Gold Prospecting Equipment - GOLDH…

GOLDH…
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 Important Update to the following pages.

Talon Mat

I have decided just to add this update to the following pages as the Talon mat was not
launched before they were written. The Talon mat is an AWESOME mat and a great performer
under a very wide range of flow conditions.

I believe it should be included in EVERY sluice that is out there.

As an example… we use it in our small clean up system, the Multi Sluice, running an 1100 GPH
bilge pump. At the same time we use it in our large 6” dredges with water screaming through
them. Just a little tuning and you’ll love this mat.

I can’t stress this enough…. Include the Talon in your sluice.

Doc
 Gold Hog® Matting - Choosing the right mats.
Before you decide to purchase our matting for your gold recovery needs it’s vital that you FULLY take the time to
understand it and what type of matting is best for your system. Remember… in gold recovery there is NO MAGIC… it’s
just science, physics, and math. Spend a little time researching, reading, watching videos, getting advice, and you’ll have
a system that is tuned in perfectly.

Before you begin reading… a note from Doc.

I decided to revise this info packet to include this “kind of funny” email exchange.
We had a young engineering student from overseas email us. He was working on a project for a gold recovery system
which would be based on an underwater / subsurface system. He was looking for “flow numbers” and specifications for
our mats. So, I decided to send him this packet and said I thought it might help him.
Here was his response:
“as your probably ust to people with no real scientific knowledge or mathematical aptitude… i was looking for a numerical
answer, this answer would let me design then cad simulate a system, so that i could optimism said system before building
it so it would only need minor tuning. i wasn't look for a PDF that gives info slightly more complex than Kentucky windage.”

Needless to say I had a good chuckle.

For years I have dealt with a LOT of “smart”, well educated people that simply couldn’t get it. A lot of them dealt in very
specific numbers, formulas, and mathematical equations where there was always a way to find the ANSWER through a
“formula”. While gold recovery is mostly math, science and physics, there often is not a good way to get the EXACT
ANSWERS you seek without “KENTUCY WINDAGE”, visualization, experimentation, and good old trial and error.
What I want YOU to understand, after reading this, is that EVERY system, every piece of equipment, every type of gold,
every type of “dirt”, and every operation will have variables that will impact what matting is used. We ALL can make our
best “assumptions”… but it’s not always simple and easy. However, once you do get your system tuned in, there’s no
better feeling in the world.
Doc

Let’s begin……….

A warning for you…

Our matting is a bit complex due to the selections and the way they are assembled by the customer. DON’T… rush. Take
the time to watch the install video and you’ll be very comfortable with it. Don’t watch it and you’ll make some big
mistakes. The install video is here: http://www.goldhog.com/how_to_install_sluice_mat.htm
We STRONLGY recommend you cut ONE piece… fit it into the sluice, and then cut the next. Do this time and time again.
This is the way WE DO IT on our units. Each piece is cut, fitted one by one, and numbered before we glue it up.
Also, use the test strips for the side tape shown in the video. That will ensure a nice snug fit.
Why you need to LEARN MORE…
We get emails all the time that say… “I have a 12” x 48” sluice. I have fine gold. What mat should I use?”
We simply can’t answer that question without a WHOLE BUNCH more info.
- Is it a stream sluice?... Highbanker? ….Dredge?
- What’s the GPH (Gallons Per Hour) running through the sluice?
- Etc, Etc, Etc….
So, taking the TIME to read the following will help you select the best matting.

Cleaning the mats…

We needed to stick this in somewhere, so why not first.
We are 100% confident you’ll find our mats the EASIEST and QUICKEST to clean compared to anything on the market
today. However, some people just don’t know the right way to clean them. It literally takes 5 minutes and you’re up
and running again. So we made this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGU2C_LHG_A

