Sluicing for diamonds Options

[amethystguy]

I was wondering if your forum duiamond expert, John Tonko, or any of the other can answer a few questions for me.
Any pertinant info on Diamond sluicing? I was told one time before that miners moss was the way to catch diamonds. What about the riffles? What size, shape, angles do the riffles have to be at to catch diamonds? How do you determine the angle of the sluice. I know the amount of water running through will determine the proiper angle set. What about material like grease and beeswax which diamonds stick to. Should that be put into the sluice/riffles? I thought i had read that alluvial diamonds didn't stick as well to grease as did hardwork material. Is that true or does it make that big a difference? Any other info you can provide?
jason

[amethystguy]

Thanks once again, john...I appreciate all the help. I have been speaking with Rafal Swiecki about the matter and came to realize after 30+ years of him mining alluvial diamonds all over the world that only 2% of diamonds 2cts and under are recovered from a sluice and less than 1% larger than 2cts are recovered. Portable dredge and sl;uice is not a platform for any type of real diamond recovery system. Jig is the only practical and reliable diamond recovery system. He was just on a project, he was telling me, in the DRC(congo)
where a grease recovery system costing 1 million 200 thousand
dollars was purchased by a Canadian company in RSA and it was loosing 85% of
diamonds while a $9 thousand dollars jig was and set at
the end of "the grease machine", recovered it all! They actually take diamonds and count them out and toss them into the mix to be washed and sent through and thats how they tell the amount and percentages of recovery

Her said the grease machine is still there at the Badibanga site as the monument
to... [quote] "a poorly informed choice"[end quote]
The same Canadian public company, later taken over by Mwana Africa
from RSA, after seeing the efficiency of the jig Rafal supplies (the 6 inch dredge and jig) to bulk test the alluvial deposit in Badibanga,
DRC will now use it in all of their projects. Geologist in Zimbabawe recently started using this same set-up.

I got a lot of information from 3 diff. companies about recovery systems. The consensus seems to be dredges and jigs work the best for alluvial mining of diamonds. I got printout of every single piece, screw, and part for a 4", 6", and 8" dredge and jig and even all the info for large diverless river dredges which won't apply to me but still wanted to have.
Price for the whokle set-up of a 4" is $29,308 with out broker fees, packing fees, freight, and insurance. weight is roughly 2,800kg's. (6" $53K and diverless is $247K) Looks like I need to save up some money before I can go to guyana or sierre leone to mine for diamonds..LOL
Thanks again for the help, john. How are you kimberlote hunts going out in ole state line district?