Welcome Andrew,

In my opinion, forget crushing ore, those days have moved on, unless you have tonns of ore to process
It's still out there, the rules and regs depending on your location, plus the effort to retrieve the minute color is not worth the return

Again my opinion
The angle of the box will depend many things
#1 Water flow, how much and how fast will determine angle
#2 size of box, will dictate amount of water flow, determine angle
#3 size of material your feeding will dictate water flow, angle

"A piece of foam" is not representative of rocks gravel sand ect
Run some rock sand gravels through the box
Depending on the size and design of the box
dumping a scoop of material on the front of the box
the materail "should" clear from the slick plate area onto the "V" matting in front of the first riffle within 10 seconds + -
clear the first riffle shortly there after, then the second riffle so on and so on
you want to see the material behind the riffles dance with water running
My guess is that the set up you have in the basement is not flowing enough water at the present angle
How wide is the box ?
Again my opinion,
forget the burlap, it will ware out over a short time
forget the miner moss, entirely to difficult to clean thoroughly
find you some deep groove matting behind the riffles, I use a matting the has a deep cut then a shallow cut, square ridges
Shallow v matting up front for instant recognition of values
I classify to 1/2 minus, maybe an 1 1/2" of water through my box in a creek
not a real comparison

Bill

As far as the punch press, I would certainly use it for field samples. I take different samples and crush them in a mortar and pestle, but it is time consuming, so the press would speed that up. Looks like there is no way to run a large amount of material through it. I think it will turn out like William Hall suggested and you won't find much, but sampling for hard rock is part of a process. In all the hundreds of samples I've crushed, I have only pulled up a speck or two of gold. There's always a hope though.

For the sluice, I have a Keene A-52 sluice, which I think is 12 inches wide I run indoors. I used a couple of 12 VDC bilge pumps, probably a total of 3000 GPH, and I never got enough water going to use the riffles, so I went with a ribbed matting, or a ribbed matting with expanded metal. With that, never found much to speak of. Sluicing is more of an art than science. The rules of thumb I use is first, water twice the riffle depth, and second, flowing fast enough the heavier black materials Dance either between the ribs or riffles. You can test this with some BBs or other small pieces of lead. After a bit, I used a 110 VAC waterfall pump that pushes much more water. The bilge pumps are not really designed to push water up and down, so moving the water vertically from the bucket to the sluice lost a bit of power. The waterfall pumps pushed so much more water. If I wasn't in the dessert, I'd like to use a Gas powered water pump that starts moving water in Gallons per minute, not per hour.

Thank you both for your time and knowledge. My sluices are 8 inches by 30 inches and 8 1/2 inches wide by 18 inches long. I have the deep v groove matting and regular or small v groove matting also. I can get a 4 foot long 12 inches wide sluice pretty quick. The sump pumps im using might not have enough flow or force to push bigger material so im going to bring it down to right around sand size.

8" would make a good clean up sluice
my clean up sluices dont use riffles, are around 18 " long

My stream box is a keene A51 10" x 32" if I remember correctly with modified riffles and altogether different solid rubber matting
smaller box than the keene 52, but way easier to set up in smaller creeks and requiring less water
If I ever replace this, I would consider Hog mattes, pricey but worth if they work as advertised
I also use a water fall pump for my cleanup, if you buy one, make sure it does not have internal oils
Had a summers worth of cons contaminated before I realized where the oil came from, oil and gold is not a good mixture if you want to recover gold

Bill

Ok thank you. I have pictures of the sample rocks from the yard. Is there a way to post them for comments or info on wether they are worth crushing. Aloth of white quartz with yellow and brown. Alot of pyrite on red quartz and other rocks. And couple with iron and pyrite etc.