does anyone know how to build a home-built dredge for coins or gold?

I would like to experiment with building a home-built dredge for dredging coins out of creeks or river beds. It'd be nice if it could also double as a gold dredge. Anyone have any ideas or plans?

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OK,you need to understand how a dredge works first. A dredge sucks everything off the bottom of a creek or river. gold is 19 times heavier than water so as the dredge brings up material, The gold concentrates behind the riffles of the sluice box everything else gets washed out the back.

Dredging for coins is out, but dredging is labor intensive, and the best way to recover gold, once you get down to the bedrock, and hit the crevices real good. You take the concentrates from the sluice in the dredge, and recover the gold. I personally haven't gotten any coins dredging,but it is a matter of time and luck.


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Whether or not a dredge is practical for recovering coins from a creek (or even a wishing well or fountain), modifications could be made that would allow for coin recovery....the principles involved in "vacuuming" the material from the river bed or sea floor are the same whether you're recovering gold nuggets or sunken treasure.   The differences are going to lie in the optimal discharge pressure and/or the addition of screens to prevent coins from washing back in to the water body.

Personally, I'd think that unless you were planning on sucking up a whole lot of coins at one spot, using a dredge would be overkill.......but if you want to do it, the plans in the links provided would still be good starting points.

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i built a small portable dredge, materials used, i came across a hobie one person pontoon that had a frame and a aluminium plate for a motor,for fishing for $150.00, i had a fertilizer spreader laying around and used the molded container for the hopper with a 3/4 inch screen on top with a formed uluminium fastened to the top like a highbanker, the sluice box was a keene a51 in which i put a smaller screen below the hopper to catch the finer gold. the sluice box costs about $110.00, the screen didn't cost because it was off a old gas heater. the motor i use is a 2 1/2 4-stroke honda engine which cost $525.00 the water pump is built in it and is a gas engine, i use a suction nozzle where you hook up the water pressure to the nozzle which creates the vaccume suction, $100.00 for nozzle, flexible hose costs about $2.50 a foot and i use about 12 feet of 1 1/2 inch hose. the hose, the other hose came off a carpet cleaner machine which is about 2 1/2 or 3 inch hose that fits on the end of the nozzle and is hooked up to the hopper box. with everything it cost about $800.00 whereas a small keene backpacking dredge will cost $1200.00 plus shipping. I live in wyoming and have used it to get gold. hope this will give you some ideas on how to build a dredge.

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You need a Permit to operate a dredge in most states if it is even allowed.   

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