I became interested in these “Gold Suckers”, “Hand Dredges” or what ever name you choose to call these by, about a year and a half ago. I built a 1 1/2 inch model to try it out. After trying several different designs I settled on the one in this video. I have been working with this one for a year now and found that it is a pretty solid design.
For the most important part, the plunger, I have found that the best material to use is a leather pump cup designed for water pumps. You can find them on Amazon or Ebay or just google them. Just do a search for “leather cup”. They come in all different sizes.
I use the plumbers test plug here and I have found that next to the leather cup, it works very well. The big box store Lowe’s and Amazon carries this Oatey brand and you will need two of them. You can buy just one and grind the large part down to fit but I found it’s much easier to just get two and use the smaller ends. There is a very small band around one end of the rubber part that needs to be sanded off in order to work smoother.
If you are trying to get material out of a fairly fast moving stream, these units are hard to beat. You can reach out in a stream and suck material out from under the rocks without getting wet. They will reach down into a deep hole that would be inaccessible except for scuba gear. Wonder if a big nugget could be waiting at the base of a small waterfall? Easy way to find out.
If you use a 36 inch body tube like I did here and need more reach, you can buy a 5 or 6 foot tube and the plunger and end cap will work just fine with that.
If you decide to build one, I think you will really like it. It’s rather inexpensive to build and If you have the drill bit on hand for the end cap, it only takes about a half an hour to build.
The super sucker nozzle will really move a lot of material and will keep a sluice going very well. Enjoy.
UPDATE: There is a new video update on replacing the plumbers plug with a Leather Pump Cup which works much better than the Plumbers Plug. You can see the update here: