I need black sand concentrates

[chlsbrns]

Seriously....if I can find someone that can put me on some gold, I will pay their way round trip. Kind of like takin the coonhounds in the woods lol show em the coons and let them do their thing. I get laughed at in Arkansas for talking about prospecting/ mining, but everyone I've ever known that was determined to accomplish something within reason, eventually succeeded!

The gold is there thats for sure. A magnetic locator will find many hot spots. Mine can detect heavy black sand deposits down to about 15 feet. Im sure there are plenty of large deposits as few to none go so deep. They just cant dig that deep. The borehole dredge solves that problem!

 

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[reptwar1]

Yikes! Looks like I'm just bringing the gold cube this year lol

 

[chlsbrns]

Why dont you go east to NC or west to AZ or Nevada or find gold in Arkansas?

 

[huntsman53]

Has anybody ever thought about making iron or steel with their black sand? Magnetite is actually one of the