Beginner

[goldengirlsophia]

My husband and I are VERY new to prospecting. The problem that we are running into is the gold is so fine, it doesn’t easily separate from the black sand. A good bit has been lost when panning because it so fine. Any advice is appreciated!

 

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[releventchair]

Welcome to TreasureNet!

Try the gold forums here.
My inexperienced guess would be to take your black sands containing flour or tiny gold home.
Then work on it during downtime or offseason.

Here's one thread that might give you some ideas.

How to “Back-Pan” - Black sand finishing gold panning technique! (Gold Pan Only)

Hey everyone, Longgun here. I have watched a lot of gold prospecting videos and read many books on the subject but never seen anyone demonstrate this particular panning technique. This "Back Panning" technique is a very helpful skill plus it saves a lot of gear cost and gets high recovery. The...

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[vpnavy]

I moved ya from HELP! over to GOLD PROSPECTING for more exposure.

NOTE: Forum HELP! Description: This section contains guides tutorials on how to use the new TreasureNet.com software.

 

[russau]

Well WELCOME to treasure net for your first post! Like has been stated ,take your cons home to work out and pan. Try using a rare earth magnet to pull the magnetic black sands from your cons will help in any further clean ups and screen your cons to a little larger than what the size of your cons. This will help a LOT !

 

[RTR]

For fine gold recovery..
You need some sifters like these .Sift your material(to be panned) so all material is roughly the same size.
And a few drops of "jet Dry" or liquid soap will break the water tension allowing fine gold to drop out in your pan.
>>

 

[RTR]

Also a Miller table would be good for that Fine Gold
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[Gold4Mike]

Definitely don't do your finish panning out at the stream or river, when you are worn out and fatigued from the outing. Take it home, recover, and then place yourself in a comfortable spot and take your time. I sit at the kitchen table with good lighting so I can take breaks and just leave it sitting there. If you have other equipment like a clean up sluice or miller table, you can lessen the material you will have to work through.

 

[N-Lionberger]

Yup as previously mentioned screening your concentrates helps a lot with getting the fines out. Even with doodads like miller tables and blue bowls you still need to work your cons through a stack of classifier screens. My favorite method is to crush the cons in a mortar and pestle or rock tumbler to flatten out the gold while reducing the size of the granules of black sand before screening it out, it makes it really easy to separate.