Well I was really hoping you would join in on this one trev and I appreciate that you did. I have read up on the old timers that came here to the west coast and how they won there gold and I noticed the word “plush” used alot and I guess that’s similar to felt or polar fleece.
I recently watched the gold hog video on how they suggest gold should be captured and as you said, it’s either fine or coarse at a time so they have high velocity deep water on the top sluice with a steeper angle to capture coarse gold then a wider less aggressive mat on a flatter angled sluice below to get the fine stuff when they run there highbankers. I know that doesn’t help with stream slicing but makes good sense I guess.
So I ask you with a stream sluice is there a tryed and true riffle formula for a typical river sluice?
One more thing, I did read on here your recent health scare and I am glad to hear that you are obviously a strong stubborn ol bugger that just refused to quit… Well done and cheers
gold hog matts are wonderfull for fine gold recovery they handle adverse water flows really well for me gold hog is the bomb
You should of continued looking into the static gold system! A patent was filed in 2006 for an electrostatic sluice, the product is still under test in Alberta but reviews say it has the ability to pick up gold invisible to the naked eye, it runs much like a river sluice over a pvc bed that is positively charged, when the negatively charged gold is feed over the top the combination of electrostatic attraction and gravity trap the gold in the grooves!
This process looks interesting to me - phytomining of plants over gold bearing soils causes microscopic gold to end up inside the plant, the gold is then extracted from the plant!! Massey university have done study’s here - Gold in herbs - The Country News - NZ Herald
Good on you Gav. 
JW 
Vortex Dream mat is a mineral concentration system developed by Mechanical and Fluid dynamics engineer David Peterson from Montana, David and myself (Dustin Gold Rat Engineering) partnered and developed variations of the technology with varying features to accommodate different solutions working with industry, that is through our long relationship with artisanal miners, prospectors, engineers, CSIRO to very large mining companies.
The mat itself is a premium hot cast urethane which allows us to select the hardness, tear and cut resistance and wear characteristics for each respective product to suit its application. Urethane being 1000 times better than rubber is the best product for these mats to last many years without cracking being non dangerous goods and nontoxic as well as not leaching any product during breakdown which may cause gold to float.
These small issues are something that dealt with using rubber mats for many years prior to Dream mat being available. I personally used gold hog with great success for many years and you will not see me knocking another product ever as all recovery mediums in the market work that’s why people are using them period. Why dream mat made such an impact on me was there were several small issues with other systems that were limiting or interrupted the normal work flow of mining and dream mat solved these issues by simply harnessing elegant flow Phenomena in Nature.
All tech has its limits and boundaries there is no silver bullet.
The facility we’ve build in Australia produces dream mat supplying most of the industry with the exception of USA producing mats for their own domestic and small-scale mining market where dredge mat is concerned. We’ve grown the facility to accommodate the demand which has been challenging but exciting at the same time investing in more machinery commercial ovens to increase production and maintain supply whilst holding price point over these years.
Our processes are by no means a cheap way of producing product, but we are producing an effective Australian family made product which I’m very proud of.
We partner with reputable established businesses around the globe to support customers and our products on a local level which is why you will see our range with Daniel at Dredge NZ. We only partner with businesses who have real world prospecting experience.
The small range of mats in the 6,8,10 and 12 inch wide variety both mini cell and open cell are around 65A shore hardness while the industrial larger tiles used by 10 -500 tonne per hour plants is closer to 75A. This harder industrial tile can be milled drilled and implemented in ways the smaller mats cannot, they really can’t be cut very well as this is a characteristic we wanted in making sure the product lasted for many years and generations of miner. The weight of the industrial tile is 14kgs and retails for $549 AUD in Australia once you take the government tax off that we are producing this product for under $36 per kg which in the urethane industry is unheard of, you’ll find if you get a quote for urethane produced goods the industry average is $80 per kg so i’m also very proud we were able to develop a manufacturing system that allows us to provide this solution very cost effectively to the miner.
The little pocket sluice dream mat is a hammer hard urethane at 80D. Great for the kids and hikers.
There are many Dream mat cell variations, starting at the micro cell being used in many thousands of gold cubes around the globe on the top deck and in clean-up systems including our own gold rat range, this cell is great for skimming gold from black sands and this cell is currently being tooled again for full size sluice applications. I believe this product will be extremely effective in Nz as is the feedback from miners we work with.
The next cell is a mini cell which we originally developed for a 500 tonne per hour gold sand project in PNG this particular cell we use in our 6 and 888 sluice systems its amazing for gem stones and crushed ore and suits 8mesh screen size but can be fed without classification, this cell is also available for the gold cube, if you feed without classification you will need to clear some rocks manually.
Despite what some people claim migration is not an issue with dream mat when you block a vortex with the correct water flow over the cells, smaller mini hydro-cyclones form both under and behind the larger vortex and the cells do not displace gold rather once in the holding cell its very hard to displace. You’ve seen this before in nature where a river turns a bend and there’s a rock in the centre the gold concentrates behind and in front it does not jump 20 meters down the river out of the swirl.
The next cell up s the original cell launched 2014 odd, this cell requires no classification of normal ore but and its a big one the “Achilles heel” if you will of the cells is slates and shale even pyritic cubes in the 4-5mm rang that form plates and lay down to disrupt the cells, in this case we screen to 8mm.
Next up is the Industrial cell and the dredge cell, i haven’t been a big part of the testing/development process with the dredge cell so i won’t go into that until i am intimate with its characteristics as I’ve been mainly working with industrial small scale operations while David in Montana has been working with dredgers, we have large dredge plants using our commercial tiles all around the world with great success.
