Ultra fine gold dust

[Tahoegold]

Hi all,
The other day I found a patch of gold in a highbank. I've been sampling to find the parameters. So, I didn't move much dirt. I used a snuffer bottle to grab the tiny -50 mesh I would say and took that plus some of the sands surrounding these pieces from my pan. I am being careful and gentil to recover as small of gold as I can. I went home with only my snuffed material. I then decided to try a process I saw on line that uses one small dish inside a slightly larger dish. Then ran a steady stream on one side of the small dish pushing the black sands out the opposite side like the blue bowl process. To my surprise, it really worked. I would say -100 stayed and only 4 bits of black sand remained. I had about 20 pieces of gold. Then comes the interesting part. I took the bigger of the bowles and tried to swish the black sands around to see if any gold spilled into it. No,not even a tiny speck. Upon setting this bowl down I noticed some material forming a line. It was moving like mud does in water. You know, cloudy swirling color. This material, however, quickly settled into a trough on the bowl. I thought, humm, that looks like it may be golden. I swished it gentlyand was able to get a better defined line. This really looks and acts like gold. It really settles fast and looks like it could be ultra fine gold dust. I have been looking into methods of recovering this tiny pigment like form of gold. Millertables I believe would wash this away. The two bowl method seems to capture it though! I am going to try the two bucket process that uses a whirlpool and a test plug to capture all the gold.
My question is, if just a tiny bit of black sands can produce a visible amount of gold dust. If this can this be mined to produce some quantity. How would a newbie recover this ultra fine gold dust in s payable quantity? I'm curious as heck. I've accidentally recovered the smallest particles I could ever imagine. I couldn't even tell you how small the mesh of the would be. It moves like smoke in the water before setteling. I literally had one drop of black sands that produced this material. I am proceding with caution. I need advice. Anyone have actual experience mining this? Please, lets not speculate. Experienced miners, please advise. Thanks!

 

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[arizau]

Goldwasher, no offense, I am a newbie without experience. And I am grateful to be here getting this info. Here's the Pics. By the way. I know for sure this is gold dust. I can clearly see it in the sunlight. You know, there's nothing like the glint of gold. Definitely not mica.
OK, I know this is a tiny amount. I panned about 5, 12" pans of 1/2" classified material. I am sure some were a little overloaded and not enough water. Never the less, it is the amount of dust compared to the amount of small gold that is intriguing. This is what I snuffed up with the gold pieces. I didn't even bring anything else back. So, this is just from a small line against the edge of the pan. I intend to use buckets and classify some more material and bring the concentrates back to see how much is really in this deposit. Well, there you have it. View attachment 1540070 View attachment 1540071

Welcome to my world!! The vast majority of the gold I am currently finding is smaller than 50 mesh with a good portion being smaller than 100 mesh. The best way I have found to deal with/recover gold that small is to classify and pan only similar size* concentrates in batches eg. minus 30 plus 50, minus 50 plus 100, minus 100 plus 150 etc. Do this and you may surprize yourself with what you have been missing. For best recovery, I always classify my sluice and/or streamside panned black sand cons as well as raw un-run samples that I bring home in buckets. The bucket samples are usually rough panned at home first to eliminate silt, etc. that clouds the water before I classify them.

Good luck.

*Gold is king when it is matched only with similar sized black sands, etc.

 

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[Bonaro]

My bad... I skimmed too much I saw mercury...tumbler fine gold etc...

Missed the part where we were telling a guy with little experience (no offense Tahoe) to start playin with sulpheric acid and mercury...Well encouraging I guess since it was his Idea

I thought it was about putting strips and cons and mercury in the tumbler for amalgamation.

Not what to do after.

Fun stuff like Nitric acid......warm sulpheric...combining with mercury...then adding metal to that solution to get a little bit of fine gold....

Sounds like so, much more fun than actually going out and prospecting for weight.....

Sorry Bonaro... I did miss that part and you are right.

Tahoe...You are not there yet.

You are close enough to many places where you can find much bigger funner gold to chase.

