This is Buck's pic of his modded DFS sluice, used for fine gold cleanup. I'm just posting it for him. He sings the praises of this excellent sluice for fine gold recovery, as do many other prospectors.

yep ole Phil did a good job of designing this sluice for Allan to sell. i did the smae for my DFS a couple of years back on some cons that i had. it works real good!even when i ran 2 750 GPH 12vdc bilge pumps to make it work!

if the DFS sluice didnt work so well, why are there a lot of people copying it and making variations of it???

Count me in as one who sings the praises! I've had my DFS for over a year and have used it extensively. I got a regular riffled sluice recently and don't trust it and may never trust it as well as my DFS. DFS is pretty forgiving.

love my DFS and i does a great job i use it to run cons thro allso

What is the purpose of the 2x4's?

the 2x4s make the sluice narrower to speed up the water and material and in essence makes the slick plate longer in relationship to the expanded/matted area.... when you speed up the water, you need a longer time for the material tobe on the slick plate for the specific gravity to work better!

Ok Thank you. So since the recirculating pump doesn't move as much water, by narrowing the field you, in effect, speed up the water. Then the "change of proportion" allows more time for the separation to occur.

I understand the first point, but I am not not sure I agree with the second. Assuming the narrowing sped up the water to the correct speed, the distance the correct speeding water travels remains the same. Also assuming the feed rate is slowed due to the smaller feed area, that has more to do with the proportionality of the expanded metal area.

What do you think of this analysis?

KG

well basically by narrowing the sluice with the 2x4s you are now creating a "higher pressure" area, and that will increase the waters speed . just like in a stream.give an constant speed of water going along a wide creek, then it comes into a narrower channel and the water increases in speed(high pressure area) this is what youer trying to mimick to a degree! the same thing if your holding a garden hose withh no end on the hose and you pinch the end of the hose, the water comes out faster and at a higher pressure than if you left it alone.

[yes the narrower the sluice. the less material you can feed and you need to feed slower also. has this cleared up my muddy interpratation??

I think we are both on point now. Thank you very much.

My DFS is about 4-5 yrs old and it's my number 1 choice! AWESOME!
god bless,
geno

What does the DFS stand for? Probably a dumb question.

Damn Fine Sluice

Narrowing the width down to clean up your cons when you do not have sufficient water volume is a legit use if the DFS. The speed of the water is irrelevant except for keeping the waste material moving and out of the unit. It's the speed of the heavy material that is slowed down while in contact with the slick plate that is most important. The flow must simply strip the material in layers according to specific gravity, leaving the heavies for last which will then get caught in the trap zone(s).

I built a smaller mini-DFS for myself that runs on one 700 GPM Walmart pump to process my cons. Works so darn well, I've never been able to pan a single fine from the tailings.

And yes, DFS stand for Damn Fine Sluice, because when you use it, you're constantly saying look at all those damn fines I was always missing before! I used to stand in my driveway saying just that, and when it came time to name the unit, I knew the internet filters (back then) would have some objection to the use of the word Damn, so I named it DFS instead.

I've since designed a better unit, but unlike the last one which everyone in the world is ripping off design wise. I'm not saying a darn thing except it works even better than the original and captures larger gold also with never a spec or nugget found in the tailings.

Phil

Hey what about us loyal customers that bought your first one. Don't we get an opportunity to upgrade?

i dont beleive Phil has these in production yet. but when it is, itll be a good one!

