surface black sand

[searching]

i have been prospecting in one of the tributary of the main river. i happened to be in there a day after a high water mark. im surprise to see lots of black sand on top of the sand bar and some in mix with gravel and sand.

i have scrape the one on top of the sand bar but have not touch one with gravel and sand with running water. i was able to gather a half gallon that weight about 10kilos.

do this black sand on top of sand bar have micron gold?

thanks...

[enamel7]

I would say it's very possible. I would dig deeper into that bar also.

[Astrobouncer]

There is a section of river a couple miles from my house that has a similar spot, tons of black sand and the mud/gravel banks are so hard you dont sink into them at all when walking across and you can see the black sand everywhere. Unfortunetly, at the spot near me its just a lot of magnetite, at least so far as I can tell. Good luck with your spot, I hope its better then mine! And keep us posted. I will try and dig up some pics of the spot I was talking about too.

[searching]

thanks for the reply.

will a bh tracker 4 work on this highly mineralised sand? will it pick up nuggets and gold flakes?
i dnt have a tracker iv yet but im thinking of getting one for this purpose.

anyway, il be back there next week and let see what we will find. wl keep you posted.

thanks

[searching]

bga78,

i was introduced by friend to a kind and generous gentleman who has a little machine shop and was into foundry operation in his younger days. he knows a lot about electroplating and gold processing. fortunately, he still has his some of his tools. we have to dig it out though.

first we separated the magnetic materials using a magnet from a junk car aircon compressor. made some coil and it's a powerful magnet that can be turned on and off powered by a 12volts car battery. then we made a crucible out of a used fire bricks that is used to insulate furnace. when done, we put a mixture of borax, activated carbon and the sorted out black sand into the crucible. then we heat it with acetylene torch.

i have gathered black sands from three different locations. we are done with samples from the first location. it has very little gold in it. processing cost is greater than recovered gold.

today we will work on the sample i have taken from the location of the picture i have shown here. lets see what we got here.

till next post...

[packfan_1982]

Don't use the magnet. First you are very likely to get some gold caught in the magnetite. Second there is the potential that there is gold inside some of the magnetite. Since you are already melting with flux just throw the magnetite in as well.

[searching]

packfan,

unfortunately, we just did. after smelting it with acetylene torch, the gold we recovered is not worthwhile.

but supposing we dnt. will the black sand, which is metallic, mixed with the molten gold? if it does then it would take another process to separate it, right? if it is, then is it worth it?

thanks...

[packfan_1982]

I believe the term is cupel. Anyways if you are using a flux then the only thing you will be left with are precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, copper) So you aren't going to get pure gold but the iron magneite will be absorbed in the flux.

There is a reason that you really don't hear about a lot of people melting down their cons, because it isn't cost effective. Practice panning and you are likely to get most of the gold out. I believe that there is another post on here about soaking and cooking black sands, which fractures them further releasing fine gold.

Now save all of the cons you get because at the end of the day its just not possible to get all of that micron gold and at some point it may become cost effective to melt them with flux to recover that last bit.

It also sounds like you are just using black sands that you recovered from the surface, I'd suggest digging down some more to where the gold likes to be.

[beaks]

mix up some muratic and clorox smash the cons up and dump them in and leach the gold out of it.

way too simple HUH! LOL

PS: i would be sluicing or highbanking that area just in case it was loaded.

[searching]

thanks beaks...ill try doing that next time.

i tried sluicing the area but no colors...just black sand.

btw, i just had a conversation with an old friend who operates one of the river rafting company here in our city. he said he will bring me to a section of a river where a sand bar is all black...yes a black sand bar...

would'nt it be interesting?

ill keep you posted guys.

best wishes...