In Wyoming creeks I'd be lucky if I averaged 1 yard a day with my 2', I only used it for about 2 or 3 weeks before selling it and getting a 2.5'. If you talk to or Pat Keene you will find out the ideal conditions are fine sand in a swimming pool.or similar. Somewhere on Keene and Proline's specs they have an asterisk on their ratings, or they used to anyways, and say that the 1 yard an hour (or whatever it is for each size of nozzle) is under ideal conditions. Same thing with metal detectors, using anything less than the best for the specific conditions is just wasting time to me. Today I simply won't even bother with anything smaller unless I'm in really tight space requirements and something like a 5' seems like the smallest to do real work. I started with a 2' dredge, went to a 2.5', then to a 3', and finally at a 4' I figured out what really moving material was like. That said, after 20 years of prospecting, one lesson never seems to fail me - never buy toys. Maybe it will, you are talking to a guy who will throw 1/2 gram of gold back into the river instead of wasting hours getting every fleck, so my idea of a good tool may be different than yours if you'd be happy with a 1/2 gram of gold total for a day.

Is it actually useful? I doubt it.īut I strongly urge you to build one yourself if you feel it would work for your needs. Then you'll also be unclogging that nozzle constantly unless you neck it down or put a bar across it, which effectively reduces your size to 1' or smaller, and then it gets even worse.ĭoes it 'work'? Yeah I guess. So you'll be moving a ton of rock with your hands, and it'll take you longer then just sticking a shovel down there and tossing it in a sluice. Any river I've dredged had at least 50% of the cobbles larger than 2'. The other thing you have to consider is that in a lot of rivers, depending where you are at, the average cobble size is is bigger than your nozzle at 1.5'. That's basically 1 shovel full that he moved of the easiest possible material. And that's tiny, unpacked gravel and blow sand. *Actually look again at the video and you can see his gold pan for size reference towards the end and you can see he's only moved about 1 pan worth of material. I'm not sure the video really shows how small the gravel is and how little he is moving. From what I see I could outdig that 1.5' with a garden trowel, and I'm not saying that to exaggerate.

Mini highbanker dredge with pump