The Zeus Box

Last year, a friend of mine gave me a stainless steel box and tray. He got if from someone who was attempting to create a clone of Alan Tree's Gold Grabber.
After much thought, I came up with this design. My main concern was to have the gold bearing material spend as much time as possible traveling over the capture media.

The box measures 14"x14"x32". The sluice tray is 14"x28". The plumbing is 1" supply to a ¾" distributor then to ½" spray bars. A 2000 GPM bilge pump works just fine.

The vertical processor sits atop the sluice tray with no attachments (nuts & bolts) necessary. The sluice tray has a few inches of deep ribbed rubber at the head, followed by Shaw Veranda carpet under 1" raised expanded metal.

The first stage of the processor is a hinged ¼" classifier tray. I only run classified material through this unit as I've never found gold larger than ¼" so far.

Attached to the underside of the classifier tray is another tray that diverts the material toward the upper portion of the next capture tray.

Here's a view looking down into the box. What you see here is the first stage capture media. A strip of entry mat receives the material from the classifier. The material then travels down across the expanded and one riffle. At the end of this first stage is a gap to allow the material to fall down to the next stage.

With the first stage capture media swung up and out of the way, the second stage capture media is visible and available for clean up. The flat expanded is there to stiffen up the first stage sheet metal only.
After the material has passed over the second stage media, it hits the head of the sluice tray.

Prior to proceeding down the sluice tray, the material is restricted from moving by an adjustable flow control gate. At the bottom of the flow control gate is a rubber flap to flatten out the flow over the rest of the sluice tray. I currently run the gate about 3/8" above the raised expanded metal.
Within a 14"x28" footprint I have just over 55 linear inches of recovery media.(770 square inches) The advantage this design offers is what I call a time delay. If I was to run material through a conventional sluice box, the material would spend very little time over the capture media before exiting the sluice box.
I have built in a time delay with my 'Z' configuration and the adjustable flow control gate. When I first showed someone how it worked he thought that I was filling the box with water...then he saw the material starting to show in the sluice tray. There is that much of a delay. The many times that I've run this, I rarely recover gold from the sluice tray as most of the gold is recovered in the first two stages of the processor. It's kind of nice to swing the classifier tray out of the way and see the gold laying all over that first stage capture media.

Well, it's winter time...can't mine so the only thing left to do is create things. I'm working on a bilge pump powered crevice sucker as we speak. Stay tuned and click each pic for a larger view.