Plans & Projects

Stuff You Can Build

Plans and instructions for building mining related equipment. You can use them as is or as a starting point for your own design. Some of the drawings were received in a size larger than an 8 1/2 X 11. You should be able to reduce them for printing.

Gold Suckers Mini-Highbanker Classifiers Black Sand Separators

Sluice Boxes Rocker Box Gold Vacuum Dry Washer Misc Stuff

Gold Suckers or gravel pumps are very effective for cleaning bedrock under water. They are excellent where you can't use motorized equipment such as dredges or dredge attachments on high bankers.

Mini-highbanker This is an excellent plan for a mini-highbanker. It was designed by Jerry Bowen and appeared in the United Prospectors Inc newsletter. Information for joining UPI is included in the instructions. The instructions for this project have some good general information on working with aluminum sheet metal.

Classifiers are used to screen or classify material before panning or sluicing. With any gravity separation method, the closer in size the material is, the more efficient the operation will be.

B lack sand separators When you have a lot of concentrates from a sluice box, highbanker etc, you will find it is very tedious to pan out the fine gold from the black sand. These mini-sluices will get most of the black sand out without losing the fine gold.

Sluice boxes Here we have four designs. Two are super light backpacking sluice boxes and the other two are "normal" size and came to us from New Zealand.

Rocker Box This rocker box plan is reprinted from Information Circular 6786, "Placer Mining in the Western United States". It was published by the US Bureau of Mines in September, 1934.

Gold Vacuum These instructions are for building a gas powered vacuum for a lot less money than the commercial units.

Black Sand "MegaMagnet" This is a great idea for a magnet used for separating the magnetic black sands from your concentrates. From Joanne, Greg, and Azu Dueck in Canada.

Drywasher Plans and instuctions for building a "puffer" type dry washer.

Gravity Powered Dredge (Timothy McNulty's Gold Fever Page) Plans and information for building a gravity powered dredge.

Specific Gravity Scale This plan is for a scale for measuring the specific gravity of an object. It was lifted from the alt.mining.recreational news group.

If you have any comments or suggestions or, better yet, something to add please drop a line to Bill

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