Durability…
Our mats have run for over two years in several commercial ops and still perform like the day they bought them.
They are made from VERY heavy extrusions and can be thrown up on a hot roof for 10 years. Take them down and run
them in your sluice. (A little dramatic, but we need to make that point.) They are virtually indestructible.
Temperature rating range is 250 degrees in the heat … down to -35 in the cold.
The “Fine Gold Obsession”… let’s start here.
Catching BIG gold is easy. It’s kind of like throwing a big fishing weight into your sluice. It’s not going anywhere. It’s the
loss or capture of super fine gold that haunts people. Often much of this gold is super flat as well, making it even
tougher to catch. So… let’s address this issue now.
If you have lots of fine gold your system should be set up for it. The more you classify your material the better it is due
to hydraulic equivalence. If there’s ONE THING every miner in the world should learn… it’s how this term and the
science behind it impacts your gold recovery. We did a video dedicated to this here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGbkP_QRESQ You can also Google the term and find some good reading on it.
A “cheaters summary”… if you are trying to clear 3” rocks out of your sluice, it takes a great deal of water force / energy.
That high level of energy will more than likely cause the fine gold to be carried out as well. So, if you are focused on fine
gold recovery, build a system that is QUIET and smooth. Try and reduce the amount of turbulence created by large
riffles or flow interruptions. However, go too quiet and gentle and you’ll not have enough exchange and your system
will load up. It’s a balancing and tuning process that simply takes time and experimenting.
A REALLY good video to watch is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMMLEjjn6xc right about the 12 minute
mark we discuss the 3 different LOADS within you slurry. The Dissolved Load, the Sediment Load, and the Bed Load.
You REALLY need to understand this basic theory as it REALLY is the premise and basis for the design of our matting.

(See the image below.)

As your slurry travels down your sluice a separation will occur. Heavy things such as garnets, black sands, rocks, and
gold will quickly settle (fall) out of the flow (sediment load) and RIDE along the bottom of your sluice (bed load). They do
this in slightly different time frames and this variance is often referred to as settling velocity. This means that fine flat
gold, even though it has a high specific density, will fall out (settle) slower than a garnet which is round in shape
(sphere). So, picture fine gold trying to settle and then hitting a TALL riffle. What happens? It has to start this process all
over again. If you have powerful water flow and large riffles the fine flat gold may never get into the bed load.

Now let’s go to the other extreme. Let’s use NO flow interruption. Let’s use something that only has depressions in it
such as our UR mat, vortex mat, drop riffle systems, etc. You’ll quickly see when running these that ALL the material in
the BED LOAD is covering /entering / often packing these. There is NO LIFT and FALL action (flow interruption) meaning
that fine gold is often struggling to get to them if not tuned correctly. (We see this in Africa all the time or areas that
have large amounts of black sands or garnets.) Sometimes it’s referred to as IMPACTION but we prefer the term
CROWDING. The capture surface is BUSY… or full… so fine gold can simply ride down the sluice.
So what’s the answer?
The answer is two long years of research, study and testing… and 5 different Gold Hog mattings.
There is no ONE SIZE FITS ALL in mining so picking and matching the correct matting is needed.
I STRONGLY suggest you look on our website to find the 4000 grams success story from Africa. A VERY NICE trommel
system that works GREAT in Alaska… has losses of over 80% in their region. We had to come up with a solution and we
did. By matching the velocity, limiting turbulence, and offering a mild / moderate flow interruption and capture zones
we were able to go from 80%+ loss rate to over 70% capture rate within weeks of tuning and testing.

Would you take bare vortex mat and put it in a 6” dredge which is blowing huge amounts of water across it?
Would you take miners moss and ½”expanded metal and do the same?
The answer is NO. There is simply too much ENERGY and the gold would be scrubbed out.
However, the same applies for our UR, Razorback and DownDraft mat. These mats prefer medium to low energy and
would not perform well.

Let us make this point VERY clear………..

If someone says you should use “X product” in ALL your equipment, no matter where you are and no matter what the
flow is… run away from them VERY quickly. They have very little experience and exposure to real mining and have never
dealt with regional differences with both “dirt” and gold. These can vary dramatically.

So let’s go over each matting and some of their characteristics.

Note that all the mattings work / fit together so they can be alternated in any configuration.

UR Mat

The UR mat is mainly used in two ways. First, if you have a VERTICAL DROP ZONE, such as a under a header box, use the
UR mat. Most people will suspend ¼” perforated metal over it about ¾” high and it will create a quasi fluid bed. Where
water falls downward there is no cross flow or exchange. However the deep grooves really hold gold.
Next if you have a sluice with shallow water and very smooth flow it is a good finishing mat. However, it needs its own
flow rate which is slow and smooth. At shut down the mat should be about ¼ full of black sands.

Remember that the UR mat has NO flow interruption and we do NOT recommend it as a sole or primary mat in any
sluice. You need some flow interruption.
Scrubber Mat

The Scrubber mat is a gentle LIFT… FALL… and SCRUB… type matting. Larger rocks simply tumble down it and have little
to no effect on the capture zones. It likes fairly deep water, with water depth ranging roughly ¾” to 1.5”
The Scrubber mat has a fairly wide range of flows and velocities but most people find it works best in highbankers or
smaller dredges with a strong flow. Also we do have people that run stream sluices with a LOT of water flow. They have
had good results as well. The BED LOAD material is lifted gently and allowed to fall being scrubbed by capture zones.

