How do I use a sluice box?

A sluice box will dramatically increase the amount of ore you can process, with a small trade-off in lost gold. A proper set-up will keep loss to a minimum, and the increase in volume will more than make up for it.

You want to look for an area where the water is shallow, moving along at about 3-4 feet/second, and will flow straight into and through your sluice. Do not allow water to flow over the edges of the sluice. Also, look downstream of your intended set-up spot to see how easy it will be to clear the end of the sluice after you have run a few buckets of ore through it. This area can really pile up after a while.

When you have a good set-up, using small, flat rocks to position your sluice, put a large, flat rock over the top to hold it in place. Then start feeding the sluice a small shovelful at a time, let it clear fairly well before you feed it more, about 2/3 to 3/4 of the carpet should be visible before feeding. Here is where a classifier comes in handy, if you did not use one, you'll be constantly removing large rocks which can create eddies and wash your gold out of your sluice. Using your hands too much has the same effect, so try to avoid messing with it any more than necessary (not to mention, the water's COLD!!). After the first shovelful, look at the pattern behind the riffles, if there is more material on one side or the other, your flow is not straight, and you need to adjust.

Larger sluices can run all day with one clean up. Smaller ones, about three or more times a day depending on how fast you've fed it. Another factor is patience, but remember that if you are cleaning out your sluice, you are not getting any fresh material. I still have trouble walking away to get more ore without cleaning up, call it gold fever, I guess.

To clean your sluice, remove the rock from the top, and place your bucket horizontally on the downstream end of your sluice so that nothing can fall out when you tip it up. Lift the two at the same time being careful not to dump out all the material you just worked so hard for. Remove the riffles and carpet being very careful not to allow anything to fall outside the bucket. Rinse your carpet as best you can, and either roll it up and put it in your cup, or re-assemble your sluice. Then carefully dump your concentrates into your pan for stage two. Pan it just as you normally would, maybe being a little more cautious not to lose anything.

Some people like to burn their carpet at the end of the season, catching the ashes in a metal pan and then panning them as they would anything else. I've never done this, I don't know how much gold to reasonably expect from this process. This is the only use I would ever have for a metal gold pan.