Home Depot sand, won't get rich, but it was fun!!!

[Lycof]

Figured I would tinker a bit. Ran to Home Depot and purchased 3 60lbs bags of general purpose sand. These bags say that the material originated in Eastern Washington. Bags were $3.99, so a grand total of $11.97. Got home, classified it down to #8 and ran it. Did a clean out of my crappy little sluice after every bag. Ended up with about half of a gallon of cons. Split those cons into -20, -50 and -100. Threw the individual sizes in a frying pan, the ran the magnet for black sands.

After all that, which took most of the night, I crashed

Today I wake up and pan it all out. Here is what I got, a tiny bit of gold, and a bunch of other interesting stuff. There is about 1/8 of a teaspoon remaining, I am not good enough with a pan to get it any further.

This was a lot of fun for $12.00!!!

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[N-Lionberger]

You need the sand that originates in California.

 

[Lycof]

Yeah, I wish! It is all "local" to each store from what I understand.

 

[KevinInColorado]

You need the sand that originates in California.

Or GA or CO or ID or ...

 

[russau]

YEP knowing where it came from is a GOOD IDEA so that you know where to take your dredge out to!

 

[Capt Nemo]

Add Eau Claire, WI to the list of good sand. Mastercraft playground sand from Menard's.

Good panning practice though!

 

[johnedoe]

Run that stuff through a gold cube.... a lot less work and easier cleanup..

 

[cacarr]

Just found this old thread.

It's interesting to see what heavies are in sand. I panned down some black streak sands I carefully collected on the northern Oregon coast recently. Too far away from the Columbia for any flour gold, and way too far away from the southern Oregon coast for any of that Rogue River gold and platinum.

But still interesting: tons of magnetite, some ilmenite, and the non-metalics were zircon and a bunch of olivine.

Looks like you've got some ... garnets (the pink things)? Ilmenite, maybe a little chromite? Some rutile I think ... and other stuff. There could even be a micro-diamond or two that weathered out of ophiolites.

 

[bedrock bubba]

I live in Grass Valley. I will get some sand from the local quarry and run it on my buds shaker table and see what it produces. I already know it has gold in it. It comes from the Greenhorn River, I believe. Decomposed granite.

 

[RTR]

Or GA or CO or ID or ...

Or VA

 

[tamrock]

There's a quarry operation in Parkdale, Colo along the Arkansas river close to Canon City that actually processes and collects the placer gold out of the alluvium material they screen.

 

[KevinInColorado]

There's a quarry operation in Parkdale, Colo along the Arkansas river close to Canon City that actually processes and collects the placer gold out of the alluvium material they screen.

As do about three dozen similar operations across the gold districts of Colorado!

 

[Bquamb]

Gold... Bahahaha - I cant even believe it, but very humerus.

 

[tamrock]

As do about three dozen similar operations across the gold districts of Colorado!

Yeah for years a couple around Fairplay I knew processed the crusher fines and sands for gold, but I wasn't aware there was that many sand and garvel operations in the state doing it.

 

[Mine Shaft]

There's a massive sand and gravel quarry smack dab in the middle of a 200 yard wide wash its called the Cajon Wash,just east of me in San Bernardino. I can only imagine what amount of Gold they dig up. Sorry for the crappy pic, its off my screen lol.

 

[RTR]

Don't give up

 

[RTR]

I know for a fact this sand had gold in it.But I don't know if that's the distributors address,or where it was mined.