Thanks Russ....
As far as upgrading the old one, sorry. You bought that unit from Alan who has since ripped me off big time. Doesn't make sense to upgrade something I didn't sell.
and even if I did, it would cost just as much to upgrade as to buy a new one by the time all the extra shipping, etc was done.
If I can find a metal shop that doesn't want to rip off my arm and leg for the parts I need made, I'll put them on the market. If greed keeps dominating the market, then IMHO, that makes the price way too high to sell them, and I won't do that. Aluminum has gone wayyyyyyy up. Steel has gone wayyyyyyy up. The matting has gone wayyyyyy up. Those 3 alone will raise the price to what I fell is too much for a fine gold sluice.
The "new" XXX (tm pending) will not only keep all the fine gold as efficiently as before, It will raise the bar on what sizes it captures. I'll be putting in my special traps and etc which so far have never failed to catch lead nuggets up to 3/4 ounce. Not bad for a design intended for use only in fine gold areas. basically what I've done is improve the unit for those once in a million occasions where a rare nugget, small or otherwise, comes out of a fine gold area.
In tests run shoveling actual river bed material where the gold is lighter than the black sands due to being pounded flat by traveling miles of the river, it even kept a small 1-1/2 inch steel toy cap gun some kid must have lost many years ago. It was very corroded and beat up, but the unit kept it!
I just don't get out much any more to be able to make it much better than that. maybe I should just sell the design for $20K to some existing manufacturer instead.

Phil

Actually, in a real DFS, not a copy, variation, or knockoff, that doesn't ring true as it does with old school sluices. If you slow down the water, you clog the sluice and end up no better than a conventional sluice whose riffles are usually always packed and clogged. Yes there is a point where you have overoladed the unit and the material takes forever to process, the gold never hits the slick plate, etc... but what miner in his right mind (other than a newbie who hasn;t learned squat yet) would do that.
The directions I wrote up that were supposed to go out with every sluice apply whether you narrow it down, use a bigger shovel, smaller shovel, cons or raw river bed gravels.
1. place your material at the head of the slick plate unit, not the center. This give the gold the optimal chance to hit the slick plate and get caught.
2. NEVER add more material till the last load has completely cleared the end of the sluice.
3. Adjust your water flow so that the material takes a 5 Mississippi (minimum) count to completely clear.
4. If you ever get so much cons that the black sands are making the moss hard to see, stop and allow the water a few minutes to clean and concentrate what the unit has collected. The gold will sink the lighter black sands will wash out, and the unit will be back at maximum efficiency again. You should be able to see at least 1/2 way into the moss.
5. The only way to clog the unit to zero efficiency is to have so darn much gold trapped in the moss that the bottom turns yellow. If that happens, email me.... I'll be there to help you lift it up! I've only ever seen a sluice clogged with fine gold once in my life.... and that was a sight, for sure!
These rules are also going to apply to the new unit, if it ever hits the market....

thanks for the post Phil! yep prices of labor/material have sky rocketed!just when ive retired and was thinking of a little side job,the ecconomy,SB670 hit Cal. and everyone is in a withdrawl mode and holding onto their $$ tightly! i agree with your position of the new XXX and keeping it under wraps to prevent a occurance of what happened to the DFS. but then again, if people dont see it, they wont want it. a real dilima for sure. with the success of the DFS, youd think a manufactor would pick it up and manufactor it. but there again, ive heard about some manufactors and clubs that have had the oppertunity to veiw a product and turn it down only to change it a little and make it for themselves and sc*w the original designer of any $$$$$$$.i really like my DFS and would really like to see this new sluice in production.im sure you could use a few $$ in the ole pocket book! id sure like to get out to ole NM one of these days to say hi and maybe tip a few with you someday!

Do you mean that A. Jaramillo at http://www.damnfinesluice.com/, isn't you or an authorized distributor? I bought my personal DFS from another miner in Azuza and it had a sticker on it that took me to the above sight. Where would one go to buy an original DFS sluice, or better yet an improved one?

Kg

I'd love to buy a DFS from ya Phil, if ya got one to sell. Or one of your newer developments.

Exactly. That is not me. I am not currently building or selling them, and why should I? There are so many rip off's out there, there's no way to compete against my own design. The one you bought has a sticker that means it came from Alan? You have a early version then, and it's a good design. Use it and enjoy!

Phil

Thanks Phil. If you decide to re-enter the market, let us know. I haven't found any other people marketing this design. Pops and Sons just tell how to make something similar, but don't actually mfg. anything. So it may be a viable market afterall. The only thing I would change is a quick release and/or taller wing nuts with welded on washers, so they don't affect the water flow and you don't loose the parts when you do the clean up.

when tightening down your wingnuts, make sure the "wings" on the wing nut is aligned with the flow of water to limit the turbulance they will cause if aligned against the flow of water.

