So a while back I picked up two of the Bucket Concentrator Sluices, one of which I gifted to Caveman for his own research. I initially tested it with some random cons I had ran previously to see how it worked in real life and discovered that it's pretty much spot on with their description. It will run 20- fairly well, but really comes into its element running 30- and smaller. 20- tends to fill up the riffles, however there is still plenty of movement on top allowing heavier material to fall through. 30- flows through and cleans out quickly, same with 50- only faster. It is much less picky about setup than a blue bowl and easier to set up, very easy to judge how level it is by the flow much like a regular sluice. I would go so far as to say that it is a upgrade from a blue bowl due to its ease of operation and speed. In testing with the material I review below all gold stayed within the first three riffles (with an exception I'll discuss), exactly as described. All in all I'd recommend this sluice, giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars. It would be a perfect 5/5, however I'd like it to be a bit larger. Hey, nothings perfect.

Now, a few days ago I was over at Sportsman's Warehouse and came across something that caught my attention:
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Gold Rush branded paydirt, as in that show the Discovery Channel produces. Curiosity got the better of me, so I slapped down $20 of my hard earned cash to find out.

The paydirt itself was of decent quality, looks like they at least washed all the crap out of it before bagging. I classified it down to 20- and ran it through the bucket concentrator and found some shiny stuff at the bottom. After inspecting my 20+ I decided to run that through as well, which had the side effect of pushing some of the gold further down since some of the riffles got overloaded. Nothing made it past the 5th riffle though. Here's the end result:

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Looks to me like they salt each bag with some larger material to make it easier for inexperienced folks to pan, which is nice. Was it $20 worth of gold? Of course not, but it's a lot more than I expected to see. Once I get new batteries for my scale I'll weigh it, but I'd estimate it's probably only about a grain or so. I'll give this one 2 out of 5 stars because while there was gold in the bag their profit margin is ridiculous, we're talking on the order of 80-90%. Oh well. At least I got a nifty burlap sack out of the deal along with some more shiny stuff to add to the collection.

Once the weather warms back up, I'll give mine a go with my 30-. I've got a whole bucket of 20-; think it would do a decent job with it, as long as it was cleaned out more often?

I can't believe you bought that... It probably came from Todd's claim.

Yup, should work quite nicely.

Brandon, thanks for that review! I'm a huge fan of drop riffle systems and have been looking at California Sluice for years, more specifically their Green Giant Trommel. I think it's the best portable trommel deal out there and have considered it... still considering it. Good to hear it from you that their sluices work as advertised, I know you're a stickler for detail and ran it right for proper testing!
ps... that Hoffman Gold has cooties.

I've tried only a couple sources of paydirt (when I'm too lazy or too far away from a place with color), and I found the best bet is almost always Felix's Paydirt. Yeah it's pricey, but it's not the garbage put out by TDC.

The itch was getting to me, and since today was fairly decent out I decided to run all of my old cons again. Started with about half of a 5 gallon bucket worth of 12- that I took down to 30-. Ran it all through the bucket concentrator in about 45 minutes or so, didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the time. Here's the result:
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I ended up with about a tablespoon of material, which I then ran through my stacking pioneer screens (4 inch locking stack of 30/50/100, soooo nice for small amounts of cons) for ease of panning.

Nice to know that little thing will catch gold that small. Not sure if it's from Chris' claim or Clear Creek, probably both.

Yum, I like leftovers.