And maybe at the worst have to deal with some gold that has mercury attached. Much easier to deal with.

Typically for a guy out prospecting gold that is so fine it needs something beyond gravity and basic tools it's not worth it.

Unless your one of those poor guys that lives in like Iowa and only has glacial gold....even then using mercury isn't a game changer.

I never use mercury for recovery.

No worries. The copper strips are still useful. What you are making is a called a sickening plate. you coat the copper with HG in the presence of sulfuric or dilute nitric. The acid cleans the copper and allows the HG to easily stick Then you run your cons across it and the gold will stick to the plate. This can also be done in a tumbler. When the plate is loaded it is said to be "sick" with gold thus the name. Squeegee off the amalgam, add more HG and keep on running. Run the amalgam thru a HG press and then liberate the gold with nitric.
Of course this needs to be done in a closed system so you dont loose any HG

Personally, I would not mess with any of this based on the pics posted. 5 pans, representing probably a hour or more of careful panning, yielded about $1 in gold.
Time to move on.

 

[loco oro]

If its so small, that you need. Mercury, let it alone, really? ?

 

[Bonaro]

If its so small, that you need. Mercury, let it alone, really? ?

Size doesn't matter It's how much you have that counts.

 

[Tahoegold]

Ok, just so we can get back on trac, I sampled the area to decide the area of a deposit. The image indicates the ratio of ultra fine gold dust to gold pieces. Please resist the temptation to assess the gold deposit I am working on. I came here asking a facinating question on how to recover ultra fine gold dust. Please, for the sake of continuity of this line of reason, lets stick to the task at hand. Today, I have used my new technique to recover 5 gal of 20 mesh without using a sluice or water flow. I did it in 2 hrs. So, I am thinking of taking a small sluice 5.5" wide and 24" long, and coating it with Plastic coat spray black. Or, chalk board spray. I will first run these cons to grab the +200 mesh and then classify to -100 and possibly -350 (or what ever size is the availabe size in this range.) I will use a larger size screen to speed up the classification process. Then work the +350 for instance and concentrate efforts after to working the ultra fine dust. I feel some form of table will be the ticket. Look, a line of this material has been created thus proving this material may be manipulated into a specific location. IE,. a line in a bowl that was once again snuffed up and retained. Now I need a CLEAN way to recover as much as possible of this gold which has a huge surface area, which will be adversly affected with mercury. In the face of all this, I have succeeded in recovering these tiny particles without mercury or aqua regia. And today, I recovered 5 gal of 20 mesh in 2hrs. So, now the question will be, how much gold will be in this material. Look, just to be a guide to this, lets disregard all assumptions. Lets focus on the task at hand. Also, please, kindly refrain from responding with theory. I need to hear from experienced individuals in this recovery process. I love having a beer and talking about what could be effective just like the next guy. However, this only brings contention as those with experience and real knowledge attempt to correct. So, lets please remain on course and lets create a thread for all to benifit as well. I welcome your comments, as long as it has merit. Thank you! I will keep moving forward and am hoping for advice! I am new at this and need the help! I'll keep you updated on my progress/results so I can receive advice at each step of the way. Thank you all!

 

[Reed Lukens]

The new Gold Hog Multi-Sluice that I bought works great on fine gold recovery. You can just lower the pump feed rate, screen everything down to -1/4 and it catches most of it the first time. As you are feeding it, you can put a -20 mesh screen on the outfeed into a bucket and then classify it all down at once. You won't lose any gold this way and you will be running a lot faster. It's an impressive unit that catches the gold down to -300 from what I can see as is. Like I said above, mercury works best, I have done it both ways and I'm really liking the Multi-Sluice as is because everything is adjustable. You should watch all of Doc's movies on it, then when you run the -20 back through, put a -50 mesh screen on the outfeed for the final run of -50 after. It's already set up for this!

 

[winners58]

I will first run these cons to grab the +200 mesh and then classify to -100 and possibly -350 (or what ever size is the availabe size in this range.) I will use a larger size screen to speed up the classification process. Then work the +350 for instance and concentrate efforts after to working the ultra fine dust. I feel some form of table will be the ticket. Look, a line of this material has been created thus proving this material may be manipulated into a specific location. IE,. a line in a bowl that was once again snuffed up and retained.

should be able to push it all into a pile with your finger and know its gold
even if you have to look at it under x40 magnification with a jewelers loupe.
otherwise its just powdered pyrite, some oxide, sulfide or something else.
I would say it's more likely not Gold. I would go for the bigger gold.

-350 is not visible to the naked eye, that means if it is gold it would be multiple pieces together to see it.
I've zoomed in and don't see that, it looks like iron oxides from the soil.
click to see enlarged photo;

.
link to view of -250 mesh gold;
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/sluicing/547801-classifying-out-100-a.html#post5472767

 

[Goldwasher]

you screened five gallons in two hours?

That's not fast at all for $ .60 in gold.


You will get much more of that bigger stuff that you can see if you just run a regular sluice classified to about 1/2 inch.

What process did you use to get what you did?

The type/location of the deposit matters why can't we talk about it?

No water flow? But you did use water?

Like winners I'm not convinced the super small stuff is gold.

If it is you would need ten times as much as shown to weigh as much as those small grains.

Also consider you are already recovering whatever that is so, whatever you are doing is working.

I would be trying to process way more than five gallons of material in two hours.

 

[Twobrothers]

Hi all,
The other day I found a patch of gold in a highbank. I've been sampling to find the parameters. So, I didn't move much dirt. I used a snuffer bottle to grab the tiny -50 mesh I would say and took that plus some of the sands surrounding these pieces from my pan. I am being careful and gentil to recover as small of gold as I can. I went home with only my snuffed material. I then decided to try a process I saw on line that uses one small dish inside a slightly larger dish. Then ran a steady stream on one side of the small dish pushing the black sands out the opposite side like the blue bowl process. To my surprise, it really worked. I would say -100 stayed and only 4 bits of black sand remained. I had about 20 pieces of gold. Then comes the interesting part. I took the bigger of the bowles and tried to swish the black sands around to see if any gold spilled into it. No,not even a tiny speck. Upon setting this bowl down I noticed some material forming a line. It was moving like mud does in water. You know, cloudy swirling color. This material, however, quickly settled into a trough on the bowl. I thought, humm, that looks like it may be golden. I swished it gentlyand was able to get a better defined line. This really looks and acts like gold. It really settles fast and looks like it could be ultra fine gold dust. I have been looking into methods of recovering this tiny pigment like form of gold. Millertables I believe would wash this away. The two bowl method seems to capture it though! I am going to try the two bucket process that uses a whirlpool and a test plug to capture all the gold.
My question is, if just a tiny bit of black sands can produce a visible amount of gold dust. If this can this be mined to produce some quantity. How would a newbie recover this ultra fine gold dust in s payable quantity? I'm curious as heck. I've accidentally recovered the smallest particles I could ever imagine. I couldn't even tell you how small the mesh of the would be. It moves like smoke in the water before setteling. I literally had one drop of black sands that produced this material. I am proceding with caution. I need advice. Anyone have actual experience mining this? Please, lets not speculate. Experienced miners, please advise. Thanks!

I think what you're attempting is great, the only way to move forward gold mining is to try and figure out new ways to get more gold. Lots of it still out there and left over from the old timers for various reasons, some social, some technological. Times change new technologies come available. People sometimes think things can't be done until someone proves differently. Historically gold mining technological advances only came when people were economically forced to change. Some deposits aren't exploitable by big operators, can only be worked by hobbyists/ small scale-rs working discreetly. I've got a little experience with gold recovery using Mercury. Mercury can be made to work if your particles are a large enough size. Too small and it isn't very effective.