The industrial tile is a hybrid of the open cell, mini cell with offset jaws that interrupt laminar flow. there are some other small characteristics in this cell which focus on glacial sub 100 micron gold which can be seen in the cell floor i believe Daniel has samples in his shop if you would like to see these, its cell size is 1.5 inch wide while the open cell is 2 inch wide, mini cell 1 inch wide.
Despite some comments below the costs to produce dream mat have required significant investment in tooling and infrastructure well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
We would not be making the investment without the support of industry, and our many thousands of customers and friends worldwide and I’d like to acknowledge the support and contribution from New Zealand engineers and miners over the past 6 years working with us to provide effective solutions.
if anyone ever has a question or would like to see pictures of the cells and variations you need only ask while busy, we always make time to respond.
I hope the above information has cleared up some questions about Dream mat
nice one guys yep i have three of your sluices and they preform very well great article i will be buying more of your gear great work awesome products
yes well said i use all three gold hog gold rat and keene,s riffles and carpet and there miracle mat like you say they all have there place pros and cons which is why i use all three they are all great and some work better than others in stronger flows and vica verca its great having all these companys with different ideas i just love it absoluetly great buy all three and get into it man
now for my ten cents worth, all these new miracle mats work, but under certain caveats. Water speed not to fast and preclasified material works best unless you like to lose a bit of gold. I a dredge situation, these mats lose a bout 20% of the gold, and thats after the material was washed thru a 6mm screen, so fine gold will wash out the back with a treasonably fast current thru the setup. With miners moss on the setup, i estimate only around 2 -4 % of gold is lost. So its comes down to how you value ur time at clean up, if you dont mind sitting down and having a few beers while you clean up your concentrates which can take 1 - 2 hrs then stick with miners moss. If your an executive miner who doesnt have time for final cleanups, and consider that a 15 - 18% loss is ok, then go with the plastic fantastics. That is what it comes down to, I for one just hate throwing that extra ounce away each day.
classic love it good feed back very interesting to get everyones thoughts and personal experiences good article and yep i to love miners moss and carpet and especially love clean ups with a few non alcoholic ginger beers bundys yahoo
I woudn;t disagree with you about much in that statement mate having come from running moss and mesh combos, riffle based sluices, hydraulic riffles and a raft of different mats over the years. not all dream mat is designed to go in a dredge and not all dredgers are capable of managing throughput to suit the recovery system. i absolutely can get dream mat to fail and with all of our products we know exactly where it will fail and were it wont. you’ll notice all of my highbankers come with moss and mesh in the hopper and we catch a heap of gold up top sometimes 60%+ but when you get into high volumes and moss packs out or blinds as we say in the industry dream mat is able to recover more gold and in the 200 micron where moss works but has its limitation. its also worth noting dram mat loves intermittent feeds were alot of other systems struggle a little and vice versa too much constant feed can be too much for dream mat, as i said theres no silver bullet. but for me in a river sluice just me a pan a shovel and a sluice i’ll go dream mat every day. each to their own i still have every sluice i evey purchased and still enjoy using all them, letraps, angus mckirks, old keenes, cant tell you how many sluices i have and they all caught gold.
what were seeing and i’ve had great discussions with your geologists in newzealand over the years testing our products and they have provided recovery results higher than mercury in sub 200 micron gold using our cells. thats pretty cool.
the science is proven its use in the field and how people actually use that tech will vary with varied results and successes and failures the best bit is noones got a gun to your head and as an industry we have so many choices which i think is great
nice one gold rat yep i love the dream mat and as you say they all have there place i loving the look of your 6inch highbanker for clean ups might just get me oneof those through my trusty main man dan @ nz dredge i just gotta have one keep up the good work fellas dream mat is great product
Yes thats what i was getting at, in a dredge situation, the matts dont work so well when they have to deal with high volumes of slurry and or water.
this threads got a paid infomercial type feel to it now, That or danno and goldrat are secret lovers plying each other with adulation 
if one needs that much convincing its just a tiny bit better then conventional matting then its most likely junk or just suited for very specific scenario (classified material in a lil hand sluice) certainly dosent seem like an all round product.
I will stick to old coir matting if I chose to go gold fossicking again. Somehow everyone seems to think their new matting is better than time proven stuff and maybe seem to think that the more expensive it is the better it is.
I’m sure that makes you feel good Gogold glad you got that off your chest, i’ve worked hard for our industry over the past 10 years, I work 80+ hours a week supporting prospectors and miners and I’m well entitled to respond to misleading statements about our products and how they are made.
its not my job to try to convince anyone to buy our products we never have gone down that path miners and prospectors who understand fluid principles seek out higher recovery and they find Dream mat the results are in the pan buddy good luck out there.
absolutely not the best matting is the one you know how to use and are confident with, noones trying to convince otherwise. my post is responding to misleading content nothing more.
great thing is having options dont you think its great that there are options in our industry? things to try?
I agree with that but at the same time also think that many tried and true methods are just as good and in some cases better. I never once lost gold using my old coir mats allied to the right riffles. The right combination of matting and riffles make the entire equation successful.
I thought so too for many years, did extremely well with moss and mesh combos and nugget traps, then i used some other systems for fun and my own piece of mind, first gold hog and a few others around the globe and started seeing decent recovery of the finest of gold dust and had to eat humble pie i’d been missing some gold that i wasn;t able to catch in order to measure my losses. but for the most part the really large benefit for me was not carting home buckets on concentrates from my moss to rerun in another system that means more time doing other things. the dredging side of things is a whole other ball game and of great interest to me alot of standard sluice factors go out the window.