DIY SILICONE GOLD SLUICE MAT

One of the people I follow by the name of Alan Robertson, got me interested in trying this. He made a mold using Legos. He then made the mat using Silicone calking. I have been wanting a mat for a new sluice I just built and I thought that this would be a good time to try to make one. I wanted a Deep V Mat that would hold a lot of material and I found that the corrugations in a large cardboard box gave me just what I was looking for in a mold. So this is how I made it. Its interesting that sand and rocks seem to just slide off from silicone but metals like gold seem to stick to it. So it makes for a good sluice mat and it's more durable than one would think and easy to repair if damaged. You can make larger or longer mats by just making more mats with the mold and gluing them together with the Silicone.
If you are interested in more prospecting adventures and DIY projects, you may want to check out Alan's channel. You will find it here:
/ @alanrobertson2510
Update on mold making materials:
Home Depot in the lumber section has a 1” x 2’ x 2’ piece of styrofoam board that is ideal for making a mold baseplate. You can cut a piece for the baseplate and then cut smaller pieces off from the rest to make the riffles etc. They also have larger boards in different thicknesses. You can cut this easily with any saw, knife. A good knife is one of the hobby/utility knives that you break off the blade for a new tip. It can extend out several inches.and the blade is thin and cuts well. KZbin has some videos on making a foam cutting burner using batteries for power. You can buy the nichrome wire on Ebay. HD/Lowes also has a variety of square dowels for riffles if you can’t get Legos and flat molding for making frames in the molding dept. They also carry hobby boards of different thicknesses and widths in the lumber dept from 1/4” to 1/2”. You can glue 2 or more 1/2” thick boards together to make a wider baseboard if you are making one of my Deep Well Sluices/Miller Tables.
If you want to paint the mold to make for easier release of the silicone, you can use gloss spray paint or gloss Helmsman's Spar Varnish. For some other mold release agents, try using , Vaseline, Vegetable oil, Castor Oil and Glycerine which you can buy at a pharmacy.

[@seeker522]

planning on doing a silicon mat in a clean up sluice I am building. This helped me a lot. Thanks!

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Seeker and thanks for watching. I’m glad I could be of help. I think you will really like silicone mats.

[@builtrodewreckedit]

I would never have thought of cardboard... thats ingenious. Can't wait to see how it works for you

[@utahavalanch]

Hi and thanks for watching. These mats are working very well for me. 6 runs so far and I haven't found a single piece of gold in the tailings. They are easy to make and if they get damaged, they are very easy to repair.

[@alanrobertson2510]

Fantastic idea using cardboard for the mold. You do the silicone a little different than I do and it looks like your method is working I love watching someone else make the mats besides me and put there own spin on it. I bet the mat will catch the gold like crazy. Thanks for the shout out. My mold making is going hi tec with a new toy as soon as I figure it out. Thank you for sharing your idea with us can't wait to see how the mat works.

[@utahavalanch]

Hey, Alan. Thanks for the ideas and the videos. Looking forward to the new ones. The mat does work very well. 6 runs with it so far and I haven't found a single piece of gold in the tailings. I love how easy these mats are to clean out. Yippers, I'm still experimenting with the best way to work with the Silicone. I had a hard time gathering up all those little stringers and so just shooting into my hand has worked the best. My nice clear mats have now turned a milk bottle white after drying. :-( Thanks for watching. Buy more Silicone :-D

[@fabiobeyhautkuhn2211]

Haaa haa haaa there comes the flood

[@utahavalanch]

fabio Beyhaut Kuhn On its way. Thanks for watching.

[@FlourgoldWizards]

Nice job! I appreciate the detail you present when making your videos. Im gonna give my silicone mats another try!👍

[@utahavalanch]

Thank You Wizard and I enjoy yours. So far these mats are working very well for me. I really like the flexibility and ease of cleanup with these. They are really quite durable as well. Thanks for stopping by.

[@utahavalanch]

Just wondering, what if you made a very thin mat to fit the slick plate on your Cube like this one from small box corrugations so it was like the small V mat. Use those yardsticks from Home Depot for a frame . You could make it in 2 small sections about 6" x 12" which would take 1 tube for each section. Then glue them together. You would have a very thin mat that would have teeth on one side to work like the small deep v mat and smooth on the other. The fine gold would stick better to this than the rubber. You could flip it over to the back to see if it would work like a Miller Table like Alan did. If so, all you would have to do is shut the water off and lift off the mat to clean it in a pan. You may have to put a valve on the hose to cut the water supply down though for that very tiny gold. That would be good to do anyway as I think the Cube puts out too much water for fine gold. Just thinking out loud. :-D

[@sari6929]

@@utahavalanch Sir instead of spraying the card board for better results we can we apply a cement paste with tooth brush to give the card board extra strength and crispness??? Providing a firm base and mold for our silicon mat

[@utahavalanch]

sarwar kamal Hi Sarwar. Yes you could. There are many things you can use to do this. The Spar Varnish is something I had on hand.

[@coptechgold]

Once again, wonderful work on the new mat. Keep the ideas coming.

[@utahavalanch]

Thank you Doublenot and thanks for watching. I have a number of things I'm working on. Will have to see how many of them pass the testing phase.

[@jacksp5089]

When you make your next video of how it did, just for grins, turn it to the flat side and see how it does! I am curious to see if it did what Alan's did. Clean up slues AND miller table all in one mat!! Thanks for the video.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Jack and thanks for watching. Yippers it does work like Alan's. I also did a test where I put a rubber mat and silicone mat on a board and then put them on a steep angle. Gold and metals stuck to the silicone mat and slid down the rubber. The new sluice I built for this mat it turns out is a combination Miller Table and sluice. Stay tuned.