Mercury. Crazy liquid metal. Barely denser than gold. Know for its unique property to "surface tension-up" (amalgamate) gold.
Mercury effectiveness for Gold recovery is all about gold particle size and liberation from foreign (gangue) materials. So how does mercury work? Its all about surface tension. Mercury and native gold because of something to do with the electrons in their outer shells combined with their similar densities, and surface tension, mercury draws gold particles up in to its surface tension and dissolves a very small percentage (less than 0.1 percent of the gold by weight) into the mercury. There's basically no gold particle too large to amalgamate as long as you have enough mercury. However too small of a particle size and you can't get the interface of the respective gold-mercury surfaces. Not enough of the gold can come into contact with the mercury to break the mercury surface tension for it to draw the gold up. For the same surface tension reasons the gold must be totally freed from foreign materials/ coatings (gangue rock, oils, mineral coatings). Around 200 mesh and smaller is where mercury stops being as effective at capturing gold assuming the gold is clean, bright and shiny, which is usually a given for placer gold, not always the case with hard rock ores.
Heres some reference material to contemplate:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/43820757/75-Gold-Recovery-Methods (Page 5).

For all its bad rap metallic mercury is pretty safe to living organisms. Vaporous mercury and mercury ions, salts and organic compounds are the big ouch. You could take a swig of metallic mercury (which they used to prescribe for constipation) and it would run through you along with everything else for an interesting bowel movement.
So metallic mercury okay, vaporous mercury, mercury ions, salts and organic compounds whew boy! There've been instances where a couple drops of organic compound mercury killed people. So how do you keep it metallic state? Basically use as little as possible with chemically non reactive materials. Concentrated washed placer sands? Pretty safe. Raw hard-rock ores? Boy you better watch out. All the sulfur and who knows what else in raw hard rock ores can compound with mercury and form who knows what manner of biologically soluble compounds.

Some notes on my experience with fine gold formation/ ore genesis. I did some experimenting with recovering gold from pyritic origin hard rock ores. During the formation event the gold is deposited along with pyritic (sulfide) minerals. Predominantly within iron pyrites in my district, although know to form in calcopyrites and aresno-pyrites (You really don't want to mess with arseno-pyrite). The gold is contained as fine particles and coatings within the crystaline matricies of the vaious pyrite (sulfide) minerals, and is liberated as finely grained sheets, layers, and pockets of finely aggregated gold particles when the pyrites oxidize away. The material I experimented on had gold generally 300 mesh and smaller, a dust more or less. They occur in concentrations enough to be visible when aggregated together but they are not a singular agglomerated consolidated mass of gold but rather aggregated particles of fine gold.


Gravity separation: Basic gravity separation by panning samples was not effective for me. Probably for two reasons 1) achieving a fine enough particle grind/ liberation size and 2) primitive method used (panning). Probably would help if I ground and classified to a finer size before attempting.

Amalgamation: I achieved a result but low recovery yield when I attempted amalgamation. Process: ground rich samples to about 16 mesh and roasted to neutralize as much reactivity with the mercury as possible. Ran the material in a homemade pan mill. Ran with mercury in the bottom and wetted to the consistency of a thick milkshake with a little jet dry. Grind time 1 hour 3-4 tuna cans of material at a time. Ground to a fine mud and floated out the grind with water. Observed pieces of mosquito eye gold flow out un-amalgamated in the tailings. Recovered mercury and retorted and got a little bead of gold. But I suspect I lost a lot of it, although I do not have assay results on the feed stock and tailings to compare.

Some kind of chemical leach may be most effective but I cant make any reccomendations there as I've not sucessfully executed a process I am comfortable with yet. If you can collect enough you can send it to a refiner as a dust and they'll take care of it. Precious metals buyers, smelters, refiners of gold, platinum, silver scrap metals, dental gold scrap, platinum thermocouple wire, crucibles, silver scrap. Gold refiners, platinum scrap buyers, recyclers karat gold jewelry. Sell gold, platinum and sil

Some places will take black sand concentrates if you accumulate enough and are okay with a 15-30% recovered values charge.
TCB Metals and Refining

 

[Bonaro]

Tahoe, I dont agree with your intentions of mining this unremarkable deposit...but I will help you down that road.

