Greetings Gold Dredgers,
Well, if there's a will there's a way.......
I had a bucket of cons in my garage I wanted to play with, but the loads of black sand, although fun to play with for a while.....sure challenged me to exhibit perfect panning technique, and after several hours got a bit old.
I looked around locally for a small stream flowing enough water to sluice, but nothing close to the house. So, I had my teenage daughter help me set up my Le Trap sluice on blocks, and ran 2 garden hoses for water flow in the front, and sluiced my cons into a tub in my back yard.
Took a little playing with the water speed and feed, but in the end I was very happy. After a while I could see fine gold trapped in the first 3 riffles of my Le Trap. When all done, we did one clean up and I panned out the gold. WAY faster than hand panning it all!
One thing the Le Trap does VERY well, as it's so wide, is it spreads the black sand out very thin, allowing even micro gold to fall out and get trapped in the riffles quickly. Same theory for large gold pans with wide, flat bottoms. Gotta let that gold get to the bottom fast, and the thinner the material is spread, the faster it will settle, & less chance of losing gold panning, or out the back of your sluice.
Pic attached. Notice a little mercury on several pieces.
Happy sluicing!!
Randy "C-17A" www.goldadventures.biz