Just got back off vacation trip.

[cyberdan]

Actually my wife and I were looking for a retirement home. We made an offer on a piece of land and getting bids on a pre-fab home.
ALL IN NORTHERN CA GOLD COUNTRY! (AND RIGHT ON THE COAST)

I brought my MD and a gold pan but did not have time to pull either one out of the trunk. But, what I did was bring back samples of the beach sands less than 3 miles from our possible future home. The beach is miles long with three completely different types of black (or very dark) sands. Each sample is about 20 lbs. Right now I have them in open containers on my work bench.
Lot A is dry and course and nothing magnetic.
Lot B is slightly damp and lots of magnetic material.
Lot C is packed wet sand and lots of magnetic material.

Right now my only question is how would I dry out lot C? (do not want to use oven, smell and expense)

 

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[cyberdan]

I want some free gold! Please advise.

I won't even joke about a jewelry store heist.

More than a year ago I bought 300lbs of junk jewelry. I sold a lot of the junk part on feeBay and that paid for the 300 lbs. This jewelry was the reject pile for a "cash for gold" store. Lazy employees incorrectly said some was junk and the customer let them toss it in the box. Now i come along with my electronic tester and look at every single piece (still have 50-75 lbs of balled up chains to look at) and pull out the good ones. It pays to hit yard sales.

 

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[kcm]

There's no need to dry out all of that material. Add some water to the bucket, then use a magnet to remove everything magnetic. Run/pan your non-magnetics. Dry out only the magnetic material. Once thoroughly dry, remove all of the magnetic material again - you will be left with some more non-magnetic material, including any gold that got picked up with the magnetics.

As for magnets, a good, low-cost method is to take a small PVC pipe with 1 end cap and place a strong magnet inside, maybe glued to a length of wooden dowel. When the plastic eventually wears out from use, simply cut another length of PVC pipe and add a new end cap.

 

[Reed Lukens]

Well... As long as you bought it, I would think that if you used it under water, the spinning action would help clean the gold. Being that you want to crush the black sands first anyway, crush, then use your magnet in a 5 gallon bucket on high speed like a paint mixer and wash the sands while making good use of the magnet The small one in the demo video would take way to long to bother with. I've always liked the big orange magnet from Keene, it's fast.