1. Your net efficiency is only as great as the least efficient link in your chain of equipment. For instance is you classify then highbank with common mats then run the cons from the HB thru a Miller table you can expect this: The common sluice in the HB is maybe 30% efficient at catching gold that is -200 and the table is probably 98% efficient. This means you have already lost 70% of the gold before it gets to the table

2. Gold recovery is a process of elimination. If you already know that there are no gold particles larger than 20 mesh in this deposit then you also know that everything larger that 20 mesh is waste. Screen everything to 15 mesh and toss all of the oversize. You have now eliminated 90% of the material you need to run. Next, devise a way to separate the magnetic fraction...toss it. Depending on your deposit you may have just cut your remaining 10% in half. In theory you have just reduced a 5 gallon bucket to less than 1 quart. Skip the sluice and run this directly on either a Miller table or shaker table.

 

[mendoAu]

Don't forget that JetDri is your friend. I tried an off brand and it had why too much foam. I don't really worry about the super fine gold but if I get real bored I'll use a metal pan with a magnet duct taped underneath the center of the pan to capture the black sand. I've also cleaned the black sand out after drying by placing the cons. on a mat finished photograph and gently blowing with a straw. Now I suppose if you could cover the bottom of a glass vial with your fine gold you retrieve in a couple of hours it could be called worthwhile but it's kinda like getting the last of the mustard out of the bottle.... Just as a footnote the largest amount of gold mined in the United States comes from refining the type/size you are talking about. We are talking about the big boys with big boy equipment and chemicals.Emak Refining & Recycling

 

[Tahoegold]

Thank you all for these responses! I'll clarify a little as I agree there are questions about what and why I am doing this.
I found the dust and yes, it's gold. I've been around gold a long time. My grandpa taught me to pan as a lad of 10. The pic really doesn't give the true color very well. But, it has that nice golden glow in the sun. I know mica, it floats and moves differently. And looks brighter, shinyer. I am confident it's gold.
Yes, there's a little moving water. Just enough for my mini sluice and I used it yesterday and recovered some gold. Going back out today after changing my Gold hog mats from all UR to UR, Motherload, UR, Motherload, Motherload. I noticed some mats washing out a little too quick so slowed the water and one was loading up in the middle. The Motherload can be effective in faster water and the middle UR can get more flow.
I understand that it's more productive to go for the larger gold. But like was said, who knows what kind of techniques may be able to get the dust? Look at Doc, he has changed the way we work at getting -200 in our sluices.
Ok, so the reason I am asking is because it appears there is quite an amoumt of dust at this location. Along with a good amount of gold that can be sluiced. Sluicing looses the dust. Doing the screening method takes too long. So, there's gold sitting there that I want. But, alas, there seems to be no viable method for me to recover it effectively and efficiently.
I love a problem like this. How are we to move mining forward unless we work on problems like this? Look at what Doc did in a few years. I love his products! I'm wondering if the new flow pan in a bucket would work to get the dust. Maybe a technique of not quite shaking all the material out before reloading would retain the dust. Then I am thinking that using the 2 bucket method with the test plug and swirling the cons would collect the dust. However, even if these methods worked, and I captured enough dust, what then? How could I separate this from the black sands. Not all sands are magnetic. Smelting takes fuel.
Ok, so you all know, this is a quest. Also, I am understanding the futility of just getting material that contains this dust. I am using a sluice and moving much more dirt now as there is enough to really make it worth while.
For me, I like solving un solved problems. Or, reading about how others have done it. Thank you Doc for the work you've done! I admire your fortitude. You really made a difference!
There's a big mine in NV that has a huge mountainous leash pad. They capture this dust and turn it into gold bars weekly. Silver too. So, I know that method would work. I just can't do that of course. So, who ever is interested in joining this discussion, be assured, I am not just wasting my time and doddling around with cup fulls of dirt for hours. I'm looking at gold just sitting there, yet un recoverable. It makes me wonder how I may be able to get it in MY pocket. Ha!

