Mining Matting, Carpet, or Miners Moss. There is no single right answer just like there is no single right answer for which brand or size of sluice to use— the one you take to a beach for fine gold recovery is probably not the same sluice you should use in a river when shoveling in unclassified material.
Every prospector has his or her own opinion as to the best material to have under the riffles of your sluice box—
- Carpet holds onto the finer gold particles when wet, making cleanup harder. To get every bit of gold, dry the carpet in the sun, then later shake it over a gold pan or tub to ensure you collect every grain of gold.
- Miners Moss is a good choice for stream sluices. It will help catch the gold and let the larger waster material run over the top and out of the box. It’s also great for collecting super fine gold. Miners Moss has two weaves— use the larger side when bigger gold is present, and use the tighter weave on the back side at the beach or anywhere you tend to find multiple sizes of gold.
What’s so good about Miners Moss?
Miners moss is your “active layer” underneath your riffles which create a slow slurry area for mineral transfer. The use of miners moss is widely accepted as the best material to trap gold when using riffles or expanded mesh. In order for effective mineral separation to occur we need to create the right environment for heavies to settle and the lighter materials to move through our capture system or sluice box. By using riffles to create eddies or vortexes we create an environment that pushes new material into the miners moss whilst also removing light sediments.
Miners moss will not work perfectly by itself without being dialed in with the correct angle of your sluice box and the correct water flow to back it up. Too slow water flow means you will have build up of light material which will compact and all your gold will flow straight out too much and your gold will likely bound right out as well. Running your sluice box too level will also cause buildup, the trick it to try to measure your results by varying feed rates, angles and pitch.
Miners moss backing
Because miners moss is designed to allow light material to move through and out of our sluice box or highbanker we need to create an additional removable capture layer to hold the very tiny light gold that will settle on the bottom.
We do this by adding a layer of V ribbed matting or using backed moss which is our preferred product for more on this follow the link.
No matter if you favor miners moss, matting, carpet, or a combination, using expanded metal over these materials can help create even more small pockets to help the fine gold drop out.
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