Sam Radding's Book of Plans 1
Plans included in Volume I:
1) Port A Sluice - Build a compact, yet full-sized sluice box that breaks down into sections for portability and storage
2) Rocker Box - Build a traditional rocker box, a truly time tested pieces of prospecting equipment
3) Small Rocker - Plans for a small rocker box that is easily portable and great for sampling
4) Wooden Concentrator - Add a strong pump and this wooden highbanker style concentrator is great for getting gold out of those high benches. These plans also include a section for how to build a rocker concentrator
5) Aluminum Concentrator - Similar to the highbanker style concentrator above, but in lightweight and tough aluminum
6) Bellows Drywasher - Plans for how to build a hand-crank bellows drywasher, perfect for desert gold prospecting. Can also be powered by a small motor
7) Conveyer Belt - Build a conveyer belt for moving your drywasher tailings out of the way as you work
Plans included in Volume II:
1) View Scopes – Build your own viewing scope to snipe for gold underwater.
2) Snuffer Bulb – Works in a similar way to a snuffer bottle but can be used underwater to suck up any gold while sniping.
3) Crack Hook – A great tool for easily scraping out material from cracks.
4) Fanning Board – Use a fanning board underwater to quickly move sand, silt, moss and more.
5) Suction Stick – Use this homemade hand dredge to quickly and easily suck up material from holes or cracks and easily transfer it to your recovery equipment.
6) Vibrobasic Drywasher – Build your own small and lightweight vibrostatic drywasher.
7) Mini-Magic Drywasher – A bellows drywasher that is small and light enough to carry into otherwise unreachable spots.
8) Gold Classifying Screens – Make this handy classifier set to classify down all that gold you’ve found into various mesh sizes.
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- The British Geolocical Survey has this hand-powered shaker table. This is very cool !!
- Rocker Box - PDF file of rocker box plans hosted at the GPAA site.
- River Rocker - Another PDF, from GPAA.
The gravity dredge is basically a suction dredge without motor, or pump, no moving parts, etc. They rely on gravity to build a head of suction. They aren't all that portable, relatively inexpensive and they work really great for finding gold.
- Gravity Dredge - plans, and tons of information for more advanced operations.
- Gravity Dredging for Placer Gold has an explanation on simple gravity dredging.
- Simple Simon is another take on building a gravity dredge, this one with bucket header box and sluice box setup.
- This Wet Willie sluice combo unit .
- Several sluice box designs A must see.
- Two more sluice projects described and with pictures.
- A poop tube (Henry Henry) and a wooden sluice setup can be found here.
- Several sucker plans can be found at
- Highbankers