 

[Goldwasher]

Free milling or placer are dealt with totally differently than recovering already refined pure metal or alloys from circuit boards.

Interesting how a euro co. has mainly a recycle line. I would imagine in Europe much more secondary refining takes place than primary.

Mining refiners won't touch circuit boards totally different process.

Most primary (dore , highgrade ore, placer) in the US are in a much smaller simpler building than you would imagine. a lot is done close to the mines.

The type of gold being mined by the three biggest mines in the U.S is coming from big pits (some under ground) and contains pyrite, arsenopyrite and is heap leached.

You never see the gold. The processing plants are right in Nevada where the mines are.

Yes, the majority of gold is small. That's why the name of the game for the Artisanal guy is to find concentrations of the bigger of the small stuff.

The big boys do have the toys and the barrels of stuff to deal with material a small guy should really only waste time reading about.

There are however nice spongey lumps that can be found in that are part of those same disseminated deposits where...and believe it or not a gold pan lead the original miners to the deposits.

The early miners had no idea what was under their feet or the method to mine them at a profit.

It wasn't until the 1960's that those deposits could really be effectively mined and processed.

It isn't the same as what Tahoe found.


As rare as gold is. Plopping down on a creek or river in a good bit of California (Nevada also) can show you some fine colors with a few hours of effort consistently.

Once someone does that they tend to get sidetracked inventing some machine or new process or rework of an existing method, in a shortsighted effort to get more gold in the same amount of time.

Totally makes since right?

Well, I think it is a better Idea to find a spot that gets you more gold that adds up much quicker in weight using that same initial method.

It is very cool to go out and find gold.

If you Live in the Sierra Nevada you have access to places where two hours with a gold pan can get you ten times what Tahoe is showing.

Why try to figure out how to squeeze water out of a rock ?

What he did was sample and the sample I see in the time described doesn't seem to warrant too much more effort.

If that was from one pan it would almost be encouraging.


Not a critical post of what he is doing...I just know he is not that far of a drive from much better days.

 

[Tahoegold]

Thanks Goldwasher,
I understand your concern. The pic does show a small amount I agree. Since I started sluicing I have confidence there is more than I initially thought. I believe it's worthwhile to sluice this. I am in full agreement that we currently are not capable as a one person miner, to recover dust. And, that my efforts are best spent on a viable location. I believe this location is. Please don't go by my photo. I have done more samples and have a nice spot to work. It's perfectly ok to let me know your thoughts. There's others reading this and truthfully, these coments are relevant and words of good advice. I am grateful.
However, if anyone can find a way to get this gold dust and reads this post, maybe I can get my mits on this stuff!! Meanwhile, I'm just moving the dust to the creek bed for safe keeping. I know where to find it!
Thank you all for your concerns. I don't have any desire to waste my day over the impossible. So, I'm headding out soon to get some cons. Winter I hope will be here soon and make it difficult to get them. I'll have time to work them down then.
Where the heck is the snow this year? Last year there was tons!

 

[arizau]

Thanks Goldwasher,
I understand your concern. The pic does show a small amount I agree. Since I started sluicing I have confidence there is more than I initially thought. I believe it's worthwhile to sluice this. I am in full agreement that we currently are not capable as a one person miner, to recover dust. And, that my efforts are best spent on a viable location. I believe this location is. Please don't go by my photo. I have done more samples and have a nice spot to work. It's perfectly ok to let me know your thoughts. There's others reading this and truthfully, these coments are relevant and words of good advice. I am grateful.
However, if anyone can find a way to get this gold dust and reads this post, maybe I can get my mits on this stuff!! Meanwhile, I'm just moving the dust to the creek bed for safe keeping. I know where to find it!
Thank you all for your concerns. I don't have any desire to waste my day over the impossible. So, I'm headding out soon to get some cons. Winter I hope will be here soon and make it difficult to get them. I'll have time to work them down then.
Where the heck is the snow this year? Last year there was tons!

