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How to Make a Gold Sifter

Making a gold sifter can be a fun and useful project, whether it's for a relaxing afternoon of treasure hunting or sifting through your new property for signs of riches in the soil. The sifter allows the user to shake a sample of soil through a series of sieves that allow the rocks and dirt to be separated into different size categories. Smaller particles shake to the bottom while rocks and gold nuggets remain behind.

Things You'll Need

Heavy-duty stapler
4 wooden cross-stitching box frames, all of equal size
4 sheets of mesh material, all of different sizes

Instructions

- 1
  Take one of your box frames and spread one of your mesh sheets tightly over the top of it.
- 2
  With the mesh tightly stretched against the box frame, attach the mesh to the wood with the stapler. Be very generous with the staples, as the mesh will be carrying quite a bit of weight and you don't want it to pull loose of the frame.
- 3
  Repeat steps 1 and 2 with all of the box frames and mesh. When you finish, you should have a set of individual sieves.
- 4
  To form your sifter, stack the frames on top of each other with the mesh facing downward. The frame with the largest mesh openings should be on the top, the frame with the second largest openings should be below that one, and so on until the frame with the smallest openings is on the bottom. Now, all you have to do is place a soil sample on the top of the stack and shake the stack to separate the sample.
- 5
  If you want to add more levels of separation, all you have to do is create more box frames and add them to the stack.

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