RiverHog Mat

The RiverHog mat was designed for use in large dredges. However, due to the fact the tall riffle can be trimmed, it can
be used in just about every piece of equipment. We have run this mat in dredges 8” and larger, commercial ops, regular
highbankers and even stream sluices. You can see us cutting the riffle down in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kap1ajJjYWM It’s VERY versatile and a MUST for dredges. Most people run the
mat / cut the riffle so that it cuts through half the water flow in the sluice. (See image in the dredge section)

Razorback Mat

The Razorback mat is a medium velocity mat. It should be used in sluices that have a smooth water flow. It can be used
in stream sluices, highbankers, and even shallow running commercial ops. Just keep in mind it likes a lower velocity of
water flow. It’s great on fine gold as it creates very little turbulence and scrubs the BED LOAD.

Down Draft mat

New for 2014 the DownDraft mat is great on fine gold in medium velocity sluices. It has a FALLING or descending
pattern which in some way auto-tunes the mat for velocity. Each of the 3 sections runs at a different velocity. Again like
the Razorback mat, it can be used in stream sluices, highbankers, smooth commercial ops, and low water, smooth
flowing dredges.

Bedrock Mat

The updated Bedrock mat (2.0) is a great finishing mat and fine gold mat in smoother flowing sluices. It likes smooth fast
water and is great at the end of a sluice. It creates almost zero turbulence but has great exchange rates. It’s been tested
in everything from stream sluices to, highbankers, to commercial ops running smooth water. Like all our mats it must be
tuned with water flow and pitch.

Mixing up the mats… why do we recommend varying them?

Put gold under a microscope and you’ll quickly understand that gold pieces are just like snowflakes, but worse. Not only
is each one different but some are simply crazy shapes. We’ve found everything from hollow tubes, to feather shaped
gold to huge flakes longer than one inch.

Here’s just a sample…

Our point?

1- You just NEVER know what is going to be running down your sluice.

2- A capture zone / riffle / groove / slot / whatever… may do fine catching one size or shape of gold but not do well on
another.

3- Varying mattings offers varying velocities and low pressure zones. What catches one, may not hold the other.

Exposing you slurry (dirt and water mixed) to a variety of mattings offers a variety of capture zones, velocities, and
settling points. What’s good for one might not work for the others.

Go as smooth as you can…

Like we said, big gold is EASY to catch. Our mats just eat it up. So often the focus turns to super fine gold.
The best way to catch super fine gold is to SMOOTH out your slurry and reduce turbulence. A great example is our Viper
Pro Flare. It is a dual stage system. It starts out 12” wide with aggressive matting. (Scrubber and RiverHog) Then it
FLARES out to 18” wide. The water depth goes from roughly 1.5” deep to about ½”deep. All the turbulence is gone and
we change the matting surface. (DownDraft, RazorBack, and Bedrock) You can see the sluice running here:
http://youtu.be/9io_V7s9Npw?t=10m44s if you click that link the video will start at the right time.
More and more commercial ops are now going with a similar system that varies the velocities.

A BASIC guideline for most equipment…

If you have questions you may want to post them on our forum. On our forum you will find experienced miners that
have used our mats and equipment and they can answer any possible question you may have, often in great depth.
Many of them started out just like you, with a lot of questions. The forum is a great place to get them answered.

http://www.goldhog.com/gold_prospecting_forum/

WARNING: We recommend you use the TAPE ONLY method to test your system rather than gluing your mats at first.
This allows you to rearrange your mat configurations should you not like the layout you first chose.

Stream Sluices

Everyone runs their stream sluice differently. Therefore it’s not a ONE SIZE FITS ALL.
There are some GREAT videos on our forum of people running stream sluices catching SUPER fine gold using different
mat configurations. For most, they use a mixture of Razorback, DownDraft, Bedrock, and Scrubber. Again, it depends
on how you run your sluice and the type of gold you want to catch. If you run smooth water flow and have fine gold,
you may want to use Razorback and Bedrock. Run it kind of strong… Use Scrubber and DownDraft. Again, it will vary
based on the velocity.

Highbankers, Trommels, and Powered Equipment

This is a tough one. (It includes highbankers converted to dredges)

Each system has a different size sluice and runs on different GPH. So each piece of equipment can run totally different.
This is where it REALLY takes some VISUALIZATION on your behalf. First… I REALLY encourage you to watch the video on
our Viper Pro Flare. Why? Because this unit really runs as two systems. It shows you the WIDE spectrum of flow
velocities and allows you to see where your system falls.

Have deeper water that flows fast and aggressive?

Then run Scrubber and RiverHog with the riffle cut down.

