How Do You Use A Gold Mining Sluice?
If you bring your sluice box along on your next river trip, you may be able to get Mother Nature to pay for the trip. Prospecting for gold didn’t die out after the 1849 gold rush. People are still pulling gold out of riverbed gravel. You probably won’t get rich, but it would be difficult to find a more profitable way of getting out and communing with nature. Select a spot on the river that has a gravel deposit under or near a swift current. Place the sluice in the water with the mouth pointing upstream. The bottom of the sluice should be submerged with only the top inch or two of the sides exposed above the water. The downstream end of the sluice needs to be slightly lower than the mouth of the box. Slowly shovel gravel onto the mouth of the sluice. Remove any rocks that are too large for the current to push through the sluice by hand. Allow the current to push the gravel through the box and then add another shovel full. Continue feeding gravel into the sluice until the backsides of th
