go home with less gold. Vortex mat (industrial conveyor belting), or traditional miners moss is your best bet. Put some 10 mesh screen over the upper mat, 1/4" punch plate over the upper mat ( 3/4 high at the start, 1/2 high at the end), and some 1/2" expanded metal under your riffles and you will be good to go.
One of the guys in my group uses Hogg mats and always comes up with less gold. We all usually dredge the same spots together. I see an average of about 30-40% loss from him compared to what we find. The rest of us use Vortex belting. Doc is good at mining the miners. He uses a Gold Cube to clean up his cons.... which has the same Vortex matting. Says it all really.
There is two free modded Rhino's in that advice if you get out enough this season.
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Guess, as usual, I need to learn everything the hard way. Which is what happened with loading the back rack of that Roketa. I have every intention of making that tow mod seen here on this site. Was that you? I like my Gold Hog mats though...been using them for a few years. I use a fail safe system in my sluice box....Top half is always Gold Hog Mats...leading to a wider or less angled lower half with miners carpet, riffles, and expanded metal. That totals over 8ft of sluice with my Long Tom. I think each piece of gold running down the box is looking for a particular type of place to drop and hide. If it don't see someplace it likes, it says "Screw it! I'm blowing out the end of this box!" So I give it a variety of choices....Crash box with a punch plate, UR Mats, Scrubber Mats, slick plate, riffles with miner's carpet, and finally...expanded metal with miner's carpet. I rarely find gold in the lower half of my box but am way too paranoid that something escaped. On top of that...I constantly pan my tailings. As you you, though, we each have our tried and true methods ha ha. I have three more weeks here in North Dakota and when I hit Phoenix for my two weeks off...It's like being let out of a cage! Can't wait to get those quads on that mountain trail to those claims too test.
I stay close to the Rich Hill Area how about you?