Have a system that runs smooth and shallow?

Run Razorback and DownDraft.

Thinking of adding an extension on to your system?

Try flaring it out like ours and maybe run DownDraft and Bedrock.

Have an area under the header box where water drops straight down?
Put UR mat with ¼” punch plate (perforated metal) suspended over it.
So…
You get mats that come close to how your system runs.
Then you adjust the final velocity of the slurry through pitch and water flow.
Test and make sure your system is running at an acceptable capture / loss rate.
I encourage people to start their systems running REALLY fast. This means run your system with WAY too much pitch
and test for losses. Then reduce the pitch one degree at a time until you find little to no gold in your tailings. So, maybe
start at 9 degrees. (This will be ripping fast) Then tone it down little by little. Most people end up between 6-7 degrees,
but don’t skip that step.
Here is a great tool for figuring out pitch degrees vs. inch drop: http://www.blocklayer.com/pitchangle.aspx

Dredges… another tough one.

Why are dredges tough? Because most dredges are built differently than “normal sluices”. They are designed to have
HUGE rocks flow through them without classification. So, they use DEEP water that is flowing at a fairly good velocity. If
you’re happy with your dredge configuration, don’t change it. If you’re losing gold or having issues with rock pile ups in
the sluice, then we need to make some modifications, not just installing matting. To keep this kind of simple I will show
you how we run our larger dredges. Watch this video and you’ll quickly see that we add a LOT of pitch and reduce the
depth of our water. (Our sluices are often WIDER than most) In a way… we are turning our dredge into a highbanker
sluice as much as we can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kap1ajJjYWM About 12 minutes in you’ll see it running.
You’ll notice that for a 5” dredge the water is fairly shallow and fast.

As pictured below, we reduce the height of the riffles near the end of our box. This allows gold to settle more and big
rocks can lose energy here and hang up.

If you do install our matting in your dredge you need a mat that will CUT about 1/2 of the water depth. So, if your water
runs 3” deep don’t trim the RiverHog. Keep it full height but add pitch to your dredge. If you have punch plate or mesh
near the top entry flare (which usually has ribbed mat under it) put RiverHog there with the riffles cut all the way down.
There is little to no cross flow there for exchange. It really is just a drop zone.

Multi Stage / Level Sluice?

Same on the top, but underneath on the bottom sluice there is VERY little flow. Use alternating DownDraft and
RazorBack mats.

Again we have MANY people that have GREAT results using our mats in their dredges. Ours is tuned in and runs over
98% capture rate. You can see our testings on the videos where we capture 100% of the tailings. However, once in a
while we hear back from people that just can’t get it tuned in. This is mainly due to them not having the right matting or
failing to tune in the pitch right. We’ll say it again. Dredges are tough.

Commercial Ops
Commercial ops have great success with our matting……………………………. IF……………… they take the time to understand it
and use it properly. We can tell when they haven’t when they want to install our mats in a 36” wide sluice. They assume
since the sluice is 36” and the mats are 36” all is good. Click on this install video:
http://youtu.be/magTBc93MjY?t=43m28s it will start right at the point we talk about making BIG mats and why they
can only be so wide.
Commercial ops need to divide their sluices usually in half and install mats that are roughly 17 – 18” wide.
Again, the visualization of the water flow is essential. If you have video of your sluice running now, we always like to
review it.
Here is an example of a sluice in Africa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FakoVdPBp7E
Group of SMART U.S. gentlemen in a gold rich area.
Beautiful brand new trommel system with expanded metal and moss.
They spent over a year trying to figure out why they had 80%+ loss rates.
Even the manufacturer of the trommel threw their hands up.
They tried everything including various pitches, feed rates, adding riffles, you name it.
They came to us for a solution, luckily they were smart and had shot lots of video.
Doc studied the video as well as the ground / dirt they were running.
He came up with a solution he felt would work.
Doc’s conclusions and hypothesis….
The high viscosity of the slurry, as well as the high concentrations of sand and small particles, were essentially
creating two problems. ANY turbulence was causing gold to be scrubbed out of the capture zones and the BED LOAD
was being overloaded not allowing finer gold to work far enough down. So, any “energy” introduced was lifting the
falling gold back UP into the sediment load. We had them divide their sluices in half and run alternating matting with
low turbulence. RiverHog cut almost flat, Razorback, and Down Draft.
Well, in about 5 weeks they caught roughly 900 grams of gold.
More than they had caught in over a year of tuning. They also have one of our Vipers down there and were able to
achieve a 95% capture rate with it.

