Please read on to find out more about this awesome piece of gold kit which is fantastic for catching gold in riverbeds / streams etc.

The Gold Sluice is a great and very handy piece of gold kit, small enough to transport virtually anywhere.  A gold sluice looks similar to an elongated metal tray, with a wider opening at the top to funnel the water through the gold sluice.  You basicly hand trowel or shovel material from the streambed into the top of the funnel, then the action of the water flowing downstream carries this material through the sluice.  Usually you’ll use a gold sluice in a few inches deep of flowing water.

Along the bottom of the gold sluice is a gold catchment mat, on top of this gold mat there are riffles all the way down the sluice, the idea being that as the material is placed at the top of the gold sluice, the water action will carry these gravels etc through the sluice towards the bottom edge.  Any gold, naturally being heavier than the other material going through the gold sluice, this will become trapped by the riffles and the mat below them.

You can quite easily make your own gold sluice or they can be bought online, indeed, if you look in our gold store on this site, you will find many for sale at very good prices.

Short Gold Sluice Video demonstrating a mini gold sluice:

The gold sluice is very effective in collecting gold for use in streambeds and rivers where water flow is not a problem. There are many makes and models of the gold sluice available online, with some interesting innovations on the market all basically using the same principle for collecting gold.

If water is a problem, for example out in the middle of the desert, a similar piece of gold equipment comes into play, in a nutshell it’s very similar to the gold sluice working on the same principle, only this time a very fast strewam of air is blowing the material through the channel rather than water and this is called, the gold drywasher.

A gold drywasher doesn’t cost very much, the only downside to many of these gold drywashers is a/ the noise they make and b/ the dust that they can create, having said that depending on which model you buy, the gold drywasher is also very effective in the collection of gold, with of could some machines being better than others, so research and due diligence you must carry out first to find out which gold drywasher is particularly suited to your on the ground conditions. You can also buy a dustless gold drywasher, the two can be seen side by side in the gold drywasher video below.

A video demonstrating the Gold Drywasher.

One of your main considerations to keep in mind anytime you are gold prospecting is to keep the weight down to a manageable size.  There is nothing worse than carrying too much gold equipment out in the field, getting tired from walking long distances, carrying everything but the kitchen sink.  You’ll only carry more than you need once to never do it again.  Of course if your gold panning, gold prospecting location is close to your vehicle, then this advice does not matter quite so much, however, you will be surprised just how much everything weighs when you add it all together and by their very nature, many gold tools, gold equipment that are a prerequisite for finding gold out there are fairly burdensome to carry alone over any distance on rough terrain.

Before moving onto further pieces of possible gold equipment, gold tools, here are some basic tools which can be easily overlooked but when out in the field, you think to yourself, darn, I wish I had that with me now, for that half wouldn’t make my job so much easier!

What’ll you’ll need then regarding gold prospecting equipment / essentials, obviously this will depend greatly on the terrain that you are gold prospecting within, so just use your commonsense.

A small sharp axe is always a good idea for cutting away tree roots etc or dead timber in a river bed, to get to your ideal gold prospecting location.  A sharp knife too can help and is small enough to be considered indispensable out in the wild.  A long shovel is a good idea, more lightweight the better, this will save you bending over all the time and possibly hurting your back.  A long handled shovel is also handy for digging out holes to get to your gold bearing gravel. A shorter spade is an option.  A couple of trowels are always extremely handy, a short one for putting spoil into your gold pan or spiral gold wheel, an extending longer trowel for digging deeper or accessing harder to reach areas.  A long metal pick is excellent for prying open crevices where gold may be hiding or to simply loosen material prior to digging.  A GPS so you can make a note of any locations where gold has been found may also help you as well as of course a mobile phone or ‘GPS Spot’ device in case of emergencies.  Also carry a small compass with you if trekking out into the middle of nowhere.

A plastic or metal gold pump is also excellent for drawing up material from deeper down or for use underwater.  This works by suction and simply sucks up the dirt which is then contained in the tube for easy placement into your plastic bucket.  These are especially useful to use within crevices where gold may be trapped.  Rubber gloves will of course keep your hands dry, warm and somewhat protected, it goes without saying that warm clothes are a necessity as is enough food and water for your trip.  A pair of gardening gloves are also a good idea when digging out banks etc where there may be sharp rocks etc.  Some sort of insect repellant can be very useful in keeping midges off your skin, driving you to sheer exasperation and takes up an extraordinarily small amount of space as does a tube of antiseptic cream if you do cut yourself somehow.

