Building a new sifter

[MuckyBottles]

Im feeling quite industrious..have some 1" PVC , noodles and hardware cloth laying around..do i want to go big "24? or do the normal size, like this one "16..feedback appreciated. 

[SPrice]

First off, it's your call.

 

My feedback...I just grabbed a tape measure and 16" to 18"  seems close to natural for me.  A 20" screen might be the max that I would build.

 

Some thoughts: what is your matrix like? clayey?, gravelly?, sandy?,  or a combination of those?   A 24" screen, in my opinion, could max out the weight capacity and stress load on any of the build components. 

 

For instance, the bigger surface area of the screen might lead one to "overload" it with enthusiasm - thinking more to sift at a time is better - maybe not.  The extra capacity will add stress regardless of the matrix type.  The added weight is the factor.  The screen and attachment points are going to collect the stress and wear.  Also, it may wear the sifter out quicker...meaning you, the operator. 

 

Another thought on bigger is to install a cross bar into the PVC frame and also add bigger or more zip ties.  Good to go.

 

So if you're game to go 'BIG', then by all means.   Whatever you decide, show us what you build. 

 

Disclaimer: I am not an engineer.  But I have stayed at a Holiday Inn. 

[jcbshark]

Definitely a few ways to go about this. Some will depend on what you’re sifting. I personally like a deeper basket so I can push it down and float the leaves out without risking losing the heavier material

[SPrice]

UPDATE : Here's @Shellseeker  with his sifter floating nearby him in the river.  It sure looks like 28-30" across to me at an estimate.  Maybe the experts will chime in and suggest what size works best for them.

 

[Shellseeker]

So,  it depends on what exactly what you want to do... 

1) Is it important to you that the weight of your sifter is low ? If so,  why

2) Do you want to process as much gravel as possible based on your age , weight, strength?

 

Each person is different... 

I want to move as much gravel as possible for me. It is not rocket science.  More Gravel per unit of time means more fossils. 

 

I walk in to LOTS of sites. If I am walking in, I take a sieve that is as light as possible to reduce energy I expend to walk a possible 2-3 miles to a chosen location. 

 

IF I am taking a kayak or powered boat on the Peace River, I take a 24x36 Stainless steel screen,  adding heavy duty buoyancy. Basically,  as long as I have the shovel in hand, I want to load 6 shovel full of gravel on the screen and I expect the screen to float. 

 

After about 4 years as a fossil hunter, I and friends decided to figure out by measured experiments how fast we processed gravel across a 6 hour day of hunting. It is easy.. Count the shovel fulls,  count the sieves and keep track every time out. Vary the size and buoyancy of your sieve. 

 

Bigger sieves , more buoyancy paid off. 

 

 

[Balance]

In that photo mine’s actually upside down. I have screen on both inside the “basket” and on outside of the bottom. In shallower water load the bottom instead so you don’t have to lift the sieve up out of the water to search. You just push down to clear the waste and it pops back up above the water. Totally Jack’s technique. Actually, it’s his partners technique but I happily have adapted it. 

3/8 is fast enough to really run rock and find enough stuff to stay happy . 1/2 inch is faster. You got to decide if you wanna find everything or if you just wanna run as much rock as possible to find big stuff.  Personally, 1/4” is best if you’re really looking for everything out there. 3/8” will cut your small teeth count in half. 1/2” will remove almost everything except the big finds.  I think the size is like 24x24’’

Here’s normal operation 

 

 

 

[Shellseeker]

54 minutes ago, Balance said:

Here’s normal operation 

Agree.  This is a low weight version.  Plastic, Large Pool noodles, and zipties.  No extra weight, except the gravel and the fossils..

[MuckyBottles]

On 4/22/2024 at 11:37 PM, Shellseeker said:

So,  it depends on what exactly what you want to do... 

1) Is it important to you that the weight of your sifter is low ? If so,  why

2) Do you want to process as much gravel as possible based on your age , weight, strength?

 

Each person is different... 

I want to move as much gravel as possible for me. It is not rocket science.  More Gravel per unit of time means more fossils. 

 

I walk in to LOTS of sites. If I am walking in, I take a sieve that is as light as possible to reduce energy I expend to walk a possible 2-3 miles to a chosen location. 

 

IF I am taking a kayak or powered boat on the Peace River, I take a 24x36 Stainless steel screen,  adding heavy duty buoyancy. Basically,  as long as I have the shovel in hand, I want to load 6 shovel full of gravel on the screen and I expect the screen to float. 

 

After about 4 years as a fossil hunter, I and friends decided to figure out by measured experiments how fast we processed gravel across a 6 hour day of hunting. It is easy.. Count the shovel fulls,  count the sieves and keep track every time out. Vary the size and buoyancy of your sieve. 

 

Bigger sieves , more buoyancy paid off. 