Our point again is simple…

Catching the BIG gold is easy. Catching the fine gold that most commercial ops lose is tough.
Doc REALLY likes to see commercial ops add sluice extensions. Leave your current set up, and then flare out the slurry
so it is shallow and smooth. Treat it with quiet matting and allow our mats to capture the gold you’re missing. Many ops
will pay off their investment in our matting within weeks and some within DAYS if this procedure is followed.
 Tuning Your Gold Sluice

The Fear Factor

By DOC , www.GoldHog.com

Whether you’re a commercial operation running 200 yards an hour or a new prospector running a stream sluice for the
very first time, I think you’ll learn something from this message. “The fear of losing gold… usually causes us to lose it.” I
think I repeat this one line more than any other when working with both commercial ops and prospectors. Learning
how to LOSE the FEAR… and gain control over your sluice will make you an expert very quickly.

While there are a huge amount of variables that go into catching gold in a sluice, I think tuning is the critical factor. I’ve
been heard jokingly saying many times, give me a few pieces of wood and some “dog poo”, I’ll make you something that
can catch gold. But… it’s the truth. As long as you understand some basic science and learn how to TUNE something… it
will probably work. However, precisely tuning for very fine gold can be tricky. Seeing that many of us chase this these
tiny specs it makes precise tuning even more important.

A key element that all miners should focus on is the proper “tuning exchange”. Meaning… let the JUNK flow out, or be
worked out by exchange zones, and hold the good stuff. (gold) Sounds simple enough until you add in about 15 various
factors that will impact your recovery, as well as interfere with your success. So let’s focus on just a few key factors.

Hydraulic Equivalence … (H.E. further on…)

Why do you often find gold in piles of cobbles or near larger round rocks? Let’s look at the definition of H.E. Particles of
varying size, shape, and density, that fall out of a water flow and deposit in the same area are said to be
“hydraulically equivalent”. So while quartz rocks and gold are GREATLY varying in specific density, you can make them
collect in the same place. Just
make the quartz rock bigger and
rounder. A 2” round quartz rock
and one mm sphere of gold will
fall through water and deposit in
about the same place. (They are
H.E.) In the opposite frame of
thought , take two that are the
same size, a ¼” round piece of
gold and a ¼” round piece of
quartz, and go to a fast moving
river or creek. Drop them both.
The gold will sink through the
water and be right near your
feet. The quartz rock will not fall
as fast and be pushed several
feet away before it settles. This
process / difference is also
referred to as settling velocity,
but these two are NOT H.E.
The SHAPE of gold has a BIG influence on its H.E. I like to use the term hydrodynamic profile. It really explains why
something like gold, which is VERY dense, can move more easily than say a piece of hematite which is almost 3 times less
dense. FLAT things move more easily than spheres when either moving water or air is introduced.

H.E. is a HUGE factor in gold mining and is often one influence for classifying of materials to certain sizes. The theory
being if everything is about the same size, the heaviest material will stay in our sluice. However, it also plays a role and
explains why we struggle with recovery rates on things such as black beach sands. That’s a full course on its own, but if
you run black beach sands… your primary loss factors will come from battling H.E. Even though the material is “naturally
screened” or classified for you, H.E. makes it VERY hard to have high capture rates. It’s also a leading cause of
impaction in commercial ops and why so many do things such as add hydraulic riffles. It’s one of the reasons why
dredges often struggle to catch VERY fine gold. (Larger boulders running down a sluice vs. fine gold ¼ smaller than
grains of salt.) It’s a battle that’s hard to win without really studying it.

So, when you SLOW DOWN a sluice you start to have a traffic jam / pile up. Things that are H.E. all want to battle for the
same deposit zone and you start to gather / open the window for more “non-gold” particles to pile up. Not good.

Incremental Processing -

Let’s build the picture in your mind. You have a city bus on a busy route. On this bus, all passengers must enter through
the front of the bus. When they exit, they must leave through the back of the bus. When they enter they must fill the
seats in the front of the bus first. So, every time the bus makes a stop, a shovel of dirt is put into the hopper, there is a
large influx of passengers. During these times of LOADING… the first few rows fill up quickly and remain full for a short
period of time. So this forces new passengers to move further down the bus. (sluice) It’s really not a question of
efficiency. There’s just a bunch of folks all competing for the same seats upfront. No seats up front, you take the next
available one. If all the seats get full, you never even get to sit down and exit the bus (sluice) without ever sitting. Have
some passengers that sit there all day and won’t move? You’ll have people walking through the bus and exiting never
sitting to take a ride. The bus is all full.