Yeah I do that now, but am working on getting the taller ones mentioned.

I made some changes to my DFS and have had great sucess with it. I took out the carpet on the bottom side and replaced it with the deep v mat. Also, took out the front green mat and replaced it with the standard blue miner's moss. I turn it upside down so the tightly woven mating is up. This makes a tighter seal under the expanded metal and creates less turbulence. It have been catching the bigger pickers up too. They usually get imbedded in the fibers pretty well. I left the green stuff in at the bottom as a safety net, but most everything appears to be getting caught in the upper half of the blue mm. The carpet it comes with works well but you can never get all the gold out of it!

Sorry, taller wing nuts not a good idea. While it makes it more convenient for the user, design wise it's a bad idea. It would interfere with the movement of the material thru the unit quickly and without clogs. Quick release? I don't trust them for the long haul. How much faster than 30 seconds (in the field) do you really need?

As far as loosing the parts, I always used to immediately put them back.... You're not trying to clean up while still in moving water I hope...

As far as re-entering the market, on my pension, I simply can't afford it. Things have gotten way to pricey. I wanted to have a mold made and then have them made from a heavy duty PVC like my 20 plus year old microsluice (still in good condition after all his time. No warping etc). When I saw the quote for just the molds and first 50 units, I knew it was out of reach for me to ever do. But I would have been able to sell the units at a very reasonable price, even at todays prices.

So... enjoy what you have, it's still the best all around sluice out there.

By taller wing nuts I mean welding a washer to the bottom of a coupler ( hollow threaded tube) and welding a wing nut on top. This way the spread of the wing nut would be above and out of the water. This shouldn't affect the material at all. The rounded tube will disturb the water even less that the current wing nuts.

I often wear gloves and drop my wing nuts into the clean out tub. If they were a little bigger, they would be easier to hold on to. In the winter, my hands are even less dexterous, so I need all the help I can get.

I'm going to use mine for a 2" suction dredge. Was thinking of putting some larger raised expanded metal on it. Making a header box so the material will be dumped out onto a wall at the very head of the sluice. Going to us a heavy damper flap and might have to valve the water intake down to keep the flow reasonable. Not sure if this will work since you are supposed to feed it slow. Will try and suck material up the same way you shovel in. Was also thinking about putting some kind of plastic matting that has holes in it under the intake area to catch any posible nuggets. Not many of them around my area but they do turn up sometimes. Would be a shame to loose them. Or I might just have the dfs dump tailings onto a conventional sluice. Will post pics once I get finished with the header box.

as is, theres not enough slick plate to use as a dredge sluice. remember 1 Mississippi,2 Mississippi etc. for the flow.

Russ, how much slick plate do you think should be added? Think I will go with a 1.5" instead of the 2". Should help control water flow and material input. I could use a 2.5 hp motor that way too. Just hope it allows me to move more material than I do with a shovel now. It has to beat setting up a river sluice and lugging buckets around though ;)

Rich, Phil Hontz (PhilNM)should/could answer that one better and more acuratly than i. but, imho , you can have to much slickplate (weight,bulky)but it wouldnt hurt anything.the thing about slick plates is that in order for them to work correctly, the material needs time to stratify before it hits the screen/matt. so depending on the size of hose/sluice,volumn of material and water,width of the sluice,speed of the pump will really determine the length of the slickplate. and if you hog material, youll flood the sluice and then all is out the window! correct me if im wrong Phil!

Here is my DFS converted into a 2" dredge. I am using 3/4" raised expanded for riffles. The area I'll be working has a lot of larger flakes and some pickers. All I need now is a suction nozzle and a pressure line fitting for my pump and I'll be ready to go! Took me about 3.5 hours to put the header box together. Will probably put a square of miner's moss in the bottom of the header box and will add an Alaska Damper flap when I can find some thick rubber sheeting. Next project is to build a hopper to convert it to a 1.25" highbanker. Also building a small highbanker to run a bilge pump and recurculate for my fine gold area. Will post pics of those when I get them done. Just have them on paper right now.

