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How to Make Sluice Pan Riffles

Sluice pans are the traditional tools of gold prospectors who use their ingenuity, perseverance and luck to try to find gold in streams. A prospector places the sluice in a running body of water and hopes to collect gold deposits coming down the stream. The riffles in the pan are important to capture and collect the gold as water washes over the pan by creating a backflow of water that allows the gold to settle into the pan. The gold drops the pan for safekeeping as the water is diverted around the riffles.

Things You'll Need

Sluice pan
Square dowels
Hammer
Nails

Instructions

- 1
  Take a pan with an empty bottom or purchase a simple sluice pan that lacks riffles. You may also want to acquire a riffled sluice pan, extract the riffles and re-engineer them for better gold collecting.
- 2
  Nail the square dowels about every 6 inches down the length of the sluice pan. Use the hammer to attach the dowels firmly.
- 3
  Leave an empty space (with no dowel) at the top of the pan to be void of riffles. The force of water and gravity will guide the minerals to this part of the pan while the water will empty around the riffles and out of the pan.
- 4
  Clean and empty the minerals and gravel from the pan at the end of each day of panning for gold. With a little luck, you will find some gold deposits in your sluice pan as well!

Rocks & Minerals