Building Your Own Gold Prospecting Equipment



Posted: Sunday, October 18, 2009

by
Plan B Publishing

A friend and I have recently developed a passion for gold prospecting -- not simply the act of finding gold, but also the engineering behind gold finding methods, building custom equipment that's lighter and more efficient than the expensive specialty gold prospecting equipment found online. Though it's definitely an odd hobby :) there's nothing like hiking down to a river with a pick-axe, shovel, and random lightweight plastic home-assembled gold prospecting tools, and spending the day in the beauty of nature to see what treasures wait to be found. But more on that later. For now, lets get down to the basics of gold prospecting equipment.

The most common types of gold prospecting equipment pieces are the sluice box and the gold pan. Your average gold pan is very cheap, usually about $10. Black plastic is what I prefer. The gold shows up perfectly against the black. Sluice boxes, on the other hand, can get a bit pricey. Building a sluice is actually a lot simpler than it sounds. Using pieces of plastic cut into simple geometric shapes (squares and rectangles) we build a very lightweight sluice box from plastic simply by gluing the pieces together with plastic cement and waiting 24 hours. For plans on building your own sluice box, one simply has to type in "sluice box plans" into google and they'll find dozens of step by step instructions on how to build their very own gold catching contraption. A sluice box has a very simple design. It's just a box, after all. Who can't build a box? A lot of outfitters will try and sell you on lightweight, expensive aluminum, wanting top dollar for a simple sluice box. I say why pay the money when you can easily build a sluice with common materials.

But back to the sluice box for a moment. Plastic is generally very easy to use. As long as one doesn't buy sheets more than a quarter inch thick, it can be reasonably cut with an exacto blade. Add to that the cost of a bottle of plastic cement and you'll have your very own sluice box in a matter of a few hours and whatever other pieces of gold prospecting equipment you'll need.

The only thing left to do is find a river that has a reasonable amount of gold still hiding away. In California, that's pretty easy to do. Gold infested rivers are scattered all throughout southern and northern California. Different places have different levels of gold, but I'm assuming that those reading this already have a spot picked out.

--------

Thanks for reading this article about building your own gold prospecting equipment. If you want to check out some more writing, visit me on Hubpages.
This Article has been viewed 1,954 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.