Finally got to test out the dredge. It has been raining every day over here for the past 2 months and the rivers are up. Went out anyway. Couldn't see 1" into the muddy water. Had to go by feel. Very happy with the results. Have a 5.5 HP 220 gpm pump that I got new off e-bay for $170 shipped. Able to move a lot more matterial than with a shovel. Expanded metal caught gold. After running a total of about 2 hours got 2 1/4" pickers and a lot of smaller flakes. Biggest issues I had were with the throttle not staying open and just had it running at idle. Also kept getting blockages in the bend of the suction nozzle. I have since worked on the motor and welded a piece of rebar across the nozzle to reduce the rock size intake by 1/2. I know I will have to move more rocks by hand this way, but I would rather do that than keep getting blockages. I am also going to try some riffles that I built based on the Clarkson study. They are 1/2" angle set at 15 degrees spaced 1" apart. I will be running it at an angle of 2" per foot. I turned the miner's moss upside down to form a flatter surface for the riffles to rest on. No gaps underneath this way. Will be going back out tomorrow. Hope the heavy downpours that are falling now won't flood me out tomorrow. Wouldn't you know that as soon as I get a dredge that the weather never cooperates anymore.

Something i learned (from CP outting 2 years ago) and still do is to take out the raised metal between the riffles and miners moss all together because it flattens the miners moss and reduces the really fine gold recovery (just like in a beach box in nome)...also i could see where the raised metal could make gaps under the riffles disturbing the black sands and gold...i leave the flat side still down on the black ribbed matting because that away the mat fibers can help catch the gold just like brushes. But everyone has their own way of gold recovery.

Another thing i leared from the outting is to put a jug (milk) or in my case a empty water bottle with some holes with soap inside in a bucket with holes with the foot valve (water feed) to mix soap with the water in the sluice to help with the fine gold recovery....these are all really good ideas i use from the good people of CP (P.S. i know alot of with's in that sentence )

well this is my first post in awhile! my computor had a virus and it was a pain to get it removed. the slickplate length needs tobe longer for dredgeing ops. your moiving more material and water so you need to count: 1 Mississippi,2 Mississippi untill youve gone to (as the driections say)to 5(?) Mississippi. this will give to fines a chance to stratify and have the lighter material a chance to blow off the end of the sluice.

You're probably right about the slick plate length. But I figured it couldn't hurt. I also just utilize what I alreay have available. So far seems like the 3/4" raised expanded is the best setup. I've been getting flakes of all sizes and have caught some small nuggets. Large ones are pretty rare around here. So far almost all the gold except for the real fine stuff has been getting caught in the top half section of the Miner's moss. Stuff gets imbedded deep into the moss so you can't even see it. Even a 1/4" nugget made its way into the matt so I couldn't see it from the top! Hope the rain stays away so I can get back out into my hole. Haven't been able to see anything that I'm doing yet as the water is always muddy. If anybody is looking for good cheap gloves to wear try the thin nitrile stuff. I bought a pair and they are holding up real well and are grippy so you can grab slippery rocks easily.

You are not wrong.... Timing is everything.

One thing I'm noticing is folks seem to be forgetting that the DFS is for FINE gold and nuggets up to maybe a #10 screen, although I've caught much larger ones. Using my original DFS design for larger gold, or even a dredge is not going to be as efficient as perhaps some of the older riffle design sluices. I simply did not design it to be 99% efficient for larger gold like I did for fine gold. There are many excellent sluices out there designed for larger gold, or as I call them california designs. The DFS is for those areas where the fine gold hides. Colorado, Arkansas, New Mexico, Alaska's beaches, Chile, etc etc etc. The future of making a living off "wild" gold is capturing the super fine gold that miners, both professional, commercial and hobbyist have been throwing away for the last 200 years.

Current dredge designs simply have too much throughput and turbulance to capture ultra fine gold. Do a search for Marc's remarkable results on the Arkansas River in Colorado where he had been sluicing for years, but when he went DFS, his comment was IIRC, "I never knew this river had so much gold in it... " he went from one ounce per week to over 4, if memory serves correctly. It's been many years, I may not remember it right anymore. Or search for the results of Steve;'s placing DFS's immediately downfloe from some large dredges that ended up with a fine gold dusting in them. All throw away gold.