The BUS story should help you understand that during times of heavy loading, the first percentage of your sluice will
load up heavy and take some time to exchange out. Therefore gold will keep traveling until it finds an “empty seat”.
Load too heavy or have too short of a sluice and you’ll have gold ride over holding zones that are busy working and
exchanging. Remember, it may take an exchange center (vortex) 3-5 seconds to fully process down material and
exchange out non gold and heavies. That doesn’t seem like a long time until you actually time how long it takes for you
slurry to travel down your sluice. A LOT of material and gold can pass through your sluice in 3-5 seconds.

Where is the fear?

The mistake that most miners make is having the FEAR… of losing gold. So they start their sluice running at the “normal”
or widely accepted pitch of 1” per foot. They see gold in their tailings so their first thought is… I need to slow it down,
I’m blowing out gold, when in fact, the more likely scenario is that the gold doesn’t have a place to hide. “The bus is full”,
or all the seats are taken. We need to learn how to tune and the first step is to LOSE THE FEAR of fast water and high
velocity exchange.

Time to tune, the first step is to lose all your gold.

You heard me right … LOSE ALL YOUR GOLD… to tune your sluice. A well-tuned sluice will have heavy gold
concentrations up top, medium gold in the middle, and trace gold near the end. Yes, there will also be a small amount
of gold in your tailings. (See the tailings check further down)

Because of H.E., and the bus vision, we should now

understand that SLOWING DOWN our sluices can really cause
problems and large losses. But, how do we know we’re not
running it too fast? The answer is simple and there’s only
way to eliminate that fear. RUN IT TOO FAST. Step number
one in tuning a sluice is to lose all your gold because you are
running it SO HOT. Yes, try and lose ALL the gold. If you skip
this step, which most do, you’ll never really “get it”. What
you’ll often discover is that you CAN’T lose it all. You’ll see a
bare looking sluice except for a few pieces of gold.

Now, what you will find is fine gold in your tailings. So, if you
were running at a crazy 15 degree pitch, let’s tone it down
one or two clicks. Maybe 13 degrees and test again. Ah…
getting closer. Now it’s time to start half clicks. Let’s go to
12.5 degrees. Keep adjusting until you find an acceptable
capture rate for the size gold you want to hold. Slow it down
too much and you’ll start to see losses again.

Better HOTTER than slower.

Now we’re going to blend the LONG TERM impact of H.E. with the bus story and you’ll understand why I would rather
see a sluice run a bit too hot, than a bit too slow. At every stop the bus makes there are one or two passengers that
simply won’t exit. They want to ride the bus all day long. They never give up their seats and by the end of the day the
bus can be very full. This is why GOOD, efficient, professional commercial ops clean up every 12 – 24 hours. Yes, you’ll
hear stories of ops running for days and days on the same sluice. But again, I said good, efficient, professional ops. They
understand the above and understand that the laws of physics control their plant more so than a human time tables.

This is why pushing the HOT line can help on long term runs. Your sluice looks and operates quite different in the first 10
minutes from the last ten minutes. So we want to tune it with the knowledge that H.E. will cause some loading and
impaction. Keeping the sluice right on the borderline of being too hot will often help the more material you run.
Gold in my tailings… tuning and testing.

There’s a common myth out there that most commercial ops know that their sluices are tuned. I can tell you from
dealing with many all around the world this isn’t the case. I can also tell you that there are a handful that REALLY know
what they’re doing. I’m talking about an op like one I worked with two years ago. Three main plants, onsite full-time
geologist, daily testing, 12 hour rotating clean ups, etc. A fine-tuned, gold recovery machine.
But even this op understood that there is no “100%” when you start dealing with moving large amounts of material. I
was called to help cure one plant’s woes. It had fallen below the 80% threshold they use for sustainability. That’s where
I’m going to stop. Think about that for a moment. A LOT of prospectors and newer miners think their goal, or we would
like our goal, to be 100%. Trust me…. I get it. However there is no 100% especially when you start talking about long
term runs, moving large amounts of material. So if during a 12 hour shift they caught 30 ounces of gold, they lost
roughly three ounces running a GOOD recovery rate of 90%. There are a lot of people that won’t see 3 ounces in their
lifetime, and this “well-tuned machine” was losing it every shift. Now, that you’re wanting to know where you can work
their tailings…. let’s talk about the prospector.

Prospectors should be able to tune a highbanker to run in the

97 – 99% recovery rate range. Keep in mind however that
most are finding very fine gold. If you have 5000 tiny flakes in
your sluice during a testing run, a 2% loss (98% recovery rate)
is 100 pieces of gold in your tailings. Don’t think you have that
many pieces?

Here’s our testing data.