A hooked painters scraper can also be used for crevicing very small cracks where gold may reside within.  A strong screwdriver or two can also be used for prying open cracks in rocks.  Two pairs of tweezers, one short the other long.  A rock hounding rock hammer will be great for hitting open any bedrock etc, indispensable in my opinion.  A gold sucker, small enough to fit in a backpack side pocket.  For locating tiny flakes of gold, within gold bearing quartz for example a small magnifying glass, eyepiece can help you immensely.  And then a gold classifier, to sort through your rubble which will fit inside your gold pan to save room.

Of course, every gold prospector will have his or her favorite tools and this is by no means an exhaustive list, read online and you’ll soon be able to pick up some useful tips and pieces of advice from other gold prospectors.  Especially out in the wild, always use good commonsense, sensible strong boots with ankle protection, a headtorch, spare batteries, matches or a lighter, extra clothing and let someone know where you are approximately and what time you expect to be back again so if the worst does happen, someone, somewhere can raise the alarm.

Gold equipment essentials include the following tools to get started on this very rewarding activity.

One of the most basic pieces of gold equipment that you will need on your gold finding expeditions is the gold pan.

Panning for gold has been around for a very long time. Gold panning consists of a circular bowl, called a gold pan. Gold panning as most people understand it is a labour intensive, time consuming, manual activity. You hold the gold pan in your hands and rock or swirl the contents within the gold pan to get rid of unwanted material. Typically, wide, shallow gold pans are filled with gravels and sand that may contain the material that you are after, namely gold. Water is added to the material inside the gold pan. As gold is much heavier than and denser than other material within the gold pan, it will settle to the bottom whilst the other non gold material is sloshed out over the side of the gold pan. Eventually, after some minutes of work, you will be left with silt in the bottom of the gold pan which might just include hopefully, flakes or tiny nuggets of gold, these can then be extracted from the gold pan and placed into a gold vial, or small plastic bottle with a screw top for safe keeping.

Quite literally, rinse and repeat this process of often as is required to determine the prospects of finding gold in any particular gold area where you are looking for this most precious metal.

Depending on the area where you are gold mining, the gold pan is perhaps one of the most basic pieces of gold equipment that you will need. The gold pan can have either smooth sides or riffled sides on the inside of the gold pan to catch the gold. Other gold tools similar to the gold pan, which can help to speed up the process is the gold wheel, or gold spiral wheel as it is sometimes called. This is a step up from the basic gold pan and will be discussed next.

Incidentally, gold pans are made from wood or plastic, the latter gold pan material being the material of choice by many, simply because it is so durable out in the field. Typically, you would of course choose a dark colour gold pan which will highlight the gold specks to the naked eye much more easily. Gold pans can be bought on this site for just a few dollars, very cheaply.

Here is an image of a gold pan:

The spiral gold wheel works similarly to the gold pan, without you doing most of the hard work yourself, it is far less tiring and tedious than using a gold pan alone, the other advantage of course is that the gold spiral wheel picks up much more gold than a gold pan alone can, in a much faster time too.. Standing at an angle, gravel and sand material is added with a trowel to the gold spiral wheel.

The gold spiral wheel is exceptionally easy to use too, even for a beginner to gold prospecting.

You simply fill the tank with a few gallons of water, three to four gallons is ideal in most cases. Then you simply hook the clips to your 12V battery , flick a switcth and you are ready to go! The gold wheel will start to rotate and the water will spray from the spray bar onto the actual gold wheel itself. Then all you have to do is to add a trowelful of sand or material approximately every 20 seconds. You’ll soon start to see the gold settles to the bottom as the spiral turns and the stepped riffles will pick the gold up, conveying it higher towards the center of the gold spiral wheel. When the flakes of gold or small gold nuggets reach the center of the gold wheel they will pass through the hollow shaft in the center into your gold catch cup. You can quite easily get fully familiar with the gold wheel in as little as ten minutes it is that user friendly and will yield you much more catchment of gold than a gold pan alone and of course is much faster too.

You can buy a gold spiral wheel on this site, they don’t cost much and will almost certainly pay for themselves very quickly by the amount of gold found, so make an exceptionally good gold tools investment. The gold spiral wheel can also be easily carried in any car and conveyed to your chosen gold prospecting location very easily.

The gold spiral wheel:

In the next article we’ll be looking at gold equipment basics for gold field trips, please read on to find out more.