[@jacksp5089]

@@utahavalanch That's fantastic. Mind if I share your comment with Alan? Or you can. I'm sure he would like to know your results!

[@utahavalanch]

@@jacksp5089 Hi Jack, you certainly can and tell him hi for me as well.

[@peterloichtl4512]

i have often used spray laquor or varathane to waterproof blueprints and paper signs it always worked great for me ,, just spray the cardbord it would even work brushing laquer .

[@utahavalanch]

@@peterloichtl4512 Hi Peter and thanks for watching. Yippers, those are some great products as well and do a good job of waterproofing. I got started with the Spar varnish about 17 years ago because it was available just about anywhere. Very few stores carry it anymore sadly.

[@sjfuller1963]

Nice job Sir especially on the procedural steps and the thoroughness of them. Always enjoy your videos! Ingenuity is mother of all invention! Steve Dig Dug Gold

[@utahavalanch]

Stephen Fuller Thank you and thanks for watching. Although the cardboard was my idea, making mats out of Silicone was Alan's idea. I must say they work as well if not better than rubber mats. Much cheaper as well.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Stephen and thanks for watching. I'm quite liking these mats as they are easy to make and work very well. I have quite a number of different size sluices and so I can cut up or glue up these mats to fit each one.

[@stephenfuller8345]

I’m OTR but will be home next week, so I’ll be making mine then. Alan said you are the Spar Varnish King! He was correct. I’ll be using it a little differently next week when I film my sluice attempt! Thanks again Sir! Stephen Dig Dug Gold

[@utahavalanch]

@@stephenfuller8345 Yippers, I am the Varnish King. LOL. I probably go through as many cans of spar varnish as he does silicone. Walley World wants to stop selling it but I buy so many they can't. :-D I am looking forward to seeing how you do on yours.

[@MrLodak]

These are making it more affordable for people to get new mat's!

[@utahavalanch]

Hey J, thanks for stopping by. Yes, these are quite affordable and really pretty tough. If you tear or damaged them, you just throw it back in the mold, add more silicone and it's like new. I think Alan is going to be using his all summer and so we'll see how they hold up over time. I think they will do quite well. The nice thing is that the gold sticks to the silicone and so it makes it hard for it to work it's way down and out the sluice. You'll have to check out my new prototype sluice. It has been a lot of fun.

[@frederickbierweiler8020]

great instructional video

[@utahavalanch]

frederick bierweiler Thank you and thanks for watching.

[@kennligas6931]

Great instructional video, Utah! I really like the workmanship you put into your sluices etc., they become a work of art. Alan comes up with some mind-boggling ideas, then you finish it off. I think that if you and Alan got together and started a company to sell your products you guys would hit the Mother Lode and I would be one of your first customers!

[@utahavalanch]

Thanks for watching Kenn. Yea, no telling what we would come up with. Problem is we would spend too much time coming up with new stuff and not enough time to sell. LOL.

[@1kreature]

Wonderfull idea! I think you should try and spread the silicone along the grooves instead of accross them though, would make it a lot easier to not get air bubbles and poor rifle-shapes.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi and thanks for watching and the comment. I do it that way more so with my new mats. They are a new design and you kind of have to do it that way to get the Silicone down in side them better. It's been a learning process and after about 20 mats I'm getting the hang of it a little better. I have several new mat designs I'm working with and it takes a bit of learning how to work with each one.

[@willroper2410]

Try using a liquid rubber spray. It's used for coating tools. Stays flexible and pretty strong. I like your cardboard idea. Love all the DIY ideas.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Will and thanks for watching. I'll have to give it a try one of these days but I don't know if you can apply it thick enough to make a mat.

[@BrandonCurryChannel]

It's good to see you back at it. We missed you in KZbin world. Another great tutorial in the DYI prospecting series.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Brandon. Thanks, Ive been working on a lot of projects and have some medical issues to work through but hope to get some videos up on these projects. I hope they will be of interest to some of you folks. Thanks for watching.

[@coyotecanyon5801]

Been waiting for a new vid! Great as always, thank you! The wife's not gonna be too happy now that I have another project to work on. I'll have to show u what I've found so far.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Chandler, thanks for watching. When the wife smells the fumes from the silicone, she is really not going to be happy. LOL. But yes, this is a fun and interesting project for sure and I'm looking forward to how yours comes out. Lots of different ways to approach this.

[@anagramconfirmed1717]

Also, i could listen to you talk all day.

[@utahavalanch]

Anagram Confirmed Well, thank you very much.

[@stephaniedill9966]

Hi Utahavalanch. Glad you're back! I spoke to you some months ago about building a large combo deep well/miller table sluice, and that's coming along. I was just about to start glueing things down and installing the drop riffles when I came across Alan's videos on diy silicone mats. I immediately started bugging everyone I knew with kids for legos that might be laying around the house loll. And I found them in the most unlikely place. I happen to mention my project to one of the science teachers at the school where I work, when I mentioned the legos she said, " Oh yeah there's a bunch in the back store room , help yourself." . So after reading the comments hers my 2cents. It took three tries to get a usable mat. Now my sluice is 16" wide and about 24" long....remember the idea was a short wide low flow sluice. So my suggestion is to work on small sections and piece them together. I tried to make one big mat using GE's silicone...what a mess. It just did'nt cure. I found out that the ingrediants has to say " Acetic Acid is evolved during cure." So now I use DAP. Being the creative type I wanted to color my mats so using DAP I put the food coloringing to the Dawn/water mixture and could not get the silicone to cure.. it look like porridge. I even tried the cornstarch techique... I used flour instead and I actually got a mat and it was colored but it feels like I could rip it apart. At this point I'm thinking wooden riffles sound like a great idea! LLLOOLL. So out of shear frustration I took a 9x9 baking pan put the food coloring in it and put the silicone straight into the pan...no soap water mixture. I used a spackling knife to fold the color in over and over until it was somewhat uniform, soaped up the much smaller mold, plopped the ball of silicone on it, soaped up my hands and started pushing it into the mold. AND IT WORKED!! I know this is long winded so I'll get to my question. Since cardboard works as a mold per your instructions, why not use some other thick paper and fold in the pattern I want. Right? What's bothering me about the lego drop riffles is they are straight down and I would prefer the undercut shape. So I'm gonna try folding thick sketch paper and following your cardboard riffle instructions. What do ya think. Any tips? Also what kind of paint did you use to make the green mat?

