How much Black Sands do you have?

[chlsbrns]

I am curious as to how many prospectors save their black sand and how much they have.

Do you save your black sand?

How much do you have?

 

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[DizzyDigger]

I always save my black sand, and currently have a 3 gal. bucket about
half full (it's hefty).

 

[chlsbrns]

I read somewhere that a gallon of wet black sands weighs about 27 pounds.

 

[deserdog]

I use to have bucket fulls, but I sold it all.

 

[425jesse]

I keep a bit from each new location I prospect, label and save in a vial. The rest I save in a bucket for winter/downtime activities.

 

[russau]

over the years ive had many,many buckets of black sand. i crushed most of it and donated a lot of it to our club raffels and sold some of it also.

 

[goldenIrishman]

In answer to your questions:

1. Yes I save them for further processing. You'd be surprised at how much gold is in them that you can't see. Processing that gold out is not something that a beginner should try because it involves some dangerous materials that if not done right can make ya dead!

2. How would you like that measurement? Buckets, pounds, bags? Magnetic or non-magnetic? I have varying amounts of black sands from different locations and keep them separate until I've finished processing them. This allows me to judge how much "invisible" gold is in each location per pound of black sands. "Invisible" gold is stuff so small it can't even be called "Flour" gold. In some areas the only gold you're going to find is the "Invisible" type because it's so fine. Areas like these are usually not worth the time to work as it takes tons of materials to get even a gram or two. Other areas will have much more and can be very worth the time and effort to process the gold out.

Whenever I run out of regular materials to run and get bored I start processing my black sands. This ranges from "first step" secondary processing like "Shake n Bake" to last stage processing of amalgamation. I'm often amazed at how much more gold I can find just after doing a "Shake N Bake" on so called clean sands.

 

[kuger]

at the end of a season I would have anywhere from 5-10 5 gal. buckets full,and usually ended up with one or two kicking around,after giving much away(after processing)and the wife using it as fertilizer.I gave some to Terry C on here who discovered that the last batch contained some rare meteorites(?)or something of the sort.......

 

[chlsbrns]

Thanks for the replies!

 

[preshrunkmilk]

In answer to your questions:

1. Yes I save them for further processing. You'd be surprised at how much gold is in them that you can't see. Processing that gold out is not something that a beginner should try because it involves some dangerous materials that if not done right can make ya dead!

2. How would you like that measurement? Buckets, pounds, bags? Magnetic or non-magnetic? I have varying amounts of black sands from different locations and keep them separate until I've finished processing them. This allows me to judge how much "invisible" gold is in each location per pound of black sands. "Invisible" gold is stuff so small it can't even be called "Flour" gold. In some areas the only gold you're going to find is the "Invisible" type because it's so fine. Areas like these are usually not worth the time to work as it takes tons of materials to get even a gram or two. Other areas will have much more and can be very worth the time and effort to process the gold out.

Whenever I run out of regular materials to run and get bored I start processing my black sands. This ranges from "first step" secondary processing like "Shake n Bake" to last stage processing of amalgamation. I'm often amazed at how much more gold I can find just after doing a "Shake N Bake" on so called clean sands.

Shake and bake......is this what its called when you heat up salt with the black sand?

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Shake and bake......is this what its called when you heat up salt with the black sand?

No salt needed, just heat the BS, super hot in an old cast iron skillet, then dump it in cold water. The drastic temp change will cause some of the sands to "explode" releasing what gold is trapped. Be careful to wear some eye protection.

 

[425jesse]

The gold that comes from shake and bake....a What size are we talking? -50....-100...smaller?

 

[smokeythecat]

So who buys black sand? My creek here has gold. Most of the sand is magnetic. Every twenty shovels of sand from the creek produces 1 shovel of black sand. And very little gold.

 

[goldenIrishman]

The size gold ya get from shake n bake is usually pretty fine but I've had some pieces that were about 20 mesh more than a few times. Usually it's an oxide coating that's on the gold and it can cover some good sized pieces. We usually call it "Desert Varnish". The coating can also be magnetic depending on the area so it doesn't hurt to SnB your magnetics as well.