Matty84 said:
pjg, I too had my doubts about the effectiveness of the matted section after 3 runs when I first built my sluice when after cleans I found the results were 1 spec in the mat then nothing then 2 specs, the rest was caught in the expanded section with nothing beneath. Then you take it to a place which has a lot of really fine gold like eldorado and you get a shock at just how effective it is in catching the really fine stuff! Still the best part by volume is caught in the expanded section but from the 1 or 2 to hundreds of tiny specs caught by the matted section speaks for itself. Now I'm at the thought of I don't care if there's nothing in the mat but confident that safety net is there if I hit a patch of flour gold that it'll still get trapped.
Hey Matt84 and GT,
Just come home from Tuena.
Over the two days I ran the RS with the mat, cleaned out on the hour every hour, without cleaning out the mat until the end of the day.
The RS was doing fine catching the flood gold that was in the worked area. The iron stone was filling up the top section of the mesh as expected, with the majority of the blondes accumulating on the mat with the mesh. All of any fine gold was caught in the top section.
I will be making adjustments being, a flair, add some V mat, drop the mesh down to the end of the RS and put some handles on the sides.
In the creek with water flow.
Now, when I say that I cleaned out every hour, I mean that I would have placed two half buckets during the hour do to shovelling, classifying and collecting. This being the blue flexy bucket and when I finish the bucket to the RS I always leave enough to pan out to check if there is colour.
Now day 1, I did not finish until 4pm. This also included the mat clean up. Getting back to camp, both myself and banksy tested a sample of the mat, with zero results. But, here is day 1 results.
Day 2, produced a smaller amount from the same site, but this was from a shorter time frame as we left at 2pm to go home.
The total for the trip looks good but when I get this dried I should be able to weigh it.
All in all, another fantastic trip out. This time both Banksy and myself had our boys with us. It does not matter to me how much colour I get, it is about getting out.
Unfortunately, I won't be heading out for a month for both work and family commitments 8.( , so I hope to have the mods in my head transferred to the current RS and Tuena here I come.
Peter.