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Stephanie, welcome back. I’ve been tied up on many projects and just as I finish one, It seems to bring up more ideas for another. :-D Part of the answer I was going to leave you, I decided to add to the description as others may find it helpful as well so check that out. You can use the Styrofoam to make angled Riffles for your mat mold. Welcome to the land of Silicone Mat Making. I think you had all the same problems the rest of us had. Yep, it’s easy to tell the pioneers. They are the ones with the arrows in their backs. :-D But it’s some good experience. Yippers, use DAP and I have found that Family Dollar Silicone works well too. Cheaper too. For the coloring on my mat, I used some acrylic paint from Walmart. I used fast dry and I don’t know if that made a difference or not but the mat dried in about 10 minutes so you really have to hurry. I may try the slow dry next time. I squeezed about half a tube of Silicone into a plastic glass, added 3 drops of paint and stirred with a popsicle stick. 1 drop would have been more than plenty. A little goes a long ways. Then I scraped it out and added it to the soapy water and then squirted the rest of the tube into the glass and repeated. The Cornstarch technique as you found makes good molds but really poor mats. The straight silicone works the best and is also the strongest. See down below for the next segment.

[@utahavalanch]

As to the Sluice. I have been working with a similar sluice and with some new tests I’ve been doing I’m making another one. You will be the first in on this info. I’m trying to get a new video out on it but new project ideas seem to be getting in the way. First make it a recirculating sluice that you can hook up a pump to. You can try a stream sluice but the water control is quite important on this one. Put a valve in about the middle of the hose to reduce pump turbulence and not at the sluice. You may need an 1100 GPH pump for that size of sluice. I use an 800 for my 10”. If you can use a 3/4” hose, Home Depot has a 3/4” gas valve that works like a champ. Back in their fittings they have a 3/4” nylon hose barb with an MIP thread that will allow you to hook up the hose to it. Use the 3/4” wood riffles and not the Silicone Mat. You can buy square 3/4” dowels at Home Depot in the molding dept. Or you can use 1x2’s if you want a wider top. Make another 8” finishing sluice to run the cons through and make the mat for that. 10" wide is just about the max for Silicone mats. Also make the 8’ just like the large one. Make the Slick plate deck out of 3/4” thick pine or something similar. Just not plywood. Sand it good and flat on the top. IMPORTANT: round the top edge of the bottom end so there is a good curve to it slanting down into the trough. Leave about 1/4” - 1/2” up from the bottom of the trough straight for good water action. This curving will guide the gold down into the trough with almost no chance of it getting out. If you can cut a bit of an angle on the riffles that’s good but not necessary. With this mod you should find all the gold in the first trough. If you find gold any farther down, then reduce the water flow. Now a new addition to the build if you want to make it and if you saw how it works you will definitely want to add it. Tape off the curved end on the well side. leave the straight part of the top un-taped. Then do the same with the bottom curve. Then paint the top of the Slick Plate with about 4 or 5 coats of Rustoleum Chalkboard Paint. Remove the tape. When you are finished you should have a smooth gloss varnish finish on the slanted part in the well going up to a painted surface and then a smooth varnish finish on the downward curved end of the Slick Plate. This is really something to watch in action. This can work with at least a screening through an 1/8” mesh screen. Works the best with screening to 4 different screens and adjusting the water flow for each. When you drop the material onto the slick plate, the sand and gravel will move right off immediately and the gold will stay right on the slick plate. Any gold that gets carried off will travel very slowly across the slick plate, down the curve and down into the trough. You can then brush the gold over into the Deep Well for safe keeping and snuffer it out later. This takes some getting used to when running as you put a scoop of material on the slick plate and about 5 seconds later you see all that gold sitting there nice and clean. Oh, yes, and you can also screen your material to the same size and then just feed it down into the deep well and adjust the water flow to just move out the lights and when they are gone all that’s left is the gold. Now you can do a cleanup and rerun the material from the riffles over it again or make an 8” version with the mat to run that material over. So there you go if you feel like playing Pioneer again. :-D Hope this helps.

[@stephaniedill9966]

@@utahavalanch Thanks for your reply utah. Yes it's all starting to come into focus. I had planned on a 3 step approach. 1) big mason tub classifier buried just under the waterline of the stream. The idea that has I shovel into the tub which has a screen on it the stream will carry off the lights. Kinda like what Alan does with his wheel barrel classifier. If theres no streamflow than it can be done manually with a bucket of water. The objective is to work large quantities of dirt easily. What 4 classification screens would you use? 2) classified material then goes into another mason tub that is set up as a rather large fluid bed to concentrate further. 3) Then whatever comes out of the fluid bed goes down the deep well sluice. Now as to the sluice. What I think you're saying is forget the under cuts and curve both the upstream and down stream sides of the slickplate leaving a 1/4 - 1/2 " flat section at the bottom of both ends of the slickplate...even the deep well side. Correct? I'm inclined to use 1x2 for a wider riffle and perhaps give them the same profile as the slickplate. Would you paint the tops of them like the slickplate? As far as the clean up sluice, how about making it as an extension that the primary sluice just sits down into. And figuring out a simple way to narrow and slow the water. Look forward to your reply.

[@utahavalanch]

@@stephaniedill9966 Hi Stephanie. Well, lets address each item in turn. Sounds like the big tub classifier would work well as long as you don’t get a stream flow that will wash away the fine gold before it gets into the tub. The screening depends on the size gold you are expecting to capture. They estimate that 80% of all the gold is in the 30 mesh and smaller. That’s what I go after. If it is like in my area and the gold is 50 mesh and smaller then it’s a waste of time and energy to process the larger material. I usually screen to -12 mesh and then 20, 30, and 40. Most of the gold I find is in the -30 and smaller range but I pan the +20 material just in case. I’m finding that I am working much less material now days and getting much more gold than I used to get in the old days of working like everyone else does. If you screen to -4 mesh and run your equipment for that size then you will blow out 80% of your gold. Run all +20 material separately from the rest. You can buy excellent heavy duty stainless steel screen on Ebay in the smaller mesh sizes. You may want to use 1/4 mesh screen to screen into your tub and then use smaller screens to reduce it down to run through your equipment. I use 1 gallon screener buckets to screen my material down. It only uses an 8” square screen which is inexpensive to buy and I can screen almost as much material at a time as the big 5 gallon size screens. Or you can use the 5 gallon screens to screen it down into 5 gallon buckets. The closer you get all of your material in a batch to the same size and adjust the water flow for it, the more success you will have. One thing to remember is that a 5 gallon bucket of dirt shoveled in from stream or bank only has at very most, 1 quart of useable material and only 1 oz that has any gold in it. Now days I try to reduce the material down so I only work the quart that has the gold in it. 1 drop riffle will handle the 1 oz with the gold in it quite easily. So I guess the bottom line I’m saying is to know what size gold you are working with and build and run your equipment for that size gold. See next down below

[@utahavalanch]

Fluid beds work well as long as you know how to use them. If you don’t they will flush oz’s of gold out the end. I know, you see a lot of people running them and getting some fine gold. Some is the key word. Most is blown out the end. I tested for 2 years in a closed environment and found they are very lossy unless run properly. I am currently running all my old fluid bed tailings and getting the gold back I lost. That’s why I moved on to Drop Riffle. Only work 1 screen size through them at once. Remember they blow out the fine material and only keep the heavies. If you have a mix of +20 material and smaller, then you will only have the +20 and maybe some 30 in the end. The -30 with the gold is out the door. Remember, fine gold is not as heavy as most people think it is. It is very light and easy to get caught up in water currents. See next down below

[@303prospecting7]

I feel like I'm in High school again nice job might have to try.

[@utahavalanch]

You might as well give it a try. It's pretty easy to do.

[@artforge1318]

Great video and advice. I would however use mould star 16 from Smooth-On to cast the silicone mat - less messy because you don't need soap as a release agent and it cures within 30minutes.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Dan and thanks for watching. That would probably work well. I’ll have to give it a try. It’s about 2.5 times more expensive than the silicone I use so it would make a large mat quite expensive. But it would probably work for small projects.

[@goldprounlimited1750]

Nice job excellent detail thanks for the video!

[@utahavalanch]

Thank you Gold Pro and thanks for watching. These work better than I had expected. Wonder if Doc will be putting one of these out? Just might try one in my Gold Hog :-D

[@goldprounlimited1750]

@@utahavalanch by the way I am from Utah and I assume you are too?

[@utahavalanch]

@@goldprounlimited1750 Yippers, I am. I'm in Ogden. Greatest area in the state for..................... hmmm, I'll get back to you on that. :-D I gather you are farther south where the gold is? Lucky. I can only get down to American Fork Canyon twice a year to sluice. Glad I have Urban prospecting to keep me sane and in dirt.

[@goldprounlimited1750]

@@utahavalanch AF Canyon is almost in my backyard! 😆

[@utahavalanch]

Gold Pro Unlimited Lucky dog you. I want to come and play in your backyard this summer. 😝 we like to go up there and camp at granite flats for a week at a time and several times a summer. Last year we got bigger and more gold out of the road gravel than we did from the river. There's a bit in the beach sand as well but it's tiny like the river.

[@lloydtapia3989]

Cool video. Thanks bud👍

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Lloyd. Thank you and thanks for watching. Silicone mats are great. I’m working on a new design right now. Have a great one. 👍

[@TANAXdirecto]

Good job sir.

[@utahavalanch]

Thank you and thanks for watching. I'm still testing these and they are working way better than the rubber mats.

[@piratedredger1857]

Inovation my friend, that's how it's done .well in buddy ,what a build ☠⛏⛏⛏💙👍

[@utahavalanch]

Pirate Dredger Thanks Pirate. ☠️ and thanks for watching. Fun stuff to play with. Hope your getting the good stuff over there.

[@RugratKiller]

Just a suggestion, dip the cardboard into hot melted wax. Then put it in the freezer until your ready to use. The wax will fill the interior gaps an a toothpick to clean your groves

[@utahavalanch]

Canadian Realist Thank you for your suggestion. I'll give it a try on my next mold. Thanks for watching.

[@williamgipson6558]

Just a suggestion, since you like to work with wood, how about using a router and making what you want out of solid wood. Cardboard doesn't seem like a good way to go. I like the concept though, nice video. Thanks

[@utahavalanch]

William Gipson I can and do, but this is for people who don't have a lot of tools and this is something that is easy to put together with materials that can be easily found locally and doesn't cost much to build.

