This past weekend I found a new prospecting site. Test pans were giving me good gold so I dug 2 five gallon pails of sand to take home to work with. The Sand I took home is screened to 20 mesh. After testing 2 table spoons of the sand ( which is acting like clay) I could see hundreds of microscopic pieces of gold. I mean hundreds. -100, -200 I have no idea but they are small. I can not pan this stuff. I even tried my miller table ( video included)
Do you suggest classifying it down to a smaller mesh even more? I think this sand and gold are about the same size.
I need help! I have 10 gallons of this stuff and want the gold!
Replies
mtau my thoughts were the same but i didnt want to sayand cause any hard feelings or a debateable disscussion
I would say that what you've got is mica. Gold would be easy to separate from the blond sands. Even pyrite would hang with the black sand.
My screens, 1/2, 1/8, 1/20, 1/50, 1/70, 1/100, 1/200. I use the 1/2" in the field and sometimes the 1/8, and all the rest back at home. Black sands need to be the same size as the gold otherwise they push the gold out of the pan. Dickb
Tim what happens when you shade all those glimmering specks, do they still sparkle, or does the sparkle go away?
by all means screen down as small as you can go then run it classifying is the key to all gold recovery rule #1 the smaller the gold the smaller the classification you need if its that small when i find it i usualy just run it through mercury then retort it