Dream Mat Combo Sluice Fail!? Finding Limitations With Placer Gold Lead Test!

Good video bro, if you are not to confident on the Dream mat,
You should take a good look at the Miracle mat... it sort of looks the same but is Not.
Take care and enjoy the adventure....

I think the biggest thing is really just to understand how a sluice works. Then this would be a no brainer... Dream mat still the way to go..

read that dream mat asks for 7-12 ° angle that's steep?

The only thing I could say is. The big 3 flat pieces that floated out. When you shoveled them in they sat at the top the. You had to force them to move. Reality if you seen that wouldn’t you have just pulled those out?

I'd like to see a test with Tungston, I understand that it behaves just like gold in the sluice/pan

You don’t find flattened nuggets… try it again

The way i see it . Dream mats are the best general use mats. you still need to match size to the material Size and water flow or use multimats . if you know your specific needs and will be repeatedly dealing with the same or similar situations , goldhog matting will let you dial in your boxes for those situations. no matting is perfect. Most people suggest a saftypan when possible. Dredges are very inefficiant because of their short wide boxes and always lose gold. the only real fix is making a much longer box .

Vickie and Ryan's gold adventures here. On tight budget, and I traded a to heavy and bulky for me dredge for a 1 1/2" highbanker dredge combo. Wanted to purchase a combo dream matt but, $ and taxes and shipping stopped me. I already had a big heavy long dream matt Incan never get pitched right nor have enough water flow to use.
Could just be me. So I decided with the highbanker extra water flow I would cut the matt I already owned but never use. Surprise it was exactly the right size. And it is the big not combo dream matt.
Was happy to hear someone already discovered what I was wondering before I lost any gold. Thanks. Appreciate the test.

What if you left it the way you first had it set up with less water flowing through. Having gold situp in the flair seems like a good thing.

How much does that cost ?? I wanna buy a sluice

hello sir, I just bought this combo product for France. I'm also a little disappointed. Much more detailed instructions from the seller are missing! . I notice that if the flow is too slow, the rifles open their mouths, if the flow is faster, the rifles open their mouths, in return the fine gold flakes tend to leak from what I have observed. I saw that it had a slope of 9 to 9.5%. It remains very difficult for the 2 smaller rifles! the vortex should work better. I will add that the carpet I ordered is 8x36, it does not respect the dimensions! 36 goes to 34 so really 2inch difference 😂

with my experience with dream mat I've come to the conclusion it just isn't what the hype makes it out to be I use the gray the green and micro purple and unless you classify it to 1/8 it just fills up and clogs the cells and gold blows out you can't beat expanded metal and moss with v rib or goldhog matting I feel I wasted my money buying dream mats

Your angle is way too steep. With that short of a sluice, you shouldn't have much angle at all.

Miners moss over a v mat kills the Dream mat. Doesn't have to catch gold, just catch the miner.

wounder if ya can classify with just using the sluice ?? or do they make one that works that way..

Keep in mind that pure lead has approximately a little more than 1/2 the density of pure gold. The density of gold is what keeps the gold in the sluice. If you want to really see the difference use flat gold.

Would the size/shape/surface area of the piece of lead have something to do with it? Seems it would act like a "kite" the sluice box. I just ordered a 10x38 combo sluice, so I hope that's the case! LOL

Not sure why you think this is a problem? Clearly, you spotted all of them and could have just picked them out. Gold would be even easier to spot.

0.1 grams can be found with my detector first

Excellent video, and I respect the honesty. It's a rare thing nowadays. So that's why I am gonna ask you for your opinion, and why I am subscribing. I live in the northeast where there supposedly isn't alot of big pieces of gold. It's more the smaller stuff. I dint want to waste money and I am taking this up as another outdoor hobby cuz the VA said get outdoor more. So, in your opinion is a 36 inch long sluice suffice? And, which mat do you recommend that I get for up here. This way if I get on the gold I don't loose it. Thank you!

Interesting test, but it immediately stood out to me that you are testing the mat for pieces larger than it's designed to capture. The mat alone is good if you are in an area where there is little chance of finding larger gold pieces.

I am so glad to see you do this lead is a great test i use number 12 rat shot the smallest you can get. You can also vibe the sluice to get better results. The dirt I’m on has to be vibed I’m on a platinum deposit and the pure black sands I’m on are much bigger than the gold causing it to be just as heavy as the gold meaning my gold won’t settle out

Run more water. 3-4x..
more vigorous the water the less shit gets packed in the cells, but it keeps the black sand, and that’s what you want. Chunk of gold to fall on the black sands, and because of the swirling motion(activation) of the cells the gold will sink though the sand and boot some sand out

Looked like a good "real world" kind of test for flat pieces. I bet if you are in a place where flat pieces are common, a safety pan at the sluice outlet would be a good place to catch anything that managed to bounce that far. Sure, it'll load up with the gravel, but, when it's 1/2-2/3 full, just buzz the metal detector over it before you discard the rocks.

Awesome test! I use dream mat, i have the dredge mat and river mat they have big cells, anything smaller than that might be good for cleanup sluice. After seeing this worrys me about flat pieces, have you done this test with gold hog?

To be fair, half of the big lead pieces sat still right at the top before the mat and you had to dump on top of it multiple times to get it to move. If you saw a dime sized gold piece like that sitting there at the top, you would be too busy shitting your pants to put dirt on top of it to make it move.

I believe 8 mesh is what you should screen the gravels to. But with the wrong angle, water flow or over feeding will cause gold loss. I'm not a fan of the multi mat. I don't know how having a mat with a different size cell is meant to work with the same water flow & angle. I'd maybe understand it it had a wider area with the smaller mat.

It would be better to use tungsten shot — available in the fishing supply sections of sporting goods outlets.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do a test of this mat / sluice with the gold hog mat at the end ,catching what this mat may lose. And then flip the test to the gold hog mat / sluice in the 1st position, running into the dream mat.
My theory is these sluices are not long enough. I think with this test there is soo much to learn.

I hope my request makes sense lol.

I will now like and subscribe to hopefully see the results. Thx bud. Keep up the good work. 👍

My only problem is that you used lead in the creak risking losing it to the environment. Should have done a collection of tailings to ensure no lead went to river….

Length of sluice - minimum of 4 feet long

When we watch these videos, why is it 90% of the authors are always running brand new off the shelf equipment like they are professionals like this one?

where do you get the rotating magnet?

You need to read up on fluid dynamics you mats the wrong way around as water flows over the mat it slows down so the large mad needs to be first that the fastest flow big nuggets capture also with a short sluice you should just use the larger mat

Honestly though, if there are actually nuggets so big they don’t fit in the cells, who in their right mind is just going to keep piling more material in and just watch it slowly roll out?? Anyone who is tending the sluice even halfway decently is going to immediately stick their booger hooks in there and fish it out… in the header before it even gets to the mat.

Cool stuff man thanks for the adventures 😎👍💯💥⛏️

Great test! Seems like something to do every time you set up the sluice! I may try it

Large pieces of heavies should end up in the large cells. If you have large gold then you have the wrong mat. You would need a vortex mat.

The people I see on YT using this mat successfully dump their soil slower and spread it back and forth. You seem to be rushing.

I'm not sure whether my dream mats captures my typical micro gold. I'm going process a couple buckets at home and catch the tailings to see what goes through

Your first problem is you're feeding it backwards. Never ever shovel Your material with the flow of the water, you slow it backwards against the flow in the flare.That's what stops and slows the gold

I always use a 'catch pan' at the bottom of my sluice a 15" pan with miners moss in the bottom, you wont loose much at all with ANY sort of mat..

probably different results with the bigfoot series of dream mats

Useless test brother, they would never made it past the classifier!! Lol PS...Most of us use 1/4 classifier screen

THOSE ARE SOME HUGE LEAD "Gold" FLAKES!

Shit mat.

Dream mat is for clean up for me. I use a regular miners moss and riffle sluice at the creek. Pan out and snuffer the big stuff it catches and run the cons for the little stuff that’s a pain to pan.

Very fair video definitely gotta pick the right mats for the gold that you’re looking for or that you have in your area. For me, I have a lot of fine gold in my area so the dream mat works great.

I'm not really worried about a mat not hanging on to big pieces of gold, 'cause I'm going to see those and pick them out pretty much as soon as they hit the box. My little dream mat backpacking sluice is my favorite one out of the six sluices I've got, mostly just because it's so easy to clean out. The main issue with dream mat seems to be the tendency of little pebbles getting stuck in the wells.