The sluice itself is just a simple three-sided box. I'd designed a recirculating sluice or highbanker. This would be great! I'd be able to use it in the field where there was limited water available. Water and debris would fall back into the bin at the bottom of the sluice. Water would be pumped out of the bin to the top of the sluice. The cradle would hold the sluice and allow me to adjust the angle of tilt. I drew up a simple plan for a cradle that would sit on top of a plastic storage bin full of water. A sluice box can process much more material, much more quickly than a person, or even a team of people can pan material with gold pans. Over time, as more and more material is fed through the sluice, more and more gold builds up in it. If the sluice is placed in a running stream of water, and gold-bearing gravel and dirt is fed into the upstream side, the heavy minerals, including gold, get caught in the eddies created by the riffles, and the bulk of the lighter material gets washed through the box and out the end. So what is a sluice box and how does it work? Basically, a sluice box is a long, narrow box with a series of obstructions called riffles in it. You can see the entire evolution of this project on my web site. This sluice went through several revisions and lots of tweaking before getting to this finished product. Here is a video of the finished sluice in operation in its final configuration.

So I decided to build a recirculating sluice that would recycle a little water over and over again. A lot of my favorite gold panning streams dry up almost completely during the summer months.

Sometimes there isn't any running water available to power a sluice. I decided that it was time to step up the amount of gold I recovered on my prospecting outings. It will process large amounts of material far more quickly and with less effort than is possible by panning alone. A sluice is a device that separates gold from dirt and gravel using the power of running water. There are other methods besides panning to separate gold from dirt though. It takes too long and is far too much work. Panning is not a good method for separating the gold from a lot of dirt. To find a lot of gold, you have to pan a lot of dirt. However, you aren't likely to find a whole lot of gold by panning alone. I get to do it in really scenic locations. I've been gold panning on my vacations for many years. One of my many hobbies is recreational gold prospecting.

Sluice vs hand dredge