Aaron,
You are only limited by your imagination.

PVC for the spray bars is inexpensive, what does get costly are fittings, valves, Ts, 45s.
We bought a BBQ grill, cut it to fit, grizzly.
Bought a sluice stand, made some longer legs.
As long as your not going to use as a dredge, a cheap trash pump will work fine for water flow.
Maybe some punch plate at the top of the sluice before the riffles.

Ideas and experimentation are half the fun.
Might keep you in the shop longer 8)


Bill

Here's an image of my build. I made the hopper and the sluice, then as I was having trouble matching my riffles to each other I opted for Gold Hog matt. I use a 1 inch pump and have enough water at idle to do the job. I like the open ended Pipe to prevent clogs, and made spray caps to put on the ends, making sure my holes are equal in collective size to my pipe diameter. I use the caps for running different materials, that have more mud or clays. As for grizzly bars they are closet shelf material that I sized to fit my hopper. I like the grizzly's and it's easy enough to fasten smaller mesh of what have you with plastic flex ties when I want to classify smaller. I bought a 36 inch sheet metal brake at harbor freight and the aluminum sheet at a local surplus store. Watch the thickness or you will not be able to bend it. All in all had as much in my build as a smaller factory built high banker , but had a finished high banker that was to my specs.

Nicely Done. I have thought about using closet maid type material for Grizzlies. Adding in a modular/adaptable spray system is near genius

thanks for the advice! I will try to post pcs when mine is finished!

Good luck Aaron, There are many items out there that you can turn into a suitable hopper, it all depends on what you have on hand and what you want to spend, Look around farm supply stores, I once made a hopper like you talk about out of a horse feed bucket that was square and had an angled opening at the top. If you have any stores that carry farm supplies check in there. Think about the weight. I chose aluminum sheet, which is surprisingly weighty, I opted for aluminum nuts and bolts to hold it together, as I found pop rivets didn't hold as well or pull the metal together well. Another thing to consider is electric or gas pump, car jumper packs are much lighter than car batteries for bilge pumps. Check out you tube for ideas, then take all the ones you like and build it, It will be interesting to see what you come up with. If you haven't done so yet, join your local GPAA chapter, I see you are from PA, so there is a chapter near you. local chapters don't charge any fee to belong.

One modification that I plan to make to my Keene Highbanker Dredge combo is to add springs (1/4"-1/2" in length) at each connection for the hopper and a similar spring under the punch plate, between two washers so that we get a little vibration while the rocks are washing down the grizzly and across the punch plate.

Everyone has their own ideas as to how they want to set up their high-banker.  The one most important question you want to ask yourself is: Am I going to classify materials before I put it into the hopper?

When I designed my first high-banker I didn't take into consideration the weight of stones shoveled into the hopper.  With a 16: wide grizzly, the use of undersized rods was foolhearty as they quickly sucame to the weight of a full #2 shovel load, one after the other.  So rods were replaced with a plasma cut 1/2" slot 1/4" thick plate to absorb the weight.  This worked great for the weight, but allowed too many unwanted rocks/pebbles to work their way in and fill in the first foot of riffles.  Enter stage 2: A piece if 1/4" punch plate angled directly under the grizzly, but above the hopper mat.  The welded angle support allowed the oversized material to wash down the sluice body and be discarded.

My high-banker is 16" wide, and 102" long.  It's in three sections and is fed by a 2" spray delivery system with 6 different classification style riffles, and 4 different styles of matting.  It can also double as a 4" dredge/highbanker in shallow streams/rivers.  Years of tinkering will only leave you with more questions:  What do I do to improve on yields?    You'll always be asking yourself what next.  Ideas from others help only so much.  You've got to go out and run your construction in the field to determine, What next?

I hope this helps.  Saludos!

Sergeant Major Nichols (R)

Gary,

I bet more than just me would love to see some pics of your creation.

Thanks!

I have been working a lot and short on cash, but up till now I have managed to come up with this. I got a good deal on the diamond plate  aluminum and im only into this project for about 50 bucks so far. I still need to buy the grill grate to make the grizzly bars out of.. I don't think it is too bad considering I only have a jig saw and a drill to work with.

Looks good so far ! 

It's been a while since this was posted, how did it all turn out ???