The only dedicated piece of equipment on the market today for the average prospector, that was primarily designed* to concentrate truly fine powder gold (minus 100 mesh), is the gold cube. It is relatively expensive but if you feed it enough gold bearing material then, in time, you will be able to make it pay for itself with some to boot. The feed is suggested to be minus 1/8" so that necessitates a lot of screening/labor or maybe the addition of the gold cube trommel. Once you do have cube concentrates you still have to be anal about how you separate all or most of the gold from the black sands, etc. That mostly involves additional screen classifying to smaller and smaller size fractions and then panning or miller tabling, etc. the fractions separately. Due to the size of the unit, total throughput per day is limited to much less than you can probably process in a conventional sluice but the capture rate of "flower" gold is higher and probably in the 90%+ range.

IMO If your gold values are mostly in "flower" sized material the cube may be worth your while and at the same time it will capture the larger gold in the feed but I am with Goldwasher in that there other better spots in your area.

Have fun out there.





*It was originally developed to process beach sands whose average size is less than 100 mesh.

 

[Reed Lukens]

Personally, I've found lots of sub 200 in paying quantities. I've got the Mulit-Sluice and I have the dream mat also. My trommel from the goldcube is on its way and I'm going to adapt it to the Mulit-Sluice. You still want throughput and your going to lose some anyway, so go with a Sluice. Classification is the key and Doc guarantees 98% recovery on -200....
10 minutes into the video, I show the Falcon pan being used for fines. The secret is... put them into a vial and don't open it again until your ready to melt it down. I have some pics of the fines recovered after refining them into 1ozt+ buttons. But when dealing with fines like this, cap them into a sealed vial and don't open it until you're ready to melt them together. My fines came out of mercury from the hydraulic miners but the end result is the same.

 

[Tahoegold]

should be able to push it all into a pile with your finger and know its gold
even if you have to look at it under x40 magnification with a jewelers loupe.
otherwise its just powdered pyrite, some oxide, sulfide or something else.
I would say it's more likely not Gold. I would go for the bigger gold.

-350 is not visible to the naked eye, that means if it is gold it would be multiple pieces together to see it.
I've zoomed in and don't see that, it looks like iron oxides from the soil.

Winner58,
I got to get a day's worth of dirt washing through the sluice. I tried to keep in mind it could be oxides. When home and panning into a white tub. I noticed lots more of this powder. When pushed together it really doesn't look like gold. Not to say there isn't any in ther though. I would bet there is. But, I am grateful to have this advice. I know I am getting better amounts of the regular stuff. Now I'm just throwing dirt onto a 1/2 screen over a bucket. That seems to work the best. I tried using a 1/4" screen after but there was so few pebbles doing that it just seemed a waste of time. The 1/2 inch screen left rocks plenty small enough to roll right down easy. So, I get it. I'm just beginning but this sure jump started my efforts to get better. Unless I can go big time and get a leach pad going, I'm prospecting for stuff I can capture. I am confident in my equipment. Now I need to get to work! Lol

 

[Tahoegold]

This has been great to hash out the options for ultra fine gold for a small time miner with a sluice and a pan basically. Sometimes it just cant be done like in this case. I know now I can just concentrate on sluiceable stuff as that's where our technology is as of now. Great! That settles my curiosity. Much abliged to you all for your advice. Heavy pans all!

 

[winners58]

I did watch a show about 10 or 15 years ago of a guy in Seattle WA that knew of a turn of the century stamp mill.
they went out and dug and sluiced to get all the heavies (goldhog mats would clean it too much) they
roasted and soaked in acid what they got from sluicing and precipitated out a black sludge then they
added borax to it and melted out a gold dore bar, they took it to the refiner that drilled it and put it in the XRF
to get the %'s, as I remember they got something like $80,000, not bad for a couple days work.

 

[mendoAu]

A little off subject but my Dad told me a story about the guy that bought the old Schaffer pen company plant I believe in Pioria after they moved. He took all the old wood flooring out and burned it in a kiln. Year after year all the dust from manufacturing all those gold pen parts turned a nice profit for the guy.