 

 

Bigger for the purpose of spreading out the gravel easier, my eyes are going. I never go over two shovel loads per any of my sifters..I went with 20".

[MuckyBottles]

On 4/23/2024 at 9:00 AM, Balance said:

In that photo mine’s actually upside down. I have screen on both inside the “basket” and on outside of the bottom. In shallower water load the bottom instead so you don’t have to lift the sieve up out of the water to search. You just push down to clear the waste and it pops back up above the water. Totally Jack’s technique. Actually, it’s his partners technique but I happily have adapted it. 

3/8 is fast enough to really run rock and find enough stuff to stay happy . 1/2 inch is faster. You got to decide if you wanna find everything or if you just wanna run as much rock as possible to find big stuff.  Personally, 1/4” is best if you’re really looking for everything out there. 3/8” will cut your small teeth count in half. 1/2” will remove almost everything except the big finds.  I think the size is like 24x24’’

Here’s normal operation 

 

 

 

Bread racks seems like the ticket for my next project.

[Shellseeker]

3 hours ago, MuckyBottles said:

Bigger for the purpose of spreading out the gravel easier, my eyes are going. I never go over two shovel loads per any of my sifters..I went with 20".

Makes sense. All your gear fit for purpose

3 hours ago, MuckyBottles said:

Bread racks seems like the ticket for my next project.

For weight and durability, nothing better than plastic, pool noodles and zipties. If you walk in frequently, that’s the ticket 

[MuckyBottles]

43 minutes ago, Shellseeker said:

Makes sense. All your gear fit for purpose

For weight and durability, nothing better than plastic, pool noodles and zipties. If you walk in frequently, that’s the ticket 

90% of the time i walk, except on Saturdays....i walked 6 miles upstream on Thursday..gotta go where others don't 🤣

[digit]

My first sifter when I went out in the Peace River to learn how to sift for fossils many years ago with a fossil guide (Mark Renz) had a wooden frame and no noodles. Mark encouraged hunters to work in pairs with one holding the sifting screen and the other shoveling (swapping tasks back and forth). My sifters evolved from this form. I use 1"x3" wood to make the rails for the sifting screen. I buy 8 foot lengths and cut these into 5 pieces each a tad over 19" long. I pre-drill and use long drywall screws to fasten the 4 sides together to make the frame. This makes the square 3" high and very roughly 18" inside dimensions. I have a staple gun which I use to tack the mesh (either 1/2" or 1/4") securely to the bottom with plenty of staples which I drive home flat with a hammer to make sure the screen is tight to the bottom. I use super long zip-ties to secure pool noodles to the outside of 2 sides of the sifting screen--I have to cut away a small section of the wire screen on 1/4" mesh to fit the large wide zip-ties through (no need on the 1/2" mesh). The other 2 sides I do not attach noodles to which would aid in buoyancy but the large diameter noodles make the sifter difficult to grip comfortably (even for my large hands). I often staple strips of foam to the other two sides for comfort. The foam insulation they use for water pipes can work well for this padding. A reasonable size lanyard loop (I use parachute cord available at home improvement stores) attached to the corner of the screen completes its construction. If I'm digging solo, being able to either attach the lanyard to myself (or more usually loop it over the handle of my gravel probe) allows the sifter to maintain position in the river current while I'm shoveling gravel into it. Too little buoyancy limits how much material you can load into it before it starts to head for the bottom (requiring some shaking to drop out the sand before continuing to fill it). Too much buoyancy can be a pain as @jcbshark noted since you'll probably have to push the sifter under the surface and move it horizontally to float away the lighter leaf debris.

 

If you have any desire to search for micro-fossils (some cool finds that most folks overlook searching for the big prizes) you can take 2 screens with different mesh sizes and stack them. I generally use a 1/2" or 1/4" screen on top and I like to have a larger (2'x2') separate piece of fine window screen mesh (~1/16"x1/16") which I place over the lower sifter before stacking the upper sifter. It's a bit more tricky to get the matrix through the upper sifter which is now sitting well above the water surface but (without too much buoyancy) you can push this down and shake it around to separate out the larger material. I'll look through the top screen for any larger fossils before focusing on the matrix captured by the window screen. You can lift out the loose window screen by grabbing it with 2 corners in each hand. It is then easy to lift this screen out of the lower sifter and you can shake the material from side to side and dunk it in the water to clear out most of the sand. The mostly clean micro-matrix can then be easily transferred into a bucket to take home to search later.

