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The material drops into a trough after being fed into the mud box, the highest point on the plant. Mixed with water, the material creates a slurry that is pulled through the plant with gravity. The journey through the Wizard mixes the material up and loosens the gold. It rushes around the first corner and runs down the chute over the top nugget catch. The larger nuggets now start to fall out of the slurry and get caught up ino the riffles of the nugget catch. This method of placer gold mining works because the gold is so much heavier than the surrounding materials. When mixed with water, the lighter materials flow right through the plant so much of the sediment ends up in the tailings ponds. Gold, the heaviest material in the mixture, accumulates wherever it can find a place to hide. The gold plant is just a big mixer that gives the gold a place to go.
Occasionally a larger rock or clump of material will come through the material and get stuck, causing a minor detour. Scott keeps a number of pike poles that are used for poking and prodding these stuck pieces to keep them moving through the plant. The poles are also useful for breaking up any material that is stuck together, loosening up the gold and letting it drop into the nugget catch.
The plant was designed and built entirely by Scott in his Watson Lake back yard over a two month period and hauled to Holloway Bar on large trucks. This plant was designed to be run by a couple of people, but because of the sight lines and strategic placement of mirrors, it can, in a pinch, be run by a single person. But, this is a lot of work and the miner puts a lot of miles on his boots keeping an eye on things and keeping things cleaned out and working efficiently.
After going around the corner and passing through the top nugget catch, the remaining material runs through the trommel. The trommel is a large tube that rotates on a set of tires driven by an old VW 4 cylinder diesel motor pulled out of an old Rabbit car. The trommel acts like a big corkscrew and mixes things up even more. Most of the remaining material falls through a screen at the lower end of the trommel and passes through the sluicebox, which is the primary exit point for all of the water and lighter material passing through the plant.
You can see a pile of nice, clean rocks about 8 to 10 cm in diameter gathered at the end of the trommel. These rocks were too small to be filtered out at the grizzly at the top, but too big to drop into the sluicebox, so they end up here. The lead hand (the second minor on the job) comes and cleans these rocks off from time to time. Much care has to be taken, though, because it's entirely possible that one of these rocks could be a very large gold nugget.