[@CrazyChipmunk78]

Outstanding video sir! I wonder if a old washboard would work as a mold

[@utahavalanch]

Alvin Dunn Hi Alvin and thanks for watching. I think that it would work quite well and it's already waterproofed. 😄

[@bob.shylowprospecting9124]

Hi that is the best idea I've seen in a long time. Grate job. 🌛😭🌝😀🐕🚶

[@utahavalanch]

Thank you and thanks for watching. I build and test 3 or 4 different sluices a month and some are different sizes and it gets expensive buying mats. This makes it easy to make a mat to fit a particular mat sluice very easily and cheaply. It's easy to make to mats and glue them together to make a longer mat. Plus they are really durable and easy to repair if damaged.

[@jadekayak01]

I really feel ya on the cost of leggo

[@sergiitkachenko8976]

It’s very interesting to look at your work. A huge request, if you decide to make a new video, then in the comments to it please indicate the name of the materials you use. Knowing the exact name, finding an analogue will not be a problem. In other regions there are no colors exactly like yours, but It’s simply impossible to read in your hands. Thank you!

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Sergii and thank you for watching. I will certainly try to do better with my next videos. I have people watching from many different countries and the woods I use aren’t available to them so I suggest they use what ever is available to them. For all my projects I use cheap Cedar fence boards which is the red wood and cheap pine for the lighter colored wood. I build many of these projects and so the cheaper wood is more affordable for me. The glue I use is Tightbond III waterproof glue which should be available in many parts of the world. The Helmsman Spar Varnish may be harder to find but any waterproofing varnish made for waterproofing boats will work. The Silicone is GE type 1 clear 100% Silicone. The 100% Silicone is the most important. Any dish soap will work as a release agent. I hope this will help.

[@sergiitkachenko8976]

@@utahavalanch Thank you very much for your video and for your answer. It will help me a lot. Good luck and blessings to you in all your endeavors!

[@utahavalanch]

@@sergiitkachenko8976 thank you.👍

[@darrellgoodman9585]

Maybe try getting waxed cardboard like a lot of produce farmers use more resilient to water . Maybe you could make just a smooth flat mat for the Miller table try adding green dye to it see how it turns out .

[@utahavalanch]

Darrell Goodman Hi Darrell. You need regular cardboard so the Spar Varnish can soak through all the fibers. When it dries, it dries hard so you can us it as a mold. The waxed cardboard will collapse when you put pressure on it to apply the Silicone. The Chalkboard paint works much better as only the gold sticks to it and the black sand slides off. With the Silicone, both the black sand and gold sticks to it.

[@mewzishun]

Another great video. Thanks for sharing your ideas and giving us the benefit of the lessons you learned. I'm wondering if a mold could be made with bubble wrap. Would it give the kind of pockets the other guy was getting with the Legos?

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Tim. Thanks for watching. Yes, it could and it would be an interesting mat. Yes, it would make the pockets very nicely. I made a sluice with circles in the tops of the riffles a couple of years ago and they really worked well. I think if you took a medium or small bubble piece and popped all the bubbles on one side so it would set flat on a board and then glued it down with silicone and built the frame around it, it would work out very well.

[@johnnytoy5487]

I'm trying a different configuration for the PVC water bar, if it works I'll let you know. 👍

[@utahavalanch]

That sounds good. Let me know how it works out.

[@newbee1016]

Hi Utahavalanch, great build nice looking matt, I tried wetting my mould up before I put the silicone down, the matt turned out a disaster. I had to make an other mould. I waxed it all over and the matt was an other disaster. The miller table I was making is finished, gave it a try this afternoon, I have a small problem, the gold that we are getting is flat as flat, I have a pan at the end of the table to see if there is any gold been washed over the end. I am going to have an other play tomorrow. It looks good so far. Cheers Robert - Aust'

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Robert and thanks for watching. What problems did you have with your mold? You need to knead the Silicone in a bowl of soap and water for about 7-10 minutes so that it will set up. Also if you wet the mold very well with the soapy water the silicone shouldn't stick to it. Then just let it dry long enough. If it sticks to the mold after it dries, you might try using glycerine that you can buy in a pharmacy. It is kind of thick like syrup and will make a good mold release. With the gold on the Miller Table, be sure to have a valve on the water line that you can reduce the water flow with and keep the angle at about 3 degrees. I screen my material to the same size, then turn the water down and drop a little black sand the same size on the table. Then adjust the water so the black sand starts moving down the table slowly. Then it's ready for adding the gold.

[@newbee1016]

Hi Utahavalanch, there are a couple of issues that do not work for me, the silicone takes a long time to dry 1-2 days, and after waxing the mould and watering up as well the silicone still sticks to the mould in a way that it is very hard to get out. On my last attempt the silicone stuck that bad that it tore an lost its shape and was unusable. I will give the glycerine a try. The miller table, I have it quite flat and enough water to make the black sands flow off the table, I have the shut off valve in the middle of my hose like you suggested. I will be checking my pan that I have at the end of the table to see if there has been any gold washed off from my first run. I have my cons screened down to fly wire mess. Cheers Robert

[@utahavalanch]

@@newbee1016 Hi Robert. A long dry time sounds like very thick silicone and not enough time getting massaged in the soapy water. If your mat is thick, try to make one only about 1/4" thick to test it. Be sure you have about 25% Dawn or another dish soap mixed in the water. Also sounds like not enough dish soap in the mold. You can brush a thin layer of straight dish soap into the mold before you put in the silicone. You may have to try a different brand of silicone. Different brands act differently. Be sure it is 100% clear Silicone and not the tinted type. One thing I recommend to people just starting out with new Miller Tables and sluices, is to buy a package of paydirt from a good reputable company to run over/through it for the first time if they haven't run one before. Check out some of the KZbin videos of people testing paydirt to find a good one. I can recommend several but one is in Alaska and another is in New Hampshire. Don't know what the shipping would be like. They will have gold in them and when you see how the gold acts, then you will know for sure if you have gold or not. If you haven't worked with real gold before it's very hard to tell what is gold and what is not. Once you see it for real then you will know if it's gold or not. If the black sand is moving slowly down your table but the gold is washing off, then you most likely have mica. It looks like gold in every way but if you get it in the shadow it loses it's shine. If you put a piece in a gold pan and try to smash it with a spoon, it will shatter. Real gold will not. Even very small gold will stick to the table. I hope some of this helps.

