Gold in heavy black sands


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Hey guys..... I hope this is ok to post in this area, if not I guess it will be moved. I have tried a few things to cut this heavy black sand from my gold but I'm not having any luck with it. Anybody have a method they would like to share I'm all ears. I used a blue bowl to rid the blonde sand,I've used mercury for some but thats a pain as well. Panning is useless,just so much gold in the sand. Probly 5 or more ounces in what you see here.

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I used to put a magnet in a sandwhich bag. The black sand would stick to it amd then id pull the magnet out over a trash can and the sand would fall in trash. U can by magnets witj a squeeze handle thays made for this. I usually do a little at a time i a pan witj water. Move it i circular motions to make sur u drop gold stuck in the black sand.

John

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I think I'm a very proficient panner and here on the east coast we have many different types of heavy minerals making up our blacksands, the common magnetite, hematite, garnet sands, and many others sands that are even heavier than the common heavies and I have no problems getting the gold out of these just using proper classification and panning techniques.

From what I see in the photo it appears to be no more than cup or so of cons and if there's 5 ounces of gold in them I would think that 1/5 of the cons would be gold, maybe it's the photo but I don't see much visible gold, some of the lighter color pieces could be gold but hard for me to say from this photo, if I'm correct and not much gold is visible most of the gold is under the other heavies, this tells me that the heavies are not nearly as heavy as the gold, which is usually the case.

That being said, what is the mesh size of this gold?

if the gold is very fine, what I'm seeing is the other heavies are much bigger in size and the key is to separate the larger blacksand out with screen mesh/classifiers (pan the larger material for gold of that size) to the point the black sand is very close if not to the same size as the gold, if the gold and the other heavies are the same size panning is a breeze and the gold being much heavier will stay back as the lighter material washes out of the pan, at this point with proper panning techniques most if not all of the blacksand should be easily panned out with regular panning and with using the "Tap and backwash" method to pull the gold away from any remaining blacksand and then sucked into a snuffer bottle, there are several great videos on YouTube on sightly different tap methods to achieve this final separation of the blacksands, below are two of my favorites videos of these tap methods, with using classification, and these methods you should be able to easily get 90% or more clean gold out of the blacksand on the first or second panning of the cons, a few more panning steps with the finest of the gold (200 to 300 mesh) will result in 95% to 99% recovery, with anything finer than 100 mesh I would recommend using a fine gold pan such as the Falcon Cleanup pan and of course classifiers of that size before attempting to pan these mesh sizes.

Falcon Cleanup pan.

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https://youtu.be/0Cbiiohp5bQ

https://youtu.be/PnBSn-BHzOU

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Thanks a bunch guys!!

Gubelube,I have run magnets through and have removed damn near all the magnetic stuff.

I don't have a gold screw Grub,and I don't have enough cons to make a purchase necessary in my book.

Great vids Gold Seeker, I have panned most of my life and tried those tricks. I think I will get some classifiers and get it classified so hopefully it can be panned down. I was curios to know if anyone has made a slate table(miller table) on here with good results? Just a small one of course. Thanks again guys for the info it's greatly appreciated. NVRADAR

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Classifiers are expensive but window screen is about 20 mesh, also many kitchen strainers and screen type colanders and well as very fine tea strainers can be used to go down to about 50 to 70 mesh, finer classification would take more finer screens.

It will take some practice to get the tapping methods to work well for you, but it is worth the effort once you get it working!

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nvradar, wow, now that's some rich black sand concentrate. Can you share more of the story?

Below is a link to posts on another forum by AzViper of Treasurenet. I've seen and used this miller table AzViper built for a friend. It really works good. All readily available materials.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/400309-making-miller-table-using-rubber-mat-surface.html

Mike

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Thanks Gold Seeker, I have a surplus store in Reno so they aren't to spendy. I have the bounce and tap down good but the sand and other crap(lead) just doesn't move like it should. I have found that alot of the grey stuff is gold as well so I need to grind it a bit to free the gold. I'll post some pics when I'm done so give me a couple days ok.

Delnorter, thats a slick set up, I'm going to see if they have some slate or matting as well. Thanks a bunch for the effort of posting those! Easy quick and cheap!!! lol!

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The GPAA has a sluice made from rain gutter with black ribbed mat. You spoon the concentrate in and the black sand ends up further down the ribbed mat than the gold does. I made one about 20 years ago and it works better than anything else I have seen.

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Thanks Ron, that was my next move.

So the first pic is just screened bigger stuff. The second is after mashing it with a round handle screwdriver for a while. Cleaned up pretty well. The green pan is the finer stuff.

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Buy yourself a cheap Harbor Freight cement mixer, leave the paddles out, and get a cheap bowling ball from a thrift store($5.00). Grind it for a while, and run it through 30, 50, and100 mesh classifiers. Pan each classification seperately. Works for me! ;) Hendo

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Well I tried the ribbed plastic pipe....it all sat in the ribs. ha. Building a small Miller Table now so we will see how that works. I appreciate the offer Hendo but that's a long drive.

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Hey fellas I found this little miracle called a rod mill. Randy Clarkson did some research on this as well as "improvements". If it really is this simple.....

As you can see from this thread I was trying to figure something easy to separate my cons. Even though I don't have enough to run through this rod mill I thought someone else could have a bunch more to clean up. By the sounds of the study it really does a job. The simplicity is what has me shaking my head. We all have this stuff laying around. NVRADAR

Hendo you have the right idea!

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Hendo I'm going the furnace route with this stuff. Been learning some things on you tube. Seems to me the very simplest and best way to get all your gold out of that dang black sand. There is a Chapman Flux made just for getting the gold in black sands. NVRADAR

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