I have 2 buckets of dirt i brought back from Arizona in july and I keep sorting thru it and every time I do thta I find more fine pieces of flakes that I cant seem to get with a tweezers or panning or any other trick I have tried does any onyone have any ideas how I can get this gold out of the dirt there is enough to make it worth while to get ut but noting is working I even tried using my rock tumbler to see what would happen any ideas would be apprieciated
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I have a gold miner spiral and have just finished running 10 gallons of concentrates I brought back from the Klamath. The gold I was on was all under 20 mesh. It took three run throughs but it came up with clean gold down to what you could not see untill it piled up. You must classify down to at least -40.
one other thing george try only working a teaspoone of material at one time it does help a lot if your useing a small finish pan like mike said
These are all specs of gold. there is no black sand in the picture. It takes a lot of practice but eventually you will be able to finish pan those specs under the R on the dime where 20 of them will fit inside the O in the word God. Honestly its all practice.
http://www.goldprospectorsspace.com/photo/mossing?context=user
George you should be able to pan out anything visible at 50. Are you using a smaller finish pan? Its really hard to get the small stuff out with a large pan.
This is from when Goldless came back from Alaska:
I do it like this till i get down to where there is a two inch wide corner of blacks in a finish pan and then just go slow on the panning. sometimes i will have a dozen of these pans to work. most times around 6-7.
http://www.goldprospectorsspace.com/photo/running-cons?context=user
The rubber mat on the A19 isnt like the kind you put under miners moss. It is square bottom groove and just a little taller and the humps are rounded. Unlike a mini drop riffle the rounded humps allow the black sand to hop off the table but the matting has a tiny texture to it and the gold stays put. You can still get it on ebay but mining stores usually never carry it.
Use dollar store dish soap or rite aid dollar dish soap. It's not capable of washing dishes but a drop in the middle of the pan does wonders.
To pan -100 down to the smallest you can see with a 10x loop, put a light behind you> I use a floor lamp with a low arm. when you stratify the gold hold the finish pan with your dominant hand only and stratify. The gold will be under either the right or left side of the pile. swirl the sand off with the water coming to the side of the sand with the gold till the first spec shows and moves and stratify again. shake the loose sand into the bottom of the pan without disturbing the gold at the top and hold the pan straight up and down and dip the lower half in water until it falls away. dont worry about the gold. it will stay at the top while your dipping. then scoop a little water back in from the bottom of the pan. When you get town to the size of pile about half a cut green been in size stratify again and spread it thin in the corner of the pan. they gold will still be on one side or another. thats the side you watch. Now you hold the pan on a 22 degree angle. with water in the bottom you send a wave gently to the top. it will bring a tiny water fall of sand back with it. as you make each wave your going to watch for the first particle to come loose but the gold wont go very far. Tip up and down and rinse as before, then stratify and wave more. you only really have to watch the place where your dominant hand lands the gold to see the first spec fall a little ways. You will see what i mean about 22 degrees. If you add more angle the gold will fall all the way. not enough and the sand takes forever to fall with the waves.
Remember these are concentrates so your going to be working in a closed loop. But each time you run a size and batch you clean up and keep them separate. Otherwise if some got through you have to screen everything all over again. I used to use a board with sides that had cuts from a cabinet blade on a radial arm saw and the kitchen sink sprayer and it was free and mostly worked. I got the casluicebox bucket concentrator and the A19 this year because even though I ran off the board into a plastic tub and didnt lose any i felt it was a pretty irresponsible use of drinking water.
I would say use the bucket sluice concentrator to get the piles as small as you can. or if you can get that mat for your miller table cheaper I would go with that. either one will trap the sub 100 particles really well as long as you feed slow.
Mercury works but dont use the old style round retort or a retort that requires the output tube to be under water. They can explode if your flame goes out and the cooling sucks water back up the pipe. Buy one of the newer ones with a square top you can add ice cubes to. Then it rolls out in balls into a jar with just about no vapor. still do it outside and work from up wind or with a fan on low in the back ground pushing air down wind. just to be safe.
Finish panning that tiny stuff is a real skill. about 90% of the folks use a wheel or blue bowl which is fine, but if you every get out in the sticks for a while its good to be able to reduce things as small as possible without being dependent on a machine. Learn the skill first, then if you want to spring for a blue bowl or something you have the skill for life.
are you classifiying it if not do so down to 30, 50, and 100 pan each one seperaet from each other it shouls help you a lot
I even use a #70 before the #100. That way, the gold remains the heaviest thing in my pan.