The Curse of the Black Sand

[Daryl Friesen]

We all have a run of bad luck while chasing the golden dream..I share some of mine with you in the following the video but it's not all Black as found something I was not looking for in the final shots of the following video.




Thanks for watching.
Hope all is well with all.

Treasure and Gold Prospecting leads in British Columbia

 

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[HardHatMatt]

Thanks for sharing and sorry you guys didn't make a rich strike on behalf of your prospecting buddy! Personally, I would have a hard time separating gold from the other heavies with that much material in the pan. Might try a little less material in the pan and see if that reveals anything shiny within the dark abyss! Of course, sometimes it simply ain't there...happy hunting and keep us posted!

 

[Daryl Friesen]

Thanks I will. A toast to gold filled pans for all.. I keep all my black sands so after going through all of it some color was found. So it's not all a sad story.

thanks for watching.

 

[Kenmitch]

As a newbie to mining/panning I kind of like the challenge black sand imposes on me. I got a 1lb bag of dirt that is mostly black sand with some small gravel and brown sand. 1st go at it was pretty frustrating and I used a black sand magnet early on in the panning process. Once I extracted what I thought was all the gold I panned it again. Magnet + black sand = lost gold in the end. Dirt is cleaned of gold now so I use it for practice with known quantity of gold thrown in. Working onow panning speed now. Thinking I was way too paranoid when panning off the heavy stuff initially.

 

[russau]

I wouldn't worry about speed when your panning! I like to pan slow myself with small amounts of screened cons! I have my best results that way! BUT Im old and slow anyway!

 

[Capt Nemo]

You want a real curse? Try when you pan down to black sand and you have 1/3 of a pan full of it! And if you're on a really good patch, you start with a pan full of it. That's what I get on Lake Superior!

 

[Kenmitch]

I wouldn't worry about speed when your panning! I like to pan slow myself with small amounts of screened cons! I have my best results that way! BUT Im old and slow anyway!

In prospecting mode I'd think faster panning would be a must. Seems like slow panning would be best for concentrates taken home for later.

 

[Kenmitch]

You want a real curse? Try when you pan down to black sand and you have 1/3 of a pan full of it! And if you're on a really good patch, you start with a pan full of it. That's what I get on Lake Superior!

Sounds both fun and challenging at the same time. Guess depending on how much gold is in it the meter could sway towards a not so fun experience in the end.

 

[arizau]

In prospecting mode I'd think faster panning would be a must. Seems like slow panning would be best for concentrates taken home for later.

When you are in a situation where you are only using a pan for recovery and you want to maximize the amount of material that you run in a day (you want to do this since running more material usually equates to more gold), then production panning is the way to go. The method is pretty much as follows......Fill the pan and reduce to a half pan or less, add more material on top of what you have and reduce again then repeat as many more times as you want to or until most of what is retained is black sands and other heavies (these are usually in the 1/4" or less range). Accumulate and take home (or process at the end of the day) the final results from several pan cleanouts of mostly black sands. Each reduction stage should go pretty quickly as you are mostly removing larger stones, silt and other lighter stones and they are the easiest things to pan off. Reducing each separate pan to black sands, then saving, is counter productive in that, that process is time consuming and takes away from the total amount of material that can be run in a day.

Good luck.

 

[Kenmitch]

@ arizau

Thanks!...Sounds easy enough while saving/maximizing time.

 

[Daryl Friesen]

Here is one more journey around gold country here in British Columbia. Can't wait to try metal detecting near the ruins on the ridge in the vid.



Treasure and Gold Prospecting leads in British Columbia