HELP
Hi folk. Dave and I finally started to work the cripple river cons yesterday. There is a LOT of super fine beach gold in this stuff. When I say super fine I mean 100- minus minus. I spent almost 10 hours trying to seperate the gold from the fine cons caught by the gold cube up at cripple river. We only had maybe 1 1/2 cups of this material. It is all we worked with all day. I used the 50 mesh classifier. Then I used the 100 mesh classifier for what went through the 50. With the 100 minus material I went to work. I set up my homemade miller table and started to put the material in. But no matter how much or how little water I ran or the angel of the table I really could not get the gold cleaned out or seperated enough to clean it. If I put a very small amount of material in and just let the miller table run it would clear the whole table eventually and at best almost flat it still spit gold out the end with almost no water flow. Dave came over about noon and grabbed the material that was sitting in the 100 mesh screen and spent about 5 hours trying to get the gold out of it. About 5pm he handed it to me and said good luck. I have several different designs of pans and used all of them. But still nothing, although I did learn what pan I didnt care for at all. I have pictures I was going to upload last night but I got way to tired and have them ready to upload tonight. Our problem is,,,,,, this stuff is so small that just about anything washes it out of the pan. Dave was threatening going and getting his mercury that he has. But I asked him to hold off until I can get some help from you all. I even been thinking about a furnace to melt everything???? Also this stuff floats like crazy. Any contact with air and it is all over. We used almost 1/2 of a small bottle of jetdry yesterday alone.
What can you suggest for us to try?
Replies
Check my website at www.blacksand2gold.com You are the type of person I really want to talk to but I am not will ing to post details off the process on the forums. What I really need is about a quart of sample (less, if it contains good gold). Keep in mind that, for most samples this size, it will cost me far more to test it than I will recover as gold. The whole idea is to evaluate YOUR material to see if it is viable for YOU.
I posted earlier on this. Wanted to add that I have a couple Falcon pans that I put a swirl circular finish in the bottom and sides with progressive grades of sandpaper from 100 grit to 400 grit. The smoothest pan with the fine swirls will help stabilize the particles from too strong backwashing and tapping. Like Doc at Gold Hogg says on one video tip. I'll sucker up blacks and gold when it's fairly concentrated, then repan that later in the winter when it's too cold to go outside. Usually use a headband magnifier, spotlight, a comfy chair, and lots of jet dry.
I tried the blue bowl and miller table and a lot of other gadgets on the micro gold but results were not as good as patient careful panning a half teaspoon at a time. Everyone's putting good tips here. Thanks.
I've had similar challenges with ultra fine gold and micro black sand from the Bradshaw Mountains. Maybe the bedrock creeks just chew everything up. I've also tried the Miller Table, also the Blue Bowl, and everything else. Under a microscope, the micro gold is flat shaped so I can see how they easily get washed away in water current on the Miller Table and Blue Bowl.
An experienced member in this group reminded me again to classify everything down to powder size. Even a magnet doesn't work for super fines as the fines get picked up with the magnetite. I ended up going back to the Falcon pan and can get it out by careful backwashing and also using a not too strong magnet under the pan as I backwash to encourage the fine black sand out of the mix.
This is micro gold and I have gallons of ultra super cons that are filled with it. When it's wet it looks like sparkly india ink. Takes tons of patience as maybe a half a teaspoon in a Falcon pan is more than enough to work with at a time. Same as you, Jetdry and a safety pan. I use magnifying glasses on a headband. Nuts. Just nuts. But it can be done.
I keep saving it up for winter but when winter comes I head out prospecting anyway and the ultra super con buckets gets filled up. I was thinking of selling it on ebay but can't imagine who would want to pan this sparkly stuff because it's such a pita. Can't throw it away so it's for another day. Oh well.
I don't have much experience with this method but I've been looking into it quite a bit recently because this is how my old man has done his river work. He gave me a few tips and pointers but said that in the end it just comes down to getting a really good gold cube and not settling for something used/pre-owned. Said it was the best way to handle really fine sand. I figure "really good" means "really expensive" but I was able to find a pretty good deal online at the gold rush trading post website - goldrushtradingpost.com/gold_cube. A friend of a friend has this one and says it works great but I'm not quite sure where he works. Either way, I'll be getting it soon so I'll keep you posted on how it goes.
Kay, just to throw this out to you. I have a post in the Daily Deals that anyone who buys a Gold Cube from me via this site. I will donate $20 of the sale to Tim for support of this site. I feel the Gold Cube IS the best tool I have.
I got at bucket of material from an old mining area. The bucket was just digged and screened down to about half inch. The gold in the area was found in sulpide ore that was crushed to powder an then extracted.
Her is the panned out losses from the gold cube
And here is the total amount of gold from one bucket, without the losses.
As you can see there is alot of very fine gold. In the microscope the size is around 200-600 mesh. So if you have a lot of material that contains fine gold the cube is something to have in mind when you are about to buy equipment. But you still have to be able to pan out the cons from the cube.
Mercury is BAD for you, your family and the enviroment in many genarations, also you get less gold than using chapman or borax flux. Please dont ever use mercury. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Sawj0HyF0
This ISN"T the 19th. Century Anymore!! You could have said "Don't handle Mercury if You dont Know
What the Hell Your Doing" Your reply is only revelant to those (Like Yourself) who are Aware of the Dangers
of Mercury and (Do Not) Know how to take it down and recover all of it Without realeasing any of it's vapors!!
Yeah, You take your 1 1/2 cup of cons and put it in a mason jar with about 1 tablespoon of mercury, (I always Zap my mercury with a 9 Volt Battery) and set it by your favorite T-V watching chair and shake it for an hour or two.. Or put it in a rock tumbler and let it spin all nite.. Next day put that in a pan, using your tablespoon pluck out your mercury then pan thru it to make sure you got all the merc. and you dont see any gold left (Which You Wont) Now take that blob of mercury place it in a small glass jar (Baby Food Jar) works great, set that aside and use it again (the same way) untill it gets all lumpy and doesn't roll around good, squeeze it thru a chamois cloth and
I think you know what to do with it Now!!
I suggest you to melt it with Chapman flux, the gold will separate from the blacksand in the crucible. Her is one of many videos that discribe this method https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_AjDqp9-hA
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