 

When I harvest micro-matrix I usually give it a wash at home by transferring a smaller amount into a separate 5-gallon bucket and flushing it with fresh water from a hose. This floats out more leaf debris and some of the finer silt. After a few washes once the water clears out of silt and the leaf floaters are gone, I pour the rinsed micro-matrix onto a tarp in my driveway. In the summer sun it doesn't take too long for the matrix to be nicely dried--I'll often rake it around to encourage even drying. More of the fine sand can be removed at this point now that it is dry. You can either run it through a piece of window screen or do what I do and classify the micro-matrix through a stack of sifting screens that fit perfectly over a 5-gallon bucket. Separating the micro-matrix into uniform size classes aids in picking through the matrix to find tiny treasures.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

P.S.: Sets of green classifying screens can be found on Amazon and is one of the best purchases I've made to help me with (micro-)fossil hunting.

[MuckyBottles]

thanks for the replies, the new 20" helped me find 9 megs and a mako..or maybe it was just her giving me some luck. I told im taking you next to dig some privies 🤣

[MuckyBottles]

On 4/27/2024 at 8:50 AM, digit said:

My first sifter when I went out in the Peace River to learn how to sift for fossils many years ago with a fossil guide (Mark Renz) had a wooden frame and no noodles. Mark encouraged hunters to work in pairs with one holding the sifting screen and the other shoveling (swapping tasks back and forth). My sifters evolved from this form. I use 1"x3" wood to make the rails for the sifting screen. I buy 8 foot lengths and cut these into 5 pieces each a tad over 19" long. I pre-drill and use long drywall screws to fasten the 4 sides together to make the frame. This makes the square 3" high and very roughly 18" inside dimensions. I have a staple gun which I use to tack the mesh (either 1/2" or 1/4") securely to the bottom with plenty of staples which I drive home flat with a hammer to make sure the screen is tight to the bottom. I use super long zip-ties to secure pool noodles to the outside of 2 sides of the sifting screen--I have to cut away a small section of the wire screen on 1/4" mesh to fit the large wide zip-ties through (no need on the 1/2" mesh). The other 2 sides I do not attach noodles to which would aid in buoyancy but the large diameter noodles make the sifter difficult to grip comfortably (even for my large hands). I often staple strips of foam to the other two sides for comfort. The foam insulation they use for water pipes can work well for this padding. A reasonable size lanyard loop (I use parachute cord available at home improvement stores) attached to the corner of the screen completes its construction. If I'm digging solo, being able to either attach the lanyard to myself (or more usually loop it over the handle of my gravel probe) allows the sifter to maintain position in the river current while I'm shoveling gravel into it. Too little buoyancy limits how much material you can load into it before it starts to head for the bottom (requiring some shaking to drop out the sand before continuing to fill it). Too much buoyancy can be a pain as @jcbshark noted since you'll probably have to push the sifter under the surface and move it horizontally to float away the lighter leaf debris.

 

If you have any desire to search for micro-fossils (some cool finds that most folks overlook searching for the big prizes) you can take 2 screens with different mesh sizes and stack them. I generally use a 1/2" or 1/4" screen on top and I like to have a larger (2'x2') separate piece of fine window screen mesh (~1/16"x1/16") which I place over the lower sifter before stacking the upper sifter. It's a bit more tricky to get the matrix through the upper sifter which is now sitting well above the water surface but (without too much buoyancy) you can push this down and shake it around to separate out the larger material. I'll look through the top screen for any larger fossils before focusing on the matrix captured by the window screen. You can lift out the loose window screen by grabbing it with 2 corners in each hand. It is then easy to lift this screen out of the lower sifter and you can shake the material from side to side and dunk it in the water to clear out most of the sand. The mostly clean micro-matrix can then be easily transferred into a bucket to take home to search later.

 

When I harvest micro-matrix I usually give it a wash at home by transferring a smaller amount into a separate 5-gallon bucket and flushing it with fresh water from a hose. This floats out more leaf debris and some of the finer silt. After a few washes once the water clears out of silt and the leaf floaters are gone, I pour the rinsed micro-matrix onto a tarp in my driveway. In the summer sun it doesn't take too long for the matrix to be nicely dried--I'll often rake it around to encourage even drying. More of the fine sand can be removed at this point now that it is dry. You can either run it through a piece of window screen or do what I do and classify the micro-matrix through a stack of sifting screens that fit perfectly over a 5-gallon bucket. Separating the micro-matrix into uniform size classes aids in picking through the matrix to find tiny treasures.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

P.S.: Sets of green classifying screens can be found on Amazon and is one of the best purchases I've made to help me with (micro-)fossil hunting.

so you are using gold classifiers? 

[digit]

40 minutes ago, MuckyBottles said:

so you are using gold classifiers? 

Yup. They are sold to help folks panning for gold to classify the material into very even particle sizes. This way it is easier to pan away the lighter material and leave the heavier gold given the uniformity of grain sizes. Though that may be the primary use, the availability online makes these easy to acquire. When picking through matrix it is most efficient to work with an even matrix granularity. Tiny fossils can't hide behind larger bits of matrix. There tend to be different types of fossils in different size matrix so it helps to focus your search image as well.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken