black sand clean up

[M3R1IN]

I was out prospecting in Montana last weekend
and there was this old guy who just showed up and started sluicing upstream from me a ways
He seemed friendly so i decided to go chat with him
he gave me a lot of useful info and let me pick his brain about the local geography and different techniques
he saw that i had a large amount of black sand and said i should take some nitric acid to that and i would be amazed at how much gold would release from the lot. I explained that i am canadian and that nitric acid and mercury are very difficult to obtain here without a business licence
I am wondering on procedure for cleaning black sands with nitric acid and if anyone knows any industrial applications for nitric acid
whereby i could obtain it with less difficulty?
thanks

 

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[djui5]

Here is a site explaining the process. Nitric and Mercury are extremely harsh chemicals and should be used with the utmost caution:

http://www.paprospector.org/blacksandremoval.htm

 

[Jeffro]

Heheheh! Tom was a good buddy of mine a few years back. Very knowledgable man with interesting tales, too. Disappeared though.... haven't heard anything out of him in oh maybe 5 years or so.

Be careful using nitric and merc. Its safe if you follow the directions to a tee. Mess around and it could cost ya a trip to the hospital.

 

[Wallace J]

Good morning young man. I too have a large amount of black sand. They say depending on which area you reclaim your gold and black sand from can determine how much gold is present in the concentrate. As a basic rule of thumb, four out of every ten grains of black sand is oxide covered gold.(micron but still gold) I have found that by using a flux and heating the mixture in a kiln I can recover all the gold or platinum values. You get some pretty glass out of it too. The flux is made from chemicals you may have around your home or shop. Salt Pieter(potassium nitrate) is sold as stump rotter in garden stores. Borax can be bought off the grocery shelf. And finally silica sand is usually sold as grit for sand blasting. Mix as a formula and place the mixture in a crucible. Apply heat to the seventh cone and let the mixture cool slow. Glass is formed from the process and has a tendencyto cool quicker than the metal, so it sometimes pops (really hot!! may stick to you, let it cool!!) I tried the method with two table spoon fulls of black sand, equal part of flux and voila' after the melting and the cooling. I had a disk of gold the size of a dime and half as thick. I collect my black sand all year and smelt it in the fall. Out of a ten pound jar we got three pounds of gold. It still needed assaying but they pay you separately for the platinum and we have alot of platinum in our local streams. Have fun, be extremely careful.

 

[djui5]

whoa


What's the formula for the flux?

 

[Functional]

whoa


What's the formula for the flux?

There are a variety of formulations for flux based on the material you are smelting. Study these links and you'll have a better idea:
(You might want to copy and paste the contents of these pages into notepad, or Word, so that you have them handy for future reference.)

http://www.prospectorsparadise.com/html/assaying.html

http://webpages.charter.net/kwilliams00/bcftp/docs/assaying.htm

http://www.nuggethunters.com/blacksand.html

http://doccopper.tripod.com/gold/blacksands.html

Browse the rest of the above websites for additional information, as smelting isn't the only method, its just a good one for those who have a safe place to work and are careful.

This link is to a free eBook on Assaying that I naturally posted in the Free Stuff forum awhile back:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18751/18751-h/18751-h.htm
(Its a long download of about 450 pages, if your on dialup like I am, but worth it.)

F.

 

[djui5]

Thanks buddy! Got some black sand to process

 

[Functional]

I was out prospecting in Montana last weekend
and there was this old guy who just showed up and started sluicing upstream from me a ways
He seemed friendly so i decided to go chat with him
he gave me a lot of useful info and let me pick his brain about the local geography and different techniques
he saw that i had a large amount of black sand and said i should take some nitric acid to that and i would be amazed at how much gold would release from the lot. I explained that i am canadian and that nitric acid and mercury are very difficult to obtain here without a business licence
I am wondering on procedure for cleaning black sands with nitric acid and if anyone knows any industrial applications for nitric acid
whereby i could obtain it with less difficulty?
thanks

Hi M3R1IN

The other responses, (including my own), really didn't cover all of your questions, so here goes.

Nitric acid has numerous industrial applications, including but not limited to those uses mentioned on this webpage:
http://www.scorecard.org/chemical-profiles/uses.tcl?edf_substance_id=7697-37-2

I don't know if you have any provincial regulations limiting your ability to purchase chemicals, but I haven't encountered any limitations here in B.C. In the past, I've directly contacted chemical distributors and I've been able to obtain most any chemical I needed at the time. When contacting a supplier, don't be afraid to admit that you are a prospector/miner, (the holder of a license for this purpose), and offer to provide your prospectors/miners license number for verification.

As long as you sound like you know what your doing, (have enough of an understanding of the dangers of handling chemicals, in a safe environment), and have a reasonable and legitimate use for the product, you shouldn't have any problem. Unfortunately, some of the chemicals that are used for our collective legitimate purposes, also have illegitimate uses which cause others to be on the alert for illegal activity and the law abiding people are the ones that suffer as a result.

F.

 

[M3R1IN]

thanks so much for the feedback guys
Functional, yeah i know what those illigitimate uses are for those chemicals i want and thats the problem here
everyone ive contacted about them seems to think im full of it and want it for some sinister purpose. I am sure sick of a few bad apples ruining things for the rest of us.
I have a question about using flux in a kiln and such.... where would one obtain a kiln? or access a kiln... its not something thats exactly easy to find round these parts on the plains of Alberta.
thanks again

 

[M3R1IN]

oh i forgot, one more thing
not to toot my own horn or anything, but i do know how to handle hazardous chemicals properly
3 years in a photo lab and 1 year in a industrial lab have taught me a lot
thanks for your concern though

 

[Functional]

djui5, let us know how things turn out for you. If either you, or Wallace J has info on building a kiln suitable for smelting those black sands, I'm sure M3R1IN and others would like to see how they go together and what materials you use?

M3R1IN, if I recall correctly, you can make nitric acid using sulfuric acid and something else, but then you have to get the sulfuric acid from somewhere? If they don't want to sell to you without the business license, theres not many options available. Showing up in person at a supplier would likely be better than phoning them, as they likely want to see who they're selling to and have a chance to copy your I.D. and check you out.

If you just want to get small quantities for testing, my old post in the Nugget Hunting forum has a few links for assaying kits and you can order individual bottles of nitric acid and other chemicals from them. The link to my post is here:
http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,76324.0.html
The first link in that post are to a Canadian supplier, but I don't recall which of the others are Canadian.

Regarding your question, "where would one obtain a kiln?", most people doing small scale smelting build they're own. A typical DIY (Do It Yourself) backyard kiln / furnace for smelting iron, or black sand containing gold, silver, platinum, etc., is usually metal lined on the outside, sometimes has a manually removable "lid", but is also found with a mechanical arm, or pedal to lift the lid clear. The inside of the kiln, (and its lid, if it has one), can be lined with firebrick, or molded/formed with a high temperature cement that is readily available.

Regarding smelting, I had several links to plans for kiln's, but I lost them when my old computer was stolen. Earlier today I was doing some searches for this, but the only ones I found were pretty much limited to smelting copper and brass. If anyone has some links they would be willing to share on this, I could sure use the information.

I'm hoping to build a propane fired kiln, if I can find the same plans I saw before which used a burner similar to a "tiger torch" that shot the flame into the furnace at an angle to create a cyclone effect. This supposedly was enough to get the temperature up high enough, to melt iron and most other metals. I want to end up with a furnace that I can load onto a truck, (preferably under 100 pounds without propane tank), and move to whichever location I need it. At the same time, I want to be able to smelt at least a pound or two of black sand at a time, (five pounds or more would be better), as I would normally be saving my black sand until I have enough to smelt. (I still have some from two years ago that I never even finish panned.)

Also, a source for related tools for handling the crucible and making molds, etc., would be useful. I'll keep hunting the web, but if someone runs across this info, please post it here.

F.

 

[nebraskadad]

Functional FWIW,
I know the source of which you query!!
Here is a link to a Home built forge.

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/green51.html

 

[Functional]

Functional FWIW,
I know the source of which you query!!
Here is a link to a Home built forge.

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/green51.html

Thanks nebraskadad. Thats not the same one I was looking at before, but it added to my knowledge of forges. That one was coal, or coke powered and the one I saw was propane powered, similar to this one:
http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/bucketfurnace1.html
And this one before it had a meltdown:
http://www.vk2zay.net/article.php/83
This one might have potential:
http://www.vk2zay.net/article.php/84


I modified this post just so I could include a link to a forum post titled: "The Poor Mans Method of SMELTING GOLD", which uses an acetylene torch. The page can be found here:
http://www.weekendgoldminers.com/wegmforums/viewtopic.php?p=31&sid=fcbb812884abc3d723d0f41ef5b750b8
Probably the most informative post I've found anywhere on the topic of smelting black sand. That forum post is basically an enhanced version of this web page:
http://www.nuggethunters.org/Poormans-Smelting.html
Regular gold smelting info can be found here:
http://www.nuggethunters.org/smelting.html

I still have to check out rec.crafts.metalworking to see if theres some links there, to the type of propane fired furnace I saw before. I'll try and report back later on what I find.

F.

 

[Functional]

So....

Has anyone out there had any luck with recovering gold from their black sand yet?

Anyone?

I'm in the middle of several different projects here and haven't been past my gate with either my gold pans, or my metal detector, (which I still need to fix, or buy another coil for), and I don't expect to "get out there" until July. Hopefully, the water levels will be down in the creeks and rivers by then. I'm looking at some areas I haven't been to in several years and had never used a MD in.

Let us know how the smelting goes and if you have some pictures and personal experiences to relate.

F.

 

[M3R1IN]

I havent had a chance to do anything regarding smelting my black sands... no time... work is crazy busy, theres a building boom in Alberta right now and im working like a dog. I did get a few hours this afternoon to look through my sapphire gravels... and look what i found. http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,90274.0.html
yay, i wonder how much its worth?

 

[Functional]

I havent had a chance to do anything regarding smelting my black sands... no time... work is crazy busy, theres a building boom in Alberta right now and im working like a dog. I did get a few hours this afternoon to look through my sapphire gravels... and look what i found. http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,90274.0.html
yay, i wonder how much its worth?

If its real, which I would think it was, theres a chart half way down this page that shows price trends in U.S.$ per Carat:
http://palagems.com/gods_graves_sapphires.htm

Maybe you can afford to take a holiday now?

F.

 

[M3R1IN]

i guarantee you this rough gem is genuine. I pulled it out of gravel concentrates by my own hand... unless the mine owners are screwing around with me it is real. I really should get this gem finished and i also found a 2.3ct purple one last night i will get finished... my sister in law's grandfather is a gem dealer at auctions and i will probably try to get him to sell it 4 me... it sure would pay for that MD ive had my eye on.

 

[Functional]

i guarantee you this rough gem is genuine. I pulled it out of gravel concentrates by my own hand... unless the mine owners are screwing around with me it is real. I really should get this gem finished and i also found a 2.3ct purple one last night i will get finished... my sister in law's grandfather is a gem dealer at auctions and i will probably try to get him to sell it 4 me... it sure would pay for that MD ive had my eye on.

I don't know about this particular instance, but in some cases mines that invite people to buy concentrates, sometimes "salt" them to encourage others to go there. That doesn't mean they did, nor does it mean that those aren't real sapphires. It might just have been luck of the draw. I'd definitely mark that place as a stop for my next vacation to pick up another bucket or two.

You could buy yourself a nice little smelter for your black sands, with that too.

F.

 

[M3R1IN]

this is my 4th bag from that mine and ive been getting consistent high carat counts from each one... i dont think theyre salted concentrates, so long as they dont let me down, i will keep a comin back

 

[nebraskadad]

FWIW, You all need to get a copy of the latest ICMJ magazine.. The "best suggestion" in the article comes down to one thing. Classify, CLASSify, CLASSIFY!!

You can classify from 12 mesh down to 30 mesh then 100 mesh use a magnet, then tumbler the blacksands in an acidic solution, then put in a bluebowl that is as good as it gets without playing with mercury.