CAREFULLY counted sub 100 mesh gold in ½ GRAIN = 769
pieces, 769 x 2 = 1538 pieces in one full GRAIN , 1538 x 15.43
= 23,731 pieces in one gram. That’s a LOT of pieces to make
up a gram. Remember, if you’re going to test your sluice you
HAVE to know what you’re measuring. Don’t guess; know as
much as you can so the data is right.

By LOSING THE FEAR, through testing and experimenting,

prospectors and miners will not only tune in their sluice,
they’ll also get a great education.

© GoldHog.com
 Tuning Your Gold Sluice
Part Two – The River (Your Slurry) Runs Through It

By Doc – ©GoldHog.com

In this part of our “tuning your sluice” series, we’ll take a look at that wet stuff flowing through your sluice. I guess you
could call it water, most call it a slurry, but whatever you call it, it’s more complex than you think. Again, understanding
what it is, and what is happening, will help make you more of a gold recovery expert.

Now… stick with me on this one as all this “stuff” leads to something important.

Before we begin it’s important to understand one point. While GOLD… is GOLD…. (it’s an element) it does change
slightly in its size and shape based on geographical location. The same is true for the “dirt” which contains the gold. It’s
one of the reasons we now offer NINE different sluice mats in our lineup. We work with miners, commercial ops, and
prospectors in 35 countries and each area presents its unique make up and challenges. There is no “one shoe fits all”
when it comes to recovery in a sluice.

The Slurry…
As defined… a SLURRY is mixture of water and particles or other materials that create a thickened substance. We all use
water, but we all add different “materials or particles” based on our geographical location. I stress this point because it
GREATLY impacts what your slurry will look like and how it reacts and performs in your sluice. If you’re not careful, or
don’t understand it, it can be a gold robbing thief. We’ll break that down a bit later.

The Different Loads of a Sluice

While they’re referred to as LOADS… it probably makes more sense to many to call them layers or levels. Your sluice, like
any river or creek, has three basic loads. The DISSOLVED load , the SEDIMENT load, and the BED load.

For now we’re going to skip the “entry point” of your slurry. The feeder system, header box, etc, that creates the slurry
and drops it into the sluice. Instead we’ll be looking at the slurry as it travels down your sluice. As it travels down your
sluice you have 3 different loads and let’s focus on them. It’s “somewhat” similar to a stream’s loads.

Dissolved load
In a sluice, the dissolved load (the upper portion) really can be called the VERY FINE load, not just the dissolved load. The
term dissolved comes from streams and creeks where the water “appears” to be clear and most particles are invisible. In
our sluice, like a stream after a bad storm, the water is “murky” from top to bottom. So you’ll have VERY fine particles in
the dissolved load as well as “dissolved” material. Clays and silt will be present in all three loads.
Suspended load
The Suspended load contains fine sediment particles suspended and transported through the stream. (Sluice) These
materials are too large to be dissolved, but too small to lie (fall) on the bed of the stream. Stream flow keeps these
suspended materials from settling on the stream / sluice bed load. Given enough time and distance, without turbulence,
many of these particles will try and settle into the bed load.

Bed load
The bed load often travels slower than the upper two layers / loads. However, this variation really depends on the water
depth in your sluice. It includes the largest and heaviest materials in the stream / slurry, ranging from sands, to gravels,
to black sand, larger rocks, metals, and of course gold.

It’s important to understand that these loads DEVELOP in your sluice, as well as CHANGE during the run of your sluice.
Remember, you’re “creating the river” and its loads. Larger, heavier, denser “particles” will drop out of the slurry quickly
and enter the bed load. Large gold nuggets usually are found at the top for a reason. This goes back to our first article
dealing with hydraulic equivalence and settling velocity. They enter the bed load instantly. As the water travels things
such as hematite, pyrite, and other heavy metals or particles will also leave the sediment load and enter the bed load
quickly. However fine flat gold takes a longer time to settle into the bed load. That’s the problem WE have to deal
with.
Let’s look at the SHAPE of gold one more time to stress this point. A FLAT piece of gold reacts MUCH differently to
FORCE than a round nugget. I always go back to my “tin foil” example to clear this up in peoples’ minds.

Imagine dropping both of these into a fast moving river or creek. The SPHERE… ball of foil, would sink to the bottom
(bed load) quickly. The FLAT foil would travel a LONG way before finally settling. So by using this example we can see
that small FLAT gold might not “settle” for some time in our sluice. Or at least take longer than big round gold.
Now comes the problem…….. TURBULENCE

So we now know that heavy things are trying to settle into the bed load. The problem is that we need to create a way to
capture them. For the most part this comes from us creating TURBULENCE. Most sluices have some form of FLOW
INTERRUPTION, such as riffles, which force the settling bed load to be thrown back up into the sediment load.

