WA Sluicing

[libertydave]

If you prospect for gold in WA State you likely know we can no longer [legally] use motorized equipment for gold mining. I'm back to using a simple sluice box on local rivers and streams. Here's my lightweight setup I use on small gold bearing creeks in the state's Cascade Mountains. My easy to pack gear includes an old and well-modified A-52 sluice, a shovel and a bucket...and this eighty year old miner can still enjoy his favorite outdoor adventure.

My old sluice box has been modified by adding a set of adjustable legs and replacing the original carpet and riffles with something called "Dream Mat". You can look up Dream Mat on YouTube if you want more info. Amazing technology here as this one-piece recovery matting processes stream material without requiring prior classification. Checking for recovered gold is easy...just look for it bouncing around in the "DM's cells".

Buckets of stream material are dumped directly into the upper end of the box and the sluice, water and matting do all my classifying and recovery work for me. At the end of the day final clean up only takes a couple of minutes...loosen the retaining clamp, remove the mat and dump the remaining material into the bucket. Then I take it home.

I found a good spot on a famous gold bearing creek. This is a place where I prospected over forty years ago. Once again it is producing color, mostly fines and flakes. Best of all I can still get the same old thrill from seeing color at the end of the day.

Liberty Dave

[libertydave]

Hey All,
Last day for our summer 2023 mining adventures was on Sept 30. I cleaned the cons and Jimmy the Mule and I had our gold split yesterday over lunch and a beer. All told we made five trips up to the creek. The amount of gold in our sluice was not that great but we did find gold on every trip. Lots of fun recalling memories from many years back including the Dredge Earth First events 20 years ago when there was a lot less prohibitive regulations.
LD

[Matt Mattson]

Good report, Dave. I looked up that mat - and that is very interesting indeed. Even more so to know it works from someone we know! Interesting you did this right about the time I put up a movie on gravel bar gold. Good on the trip - hope you make many more. Matt

[libertydave]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the info and I hope you and Connie are doing well.

FYI, I have two sluices and we used both this summer, a new Gold Hog Stream Sluice and and well 'modified' Keene A-52 that had the Dream Mat replacing the conventional expanded metal, miners moss and riffles. Our test runs showed both sluices worked equally well and we even ran a couple of buckets salted with 5 grams of fines, flakes and some small pickers. Both recovered all of the salted gold so I'd have to say that it is the "operators choice" on which to use. Clean up was also equally easy...remove mat, dump is bucket, take home and pan later. I found it fun to watch the gold spinning in the Dream Mat cells.

From there we worked a gravel bar on five trips which produced mostly flakes, pickers and a couple of small (0.28 and 0.16 Grams) nuggets. Bedrock was down about two feet and overburden had lots of black sand. I also used my Gold Monster 1000 which signaled a few flakes and a picker.

Compared to when I was dredging decades ago you could not call these trips especially "productive" but the fun factor and gold fever was there as always for this 80 year old gold miner. I worked until my tired back said it was time to have a beer. All the best to you...and to everyone.

Regards, Liberty Dave