Looks like the DFS II, DFS 2 or DFS xxx isn't going to ever make it to market. I can't afford it, and there aren't any believers out there anymore. Everyone wants everything for free. Maybe that's why a lot of old-timers took their secrets to the grave with them. dunno.

As I don't check the gold forums much anymore, questions are better addressed to me off-forum, otherwise, you'll have to wait till I check in again. Or ask Russ. He's got it down.

Phil

Good thing the Colorado Prospector forums are "gem and mineral prospecting forums" and not just gold. See ya' again soon.

CP

Hi Phil. Love the old DFS. Would you build any of the new ones as a custom deal? Would be interested in one if it was within my budget. I utilize the DFS I have now for my dredge. Works real well with the bigger expanded and a low angle to catch the fines. I use the expanded that came with it for sluicing in very fine gold areas with great results. I do like the new drop riffle sluices like the MacKirk but they have their advantages and disadvantages. They have less cleanup so you can run longer but are very sensitive to fluctuations in water flow. It is real easy to have stuff blow out of them if you can't keep the water consistent which can be hard to do in a river. Nice to have the moss to hold everything in there once you catch it.

i cant speak for Phil,but i cant see him makeing/selling them as a custom order. he showed the original DFS sluice over the net and everyone strated coping it and his sales suffered from it. he wanted to sell the new design and make his money. he had offered the manufactoring of this new design to me, but i cant do it for one reason or the other. i would love todo it but.............id also like to see the design but Phil requires that any one looking at his design sign a confidentiality contract to keep them from building/making from his design and i understand his position 100% from previous experiences he had!i retired 1 1/2 years ago and originally wanted to start making mining equipment for sale. i have all the equipment but my ole bones are telling me i better think about what im doing!! i hated to turn Phil down but i dont think i could have kept up with the demand for manufactoring equipment.

Thanks.



Sorry, if I did that, I lose protection for my design. Maybe someday I will be able to produce them to sell, or someone will realize the potential and buy my design. So No, can't build you one. I talked to a plant in Mexico, but by the time everything was added up, it was too expensive for my budget.




Fantastic. Although you will be losing some of the finest gold due to the design flaws and material speed thru the dredge, you should do better than most any other unit out there. Try increasing the slick plate to as long as you dare.

Good luck! Let us know how you did come end of the season!

Phil

Here is a pic of my cleanup from about 4 hours worth of dredging in SW CO. Does pretty darn well. Lots of fine gold mixed in with the sand too. Forgot to mention that I am using the green super moss that came with it in the top 1/2 which does better with scour and concentrating and the standard MM in the bottom 1/2.

looks like you are in a promising spot! thanks for posting!

Here is what I use, it is like a DFS. but I did not copy the DFS. I have worked this creek for over 20 years, all fine gold, and had always noticed that it panned way better than it sluiced. Then Wally Koz sent me a copy of the Clarkson study and that was a Eureka moment! If I am just checking areas for gold, I use the rubber matting at the from of the slickplate because you can see the gold. But once in an area that has gold, I use about a 3 foot slickplate followed by a 3 foot small expanded metal sluice. My miners moss is cut into piece, and I leave a gap about an inch wide between them. I have never found big gold in the gaps, but I have found bullets and such, so if big gold came along, it would get trapped also. When I feed the sluice with just the slickplate, you will see the lighter blond sands and gravel take off, followed by the black sand dragging across the bottom of the slickplate, and if you watch closely, you can even see an occasional piece of gold dragging along the bottom, behind the black sand.

Wally Koz was a friend to all! sorry to see him and his wife pass!we traded videos/info all the time.i also have the Clarkson videos and the other related videos that come from AM Productions INC. www.amproductions,com is the web address if your interested in looking/buying a VHS copy for yourself.

Here is another 5 hours worth of goodies from my DFD (Damn Fine Dredge)

Yeah, Wally seemed to be the only guy that understood my talk when I talked about mining. I think I have yet to find anyone else.

Darn nice looking pan of cons there Rich! Looks like the machine is working nicely.

CP