You can clearly see how this can be counterproductive, especially with fine gold. You’ve worked so hard to get it to settle
and now you’re throwing it back up again into the wrong load. It’s kind of like trying to rake leaves on a windy day.

THIS… was one of the driving inspirations in the development of our matting systems.

A CRITICAL POINT FOR FINE GOLD RECOVERY…… If we only need to treat the BED LOAD… let’s do it with something that
will keep the fine gold settled, and NOT throw it back up into the sediment load. You can see from the design of our
Scrubber mat as an example. This mat gently LIFTS the bed load and allows it to fall. It does NOT create that “cutting
interruption” that throws bed loads back into the sediment load.

In the Talon mat below, you can see that we create an AGGRESSIVE exchange surface without using large tall riffles.
Again, the design is VERY active but the slurry in the sluice looks very calm.
What if we removed ALL the “BUMPS”?
So if throwing fine gold back into the upper layers is bad, why don’t we just remove ALL the turbulence? Don’t disturb it
at all and our recovery should skyrocket, right? Not really. What ends up happening when you remove ALL turbulence
is you end up with a PILE / LAYER of heavy junk riding along the bottom of your sluice. Everything rides along the bottom
creating a mess. It’s all competing for the BOTTOM…. Things don’t get separated based on factors we want to use to
separate them. (such as specific gravity ) It simply becomes a messy, unorganized, pile riding down the sluice.

So, the key is to have a SMOOTH slurry that still offers ways to work the bed load and keep it actively exchanging.

Slurry Density / Viscosity

A lot of us watch Gold Rush. Those that have remember the tragic season in the jungle. Todd and his crew’s efforts to
capture gold went horribly wrong. It wasn’t their fault; they simply didn’t have the time or expertize to figure out the
problem of huge losses. We don’t have that luxury. When a commercial op in Africa calls us and says they have the
same problem, we need to fix it and we have. They’re problem and most ops problem in that region is slurry viscosity.
The fine silt clay that turns the slurry a thick, crazy yellow orange and high sand content create a recovery nightmare.
Thick slurries have more scouring energy. It’s kind of like difference between running motor oil down your sluice vs.
water. When you create vortexes, they have more energy / power. Add a bunch of fine sands into the mix and now you
have a great power washer for cleaning your deck…. but not a good gold recovery system.
Thick slurries are often a problem in recirculation systems and in areas where there are high concentrations of powdery
silts or clays. Also, areas with very high concentrations of fine sands can also create the same issue. To help lower the
risk of losses try some of the following.
1- Reduce your feed rates / sediment percentage and make your slurry thinner. Use a lower ratio of pay to water.
If you want to keep your production up, try adding sluice width and length as well as GPH.
2- Eliminate as much large turbulence as possible while maintaining a good exchange. Use a smaller faced exchange
surface. Large riffles and large expanded metal just keep fine gold suspended. Let it settle.
3- Decrease water depth. We have found in larger ops this was a great help. Going from a 3” depth to a 1.5” depth
really helped reduce bed load pile ups.

Variety is the key to life…. and gold recovery.

When you go fishing in a lake are the fish spread out evenly throughout the lake? No, you’ll usually find “pockets” or
areas where fish LIKE to concentrate due to something being just right there. When you look at a river / creek, are the
rocks and cobbles spread out evenly? No, they’re usually concentrated or piled up in certain areas like inside bends and
varying size rocks deposit in varying areas. What about sand piles and piles of leaves. Starting to see a pattern?

Different things of different shapes, sizes, and density like to REST… in different areas. (Hydraulic Equivalence) What
works well for some pieces of gold might not work well for others.

One of the best things you can do to a sluice based system is to add varying capture zones, water depths, and exchange
energies. Very large, smart, commercial ops do this all the time. The slurry does not get treated in just one sluice with
the same “capture system” for the whole run. They’ll vary the width, flaring out, use different capture surfaces, and
even run totally different systems in stages such as jigs.

The same is true for the sluice of a prospector or small scale miner. Don’t just use one capture zone or type of riffles,
matting etc. Vary it. Vary the width of your sluice. If it starts off at 10” wide, try adding a flared end section that is
about 14 – 16” wide and change the matting / capture zones. See our Raptor highbanker below.
Again, some gold might like the top section, and some may like the bottom, and don’t think all the fine gold will be
found in the lower section. 100’s of controlled tests runs shows differently. Again… the fish (gold) will concentrate in
areas it likes.

Pay attention to your slurry, play, experiment and above all TEST.

©GoldHog.com