Building a Highbanker

We stole many ideas from web sites and message boards a few years ago when we built our highbanker. This machine has been through three mining seasons and a 1,000 design adjustments and tweaks. It has performed very well. It has demonstrated excellent fine gold recovery. Even though we have moved on and built a dredge, this unit goes with us to the claim each year.

We started with a plywood prototype hopper and then went to a cardboard one. The final one is riveted together from metal cut out of an old file cabinet. The frame was schedule 80 pvc but is now aluminum. The pvc barely made it through one season. The sluice was bent for us by a local boat builder. One set of riffle inserts are stolen from an old Keene hand sluice I had and the other was purchased as dredge riffles. The whole length of the sluice is lined with ribbed black matting with miners moss over it. Over the miners moss is expanded metal. The riffle inserts sit on top of the expanded and are held into place by draw latches. The grizzly was welded by a kid in a high school metal shop. We made a couple of different inserts to be place in the upper sluice to help with classification. The expanded metal insert worked the best. We attached a board that runs beside the full length of the sluice to try to take some of the weight and torque off the pvc plumbing. That worked well on several fronts.

We have messed around with several pump and motor combinations depending on the site. A 4 hp with a pacer type pump works well for most setups. We did not glue the spray bars into the head of the box. That allowed us the ability to change out spray par configurations as conditions required. We had one that worked well in gravel and one that worked better in clay conditions. When they do pop off they both work well as a shower.

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