Blogs

What is this red sand?

Posted by Dan Davis on September 10, 2013 at 2:23am

Hello all. We went panning yesterday. We had little luck in the stream we were panning in, until I found a layer of black sand and black clay in the stream bed. While panning it down to the black sand, we found a red sand that is hard to pan out of the black sand. While we did find some VERY small "fly poop" gold, we are wondering what this red sand is and why it is so difficult to remove from the black sand and gold. At first I thought it might be ruby sand, but if it were it would not be so hard to pan out, as rubies are not anywhere near as heavy as gold, or black sand. Does any one know what this sand is? Is it red gold? Is it just crap? Help me out here. 

Thanks,

Dan

E-mail me when people leave their comments –
Follow

You need to be a member of Goldprospectorsspace to add comments!

Join Goldprospectorsspace

Comments

  • Larry October 8, 2013 at 2:53am
    The red sand is garnet. You just have to pan it out just like you would the black sands. They use those garnets in sand paper also in industrial applications. They are worth a little also look for the larger ones that could be cut for stones. When panning these out you will find that stratophing your material the red sands are lighter than the black.
  • Dan Davis September 23, 2013 at 10:39pm

    Thanks for the info everyone. It is VERY hard to pan out and it does plug our riffles when we sluice. Thanks again. 

  • Bob Drake September 21, 2013 at 8:29am

    Without seeing it, I would have to agree with the others. Can be a real pain to deal with. Here is some of the Swift River Maine garnet in my sluice. Bungs the riffles up solid...ugh!

    2960235105?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024

     

     

    2960235410?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024

  • durant September 19, 2013 at 8:14am

    yes I would have to go with John, and Keith on garnet sand, we get it all the time in SD.

  • John Dorval September 19, 2013 at 3:27am

    Yes I will have to say that it is ground garnet, I find lots of that in Maine it makes for some very heavy panning.

  • Dan Davis September 11, 2013 at 2:05pm

    Thanks Keith. I did not think of that. Any ideas on how to remove it without losing all of the black sand?

  • Keith Skunda September 10, 2013 at 9:59am

    My guess would be crushed garnets. 

This reply was deleted.