A52f sluice pros and cons?

Hi guys I have just bought a keene A52f sluice and was wondering if anyone has experience with them?
I plan to use in public fossicking areas and am curious to know pros and cons with classifying and how it goes with fine gold etc

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I’ve had the mini max highbanker with Keene miracle mat before and I didn’t like it at all, after 3rd time out I got rid of it I found even the smallest stone would dislodge And unsettle everything behind the riffles, if it would of been miners moss then the gold would of embedded itself deeper down, where as I found small gold throughout the miracle mat right down to the bottom which isn’t good! Looking back it might of just needed punch plate on top or classify everything down to 10mm,Truth is I hate classifying it’s a slow process not good for your back.

Oh OK that makes sense bugger!
Well I do have the ability to to return it and maby swap it for an a52 with traditional style rifles and moss. Do ya think I should while I can?

I like the fact the one you have folds up, I’d be half tempted to just modify the front to carpet, riffles and moss and leave the back as is to see if any losses occur (if it was me) but it’s all down to personal taste.
Even if you get the a52 you ideally need to change the shit green carpet that Keene seem to put in every sluice for a good moss system.
I just run the a51 and modified it to suit NZ

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What have you used. I have an a52s which i want to modify asap

I ended up taking it back and I’ve ordered 10 inch dream mat and have a sheet metal guy cutting and folding me up an exact copy of the A52f body and il just do the bolts etc. It works out cheaper than buying a keene 1 by about 100$ and il have the ability to fold it in half so I should be right now. Cheers for advice tho.

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How’d you go about getting the A51 modded like that? Looks very good. I have a stock a51, so I’d need some different matting and then that mesh mod you’ve done somehow? Does it allow you to use it without classifying? I hate classifying.

Sorry this is an a51a bloody Keene and their silly codes, I changed the carpet first to miners moss, laid a 6mm punch plate on top of the riffles for the first section then welded spacers on top of that to suit the material coming through from the 10mm punch plate, the top screen I welded location tags on the front to clip to flare to hold it all in place.
It works a treat, no classification needed, large stones can’t disrupt and move gold out of the sluice anymore so my yield has increased and also retain more fly shit gold

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What is so wrong with the green carpet?

It’s just a plain terrible medium, unless your planing on burning it every year to get the fine gold out and replace it. Just look at miners moss and the traps it has compared to the Keene carpet, if it was any good we would all be using it.
Run a side by side comparison with any other mat and you’ll see the loss rate

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Gavzilla-i spent 7 months on the arrow,only returning to jafaland in may this year.

I use a caledonian-no matting-good
Homemade sluice from wood with ripples and astro turf-not so good ,and ripples and vynyl loop matting-to dam good.

Homemade stainless sluice-ripples and vynyl loop matting,too dam good

Another homemade sluice with ripples and STD FLOOR CARPET FROM THE OLD ASSAY OFFICE,almost perfect,and tgen some ripple carpet from mitre 10(dam near the same as keene green)-perfect.
I eventually added a plastic soil classifier from mitre10-i posted a picture on a thread here,diy sluice i think it was called.

No losses,no huge amounts of black sand-in fact it was 1/4 the volume of vynyl loop matting.

I also saw 6 a52’s in action-all of them had keene green in and they were outperforming everything else-especially your dream mat.

One guy was a local at Q/T and i personally saw him get 1 ounce iver a few months of 1 day a week with that keene greene.

Miners moss is great as Gav pointed out it has a large surface area. Its great as acting as a fluid bed. Its disadvantage is it can pack up with heavies especially in high iron sand areas if you have interruption to your flow. This is probably more relevant in a dredge or HB situation where you might turn your dredge off or on multiple times. In a stream sluice it’s obviously different.

Tbe Keene Green carpet is pretty good on fine gold under raised expanded however as Dave Mccrakens says the best medium for fine gold is raised expanded over deep V matting. He also reakons ribbed or Keene green carpet is excellent as well.
The disadvantage with carpet is that it tends to hold oily products ie fat and oil from your hands and the environment alot more effectively than miners moss. This can result if the carpet is not washed in fine gold loss.
That’s why you should be clean your whole sluice every month or so with warm soapy water.

There’s many schools of thought with many opinions on tbe miners moss vs carpet debate. .

The miners moss sold in Proline dredges which has a weave thats thinner than most of tbe miners moss I’ve seen. I think its 3M product is excellent.

I think the key to any recovery is not exactly what mat your running in your sluice but more things like water flow and classification. Classification is one of the best things you can do for recovery especially in fine gold areas.

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That makes perfect sense and so.ewhat matches up with my experiences on the arrow using vynyl loop,plain carpet,ribbed carpet,under rifle sluice.

I 100% agree with you there Prich.

Best of luck out there

JW :cowboy_hat_face:

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As has been said a few times on here Dream mat is quite finicky and hard to use especially by novices who expect to just put it in a river and start shovelling, but when it’s set up correctly it is the better medium you just need an understanding of XYZ axis and level accordingly.
Carpet still has its place obviously as it’s so easy to use and is less reliant on correct flow and angle it’s ideal for novices, for me it just has issues that other mats overcome so in my view is not to be trusted as primary source especially for larger nugget collection.
One oz of gold in the arrow over a few months is possible with any sluice even just with pan only as there’s so much fine gold scattered it’s silly. I’ve had half oz days in the arrow public fossicking area before and several over one oz days in other fossicking areas with combination of sluicing/snipe.
In my opinion the best sluices have multiple capture zones and different mediums installed to give more randomness and not such much lineal movement.
Everyone has their favourite sluice for various reasons be it as simple as being light weight and easy to carry to having all the bells and whistles, and what works in one area definitely won’t be the same in other areas, at best all we can do is build one that performs well in most areas and hope for the best.

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Watch this spot-im building a glass multi purpise sluice.

Under rifles like le trap or caledonian with a flat section on top to block it off and use a mire std system of your choice.

Ive used a caledonian-sold it to Mandy before i came back this year.

Works ok.

I know that one size does not fit all but the best yields i saw in 7 months were from A52’s.

There was also no appreciable difference in yield from my caledonian and my homemade sluice with stock std floor carpet and then later ribbed carpet.

On the subject of miners moss, is backed or unbacked beter suited?
Many thanks

I used to use coire matting the same as old front door mats. I used to get discarded ones and cut the width to size.
It was excellent and at the end of each year l burnt it in order to recover the very fine gold that had worked it’s way down into it. I used to get a lot of gold in the end of year burn.

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