Forum Home > Mining equipment and products > Keene A52 remodel | ||
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Administrator Posts: 386 |
I just finished up an overhaul of my Keene A52 sluice. For too long I trusted that it was a great design and working as it should. Yet I always wondered why the miner’s moss would quickly load up? Seeing all the different sluices now available, many with no moss at all, made me take a closer look at the A52. I built a custom sluice for higher flow rates using the Gold Hog mats and no miner’s moss. It seems to work great so I decided to take a closer look at the A52’s miner’s moss zone. Son-of-a-biscuit, the moss was puffed up higher than the riffles. Instead of working riffles, mine were filled up by the moss. No wonder the moss never cleaned itself out. I replaced the moss with the stiffer GoldHog moss, put V-groove mat below and slid the A52’s small expanded metal to the front over the moss. Now the riffles are absolutely clear and can start working! The heavies that get caught behind the first riffles can drop into the moss and find their way down to the V-groove mat. The new design theory being the gold likes to hide as deep as it can go and give it different surfaces to travel over. Makes sense as we work different streams, the water flow and materials dumped in the sluice will vary. I started with Plan A in my mind and ended up about Plan C or D. The front end of the sluice went from squishy miner’s moss thickness to V-groove mat under thicker moss under small expanded metal. So now the stream flow meets at least a ¼” high dam where the riffle assembly plugs into the sluice. Since we would want a nice laminar (smooth) flow of stream water entering the sluice, this was looking problematic. I took some quick height measurements and headed over to Gold Pan CA. I talked to Mike Dunn and his helper. They dug around the shop a few seconds and out comes a 10” sluice riffle. I hold it in place upside-down, measure it, looks good! They weld it on the spot and painted it. Now, when I put all the layers in place and lock down the riffle assembly, the new upside-down riffle ramp lands perfectly on the inspection mat. Very sweet (and lucky). I now have three sections of moss covered with the small expanded metal. This will prevent moss in general from blocking the riffle action and add some action of its own to keep the moss cleaned out. At least that is my hope.
This should help the nomad prospector that can’t fine tune his sluice by working the same spot all the time. If something ain’t working, try something else, even if it’s wrong.
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-- Dale "Bear" Myer
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Member Posts: 221 |
Dale, That looks fantastic!! I think your going to need a bigger snuffer bottle to handle the extra gold you'll capture!!!! | |
-- I'm happiest when I hit rock bottom!!
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Administrator Posts: 386 |
Gonna need tweezers for all the pickers! | |
-- Dale "Bear" Myer
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Member Posts: 221 |
Tongs!! | |
-- I'm happiest when I hit rock bottom!!
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Member Posts: 307 |
I'm taking an example from you Dale and remodeling my A52 too. I just received Razor Back and Scrubber mats from Doc and I'm spending some time today to install them. I'll test the new sluice at the July outing. | |
-- " :)"
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Administrator Posts: 386 |
Hi Robyn,
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-- Dale "Bear" Myer
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Administrator Posts: 386 |
Back to the A52! I don't think I posted the results so here are 2 pictures, one in the water and one after it was pulled for the clean up. The results were as hoped. The riffles remained active and did not simply load up the moss as before. Now I just need to get to some better gold bearing areas!
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-- Dale "Bear" Myer
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Member Posts: 221 |
But the point is it was there, not headed down stream with the rest of the light stuff!!! | |
-- I'm happiest when I hit rock bottom!!
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Member Posts: 307 |
Really nice guys! I did use Gorilla Tape to fit the mats and they're tight, maybe too tight. I hope the river is still flowing well enough to run the A52. | |
-- " :)"
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