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I'm stuck in Kansas and was thrilled to win the Nome dredge cons.  

A few years ago, a friend from AZ gave me a finish pan and some black sand.  Even though it had no gold in it, I caught the fever anyway.  For several years, I've been reading and studying prospecting and mining.  

Since we are about to have a long cold winter, I'm going to spend some time really hammering that dirt.

I panned a couple of teaspoons and found out that the gold is TINY.  I quickly realized that I needed to classify it.  First I used a kitchen strainer about 15 mesh.  I was surprised to see a few 1/2 inch rocks.  Another trip to the kitchen yeilded another about 22 mesh but the holes are 1mm.

As I classified the cons, I got cloudy water like clay or silt.  I noticed that some of it settled quickly.  So I captured it for future investigation. After it settled, it looks like even finer sand.  Which means probably finer gold.  

There is very little magnetic material and little black sand.  Doc makes it look so easy, backwash and tap. My panning skills are improving.

Jet Dry is your friend

Oct 16th

I've finished the cons, panning it twice.  Tiny bit of TINY gold.  All the gold went through the 1mm screen
Sorry about the crappy pic.  It's really hard to take a picture of something so tiny