[@newbee1016]

Hi Utahavalanch, thanks for your tips on the silicone I will give them a try when I get around to making an other matt, maybe tomorrow. The miller table is dialled in and catching the finest of gold that I can only just see. Thanks for the idea and the build video, I will be using this to clean my con's from now on. Cheers Robert

[@utahavalanch]

@@newbee1016 I'm glad to hear things are working out for you. Get a lot of practice on the Miller Table as it has a lot of capabilities. With my Urban prospecting, I run a lot of small samples to test different areas and it's a lot quicker and easier to just run these on the Miller Table. You can easily see very tiny gold that would be lost with many sluices. This new sluice I'm working on may be of interest to you as you are heading in it's direction. With this build under your belt and you get the hang of Silicone mats or you can use just any mat with it or do like I'm going to do and make it into a Drop Riffle Sluice. It's a combination Miller Table Sluice. I have been having a lot of fun with it.

[@drewconrad7093]

Use plaster of paris to push the cardboard into and make a mold.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Drew and thanks for watching. Yippers that would work as well.

[@NewfoundlandDetectorist]

I wonder if you could just spray the cardboard with something that would turn it into a flexible mat on its own?

[@utahavalanch]

Hi BC and thanks for watching. You may find something but the problem is, that it has to soak into the cardboard and keep it stiff and flexible. Rubberized compounds only sit on the top and don't soak in and the slightest weight on the cardboard crushes it down. Turning the cardboard into a hard mold was the best I was able to come up with. Actually you can use the mold in a sluice. It won't be very long lasting but it would work. You could actually build a sluice out of cardboard and waterproof it with the Titebond glue and Spar varnish. However something that works better is Rigid Styrofoam Insulation. I made a Miller Table out of it that works very well.

[@oleslewfoot]

I'm glad that you can sleep again, coolest video ever, will you be my Grandpa?

[@jjbailey01]

You could use a drop riffle sluice as a pattern to make a silicone mold. Then use that mold to make a silicone drop riffle sluice. You might need to use something different for a release agent. Or perhaps use resin instead of silicone for the finished product. I wonder how silicone would perform as a miller table surface using custom textures. Did you know you can dye silicone with food coloring? You can also mix it with corn starch to make it more durable, and easier to work with like a dough? King of Random has some good videos. He calls this silicone/starch material Proto Putty.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Bullfrog and thanks for watching and the comment. Yippers, I'm in the process now of making a mold for a drop riffle sluice. I'm playing around with different size riffles and troughs and trying to decide which would be best. Yep, decisions, decisions. :-D I have used different paints to color some of mine and it works quite well although it speeds up the setting time to only about 10 minutes. The problem with the starch method is that the silicone loses some of its metal "Stickiness" that makes it so good as a gold catcher. Yes, it works fairly well as a Miller Table and I have tried it. Problem is that it holds the black sands as well as the gold as they are metal also, so the hard deck with the Chalkboard paint is still the best in that regard. I am currently working on a Miller Table type sluice that has been one of my most fun projects to run. trying to get a video out.

[@jjbailey01]

@@utahavalanch I just found out Rust-Oleum has a clear chalkboard paint.

[@utahavalanch]

@@jjbailey01 That is interesting. I guess so you can have a customized color under it. We tried using Matt Spar Varnish on my grandson's sluice slick plate and it worked very well to catch and slow the gold down. Problem was that the gold blended in with the color of the pine and was hard to see. I have the colored Chalkboard Paint on my new sluice that I'm trying to get a video out on and it works very well as it's a strong color that the gold stands out well on.

[@jjbailey01]

@@utahavalanch I was thinking the same thing with using a custom under color. And it's about $10 cheaper for 30oz. than the black paint is for a quart.

[@utahavalanch]

@@jjbailey01 I have been using the quart paint for all of mine. You have to choose a color for them to mix it when you buy it. They have about 9 different colors for you to choose from. I like the green or the teal colors the best. Home Depot also has a little 3" roller set that I use to apply the paint. This is some pretty tough paint and I have been using it for painting outside wood items that are out in the weather all the time and it holds up better than the Behr outdoor paint. So that makes it ideal for prospecting projects like miller tables.

[@murraydupley9330]

I got a big truck mud flap, I'm thinking of using it as a mold, deep grooves/ corrugated. It is a stiff plastic, used and rough, I am wondering about needing a release agent, so the silicon doesn't sticking to it?

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Murray and thanks for watching. That should work fine for you. Yes, you will most likely need a release agent. I use Dawn Dish soap. I mix about 1/2 oz to 2 or 3 cups of water in a container. Brush it all over the mold. Then squirt about half a tube of silicon into it. And let it sit for about 1 minute. You may want to wear rubber gloves if you’re sensitive, then coat your hands with the Dawn soap and pick up the silicon and knead it like you would with bread dough. After a couple minutes, start pushing it into the mold. Push it into the cracks with your fingers and when crack is full press down hard with the heels of your hand. Then level to the top of the mold. When you have finished you can put the mold into your sink if it will fit and either run hot water over it or put it under hot water. Hot water makes it set up faster. Good luck with your build.

[@phillipjacobson4498]

There is a liquid rubber type stuff for sale, that is used to repair screw driver handles and put padded handles on other tools. May be worth an experiment. Its called plasti dip.

[@utahavalanch]

Phillip Jacobson Hi Phillip and thanks for watching. Yes, I have some and have tried it. It will work to make the mat but it is a little different material than the Silicone and the gold doesn't stick to it quite as well. But you can make a rubber type mat with it.

[@anagramconfirmed1717]

That's sweet af

[@bevanreid4005]

Thanks great video. In new zealand we have packing card board that already have the V on one side it comes in a roll for raping things when moving . If you can find it over there it would eliminate one step of the proses I will be giving it a try soon

[@utahavalanch]

Bevan Reid Hi Bevan and thanks for watching. That sounds like a great material for making mats. I haven't seen anything like that here so it must be a local material to your country. I'd be interested in how it works for you.

[@skippickens1843]

How did you get each of the ridges the same. Even looking at the cardboard you show the ridges are irregular as heck. is there a trick to getting each one kind of sort of the same shape?

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Skip and thanks for watching. When you wet the top piece of cardboard and pull it off, it pulls all the ridges up to the same height.

[@skippickens1843]

@@utahavalanch Thank you.

[@johnnytoy5487]

I know now where are Road Runner went to work after Warner Brothers let him go. He's now working for Silicone Depot. 👍The fastest shipping I have ever had.

[@utahavalanch]

I understand they have good service. I priced them about 4 years ago and found that I could buy silicone at Walmart cheaper. Now that Walmart has priced it so high, I may have to check Silicone Depot again.

[@johnnytoy5487]

@@utahavalanch #1 silicone 6 dollar's a tube. I bought 6 with free shipping, and the cardboard box corrugation is great for making molds. 👍

[@utahavalanch]

@@johnnytoy5487 Wow!!! Can’t beat silicone at half price with mat molds thrown in. I’m going to have to get in on that👍👍. I’m getting tired of Walmarts prices. Hmmm, now that I think about it, you could make the whole sluice out of waterproofed cardboard as well. That might be interesting to try just for fun.

[@utahavalanch]

Which flavor did you get? The Pro or the Premium?

[@johnnytoy5487]

@@utahavalanch premium industrial

[@dodgersfnshepard8673]

Excellent video brother! I though about this but wasn't sure how best to seal the card board. Just tops, keep at it and lots of luck with your mat. Would love to see it in action and results

[@utahavalanch]

dodgersfn Shepard Hi dodgersfn and thanks for watching. Spraying the cardboard with Spar Varnish works very well but you have to soak it good on the first spraying so that it soaks into and saturates the paper. Then apply additional coats to increase the strength. Watered down Titebond III glue will work also but it needs to be sealed with the Spar Varnish. I did a video with it right after this one showing it in use but another feature of the sluice sidetracked me. 😄 I am working on another simple sluice that folks can build and use this mat and others like it and I will test this mat a lot more. So far on my Miller/sluice, it has really held on to the gold.

[@johnnytoy5487]

What thickness cardboard do you start with? Regular or maybe a piece of refrigerator cardboard box.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Johnny and thanks for watching. I like cardboard with the largest corrugations. I look for the largest boxes I can find. The box used here held a bushel of fruit from a fruit farm.

[@UpcomingJedi]

Forget the box. Someone mentioned using a washboard. I know theres one laying around someplace which im gonna try out myself right now.

[@utahavalanch]

@@UpcomingJedi That would work as well. However it been many years since I’ve seen a washboard around so one may be a bit hard to find.😄

[@johnnytoy5487]

Using the same silicone as you use, and I'm still having trouble getting it to set up 🤔 got any tips.

[@utahavalanch]

Hi, Johnny. Well, be sure it says 100% silicone on the tube. There is a calking that looks like the silicone but it doesn’t set up. That is usually the mistake some folks make. Next silicone needs heat and water to set up. If you squirt some silicone into a bowl of soapy water and then gather it up and start kneading it like you would bread dough and dipping it back in every 15 seconds, you get it the water it needs. If the water is cool it will take longer to set up. If the water is warm, say about 80 degrees, it will start to set up in about 3 minutes and you have to work fast. After you get all the silicone in the mold and leveled, let it set up for about 5 minutes and then put it in the kitchen sink and run a light stream of water over it as hot as you can get until the silicone feels warm to the touch. Let it sit for about 15 minutes and then do it again. Do this about 4 times. If you can get the whole mold in the sink, you can cover the mold with hot water and let it set. When it gets to the point where when you press down on the silicone and it feels hard and not soft, it’s ready to go. I usually fill the mold at night and then go to bed as I get too anxious to get it out and ruin it if I don’t.😝 Hope this helps.

[@johnnytoy5487]

@@utahavalanch I'm using 100% GE clear silicone, same as you use, Dawn dish soap and warm water. It's still staying stickie and gooey. I only had one mat to set up. Still, I'm not giving up.👍 I'll make another cardboard mold and try it again.

[@utahavalanch]

@@johnnytoy5487 Wow!! You may have gotten a bad tube. I have gone through about 50 of those without a problem. I would just set it aside in a warm room and let it sit. I have heard from 2 others that they had batches that didn’t set up for several days in the winter. One of them contacted me last week. His finally did set up after several days by a heat vent.

[@johnnytoy5487]

Have you ever tried adding food coloring like some people do ?

[@utahavalanch]

Yes I have and the water based hobby paints that Walmart sells. They both work well but the hobby paint causes the silicone to start setting up rather quickly so you have to work fast with it.

[@johnnytoy5487]

@@utahavalanch SUCCESS 👍 The silicone setup fine today.

[@johnnytoy5487]

Now I'm waiting on the spar varnish to set up on the cardboard mode I made today. Thanks

[@utahavalanch]

@@johnnytoy5487 Congratulations. Glad it’s working out ok.👍👍

[@utahavalanch]

@@johnnytoy5487 Sounds good. Give it about 3 good Coates total.

[@steventamla2443]

How deep is this v mat you made from the cardboard?

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Stephen. The grooves are about 3/16” deep which is about double the depth of my Deep V matting. The thickness of the cardboard varies from box to box so look for a large box if you make one of these and want the deeper riffles. Companies that sell boxes and packing for shipping are good places to look for a box.

[@UpcomingJedi]

Instead of legos why not consider taking dimes, hotgluing them on tne edges just to keep them together, make 3 or 4 stacks to replicate the nubs then use it like a stamp

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Garras and thanks for watching. Yes, you could do that as well.

[@slimdanger7564]

I’d like to try this but I can’t find any cardboard as thick as what you have 😕

[@utahavalanch]

Slim Danger Hi Slim and thanks for watching. Yea, you have to find a fairly good size box for sure. I bought a half bushel of peaches from a fruit farm for mine. Check with Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's and shipping supply houses as they carry the larger boxes. An alternative is to make one out of square dowels like in my one video. Use a 3/8" square dowel for the frame and 1/4" square dowels for the cross pieces. That will give you a deeper mat that will catch more gold.

[@slimdanger7564]

utahavalanch Thanks for your quick response, I’ll try your dowel idea. Good videos. Thanks again 😊

[@utahavalanch]

Slim Danger I think the one video I just put out on how to build a mold should help you. I'm going to be making one with the quarter inch and 3/8" dowels but it will be a little while as I have several other others I'm currently working on.

[@slimdanger7564]

utahavalanch watching it now. Cheers

[@johnnytoy5487]

I think I found the problem, OUR buddy Allen said make sure it's #1 silicone, reading the fine print, GE 100% SILICONE comes in #1 and #2 . I found out #2 doesn't mix well with water 🌊💦👎🚫 hopefully that's the problem.

[@utahavalanch]

Well, that is good to know. He is the expert on this. I checked mine and there is a very tiny 1 on all of them so I hope I’m good to go. Nice to know about that. Thanks. I’ve only had one problem and that was when I bought a tube of discounted Silicone from Tractor supply and it didn’t set up properly. That was probably the reason. Good to know, thanks.

[@joesabourin7133]

Is there any reason you couldn't use plastic cardboard called coreplast

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Joe. Thanks for watching. I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work. I think that it would work well seeing as how it's already waterproof. Silicone sticks to some plastics quite well and so use plenty of dish soap and water on the mold.

[@joesabourin7133]

update the coreplast is not so good, the ribs are square so I'd wind up cutting out every second top leaving a square top not as good and harder to remove the silicone mat it was a waterproof shot.

[@utahavalanch]

Joe Sabourin I don't know Joe. Actually, I think it would work very well. It would be more like a conventional drop Riffle sluice which would be very good. Square riffles are better than curved and rounded. I am thinking of making something like it using 1/4" square dowels glued to a board. It would be a bit of work cutting the tops out of every other square, maybe with a utility knife or dremel tool but you would only have to cut about 3 inches wide and as long as the width of your sluice and then you could make multiple little mats and glue them together to make a longer one. I think I would still consider it. I may give it a try myself one day but I usually have about seven projects I'm working on all the time and run short on time. Let me know if you try it.

[@joesabourin7133]

The crosses run the wrong way to do short pieces but the 48X16 would work to remove every second top skin I'd be more concerned with removing the silicone with out damaging the silicone mat because of the square edges that remaining mold form

[@utahavalanch]

@@joesabourin7133 Just thinking out loud here. if you cut the top off from every other groove, you can take fine wet/dry sandpaper 220 and 320 grit and sand the edges where you cut it to be even with the walls and round off any sharp edges. To test, I would get a small piece and cut the top out of 2 of the grooves and leave one uncut in the middle. Then sand them. I'd only do a maybe 2" or 3" long strip. Then get a small amount of silicone and work it in the soap water for about 7 -10 minutes. The longer you work it in the water the less sticky and harder it becomes. Then brush straight dish soap into the mold or get glycerine from a pharmacy to spread in it for a mold release. Press the silicone into the grooves and smooth off. It should take a couple of hours to set up. That way you could see if you can get the silicone out of the mold and how it would work for a mat. Then you can decide whether or not it's worth investing time and energy into. If you can get only get small pieces like 6" or 8" square, as a mold, you can mold a number of these pieces and glue them together to make a wider or longer mat. This stuff is real easy to repair or glue together. You might even be able to squirt strips across the top of a piece of this plastic to make riffles the height you want and the space between you want. Once you get to thinking about this, the more things come to mind as you go through your day.

[@erichiles9568]

So far about 30 bucks worth of glue and varnish

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Eric and thanks for watching. That sounds about right with the prices today. It’s getting pretty expensive to build things nowdays. Hope it works well for you. After using Silicone mats for the past couple of years, I’ll never go back to rubber.

[@johnnytoy5487]

Using the same you use and

[@briandeighan5237]

Hi m8 can u mees me bk .please need advice Or can u make me a mat please

[@utahavalanch]

Hi Brian. Thanks for watching. what do you need help with?

[@JamalKhan-cv5kn]

Helo techar daray vashr

[@utahavalanch]

Hello Jamal. Thank you for watching.

[@JamalKhan-cv5kn]

Goold veel

[@utahavalanch]

Thanks and thanks for watching.

[@CalebP618]

More like U mats

[@utahavalanch]

Caleb Poole Thank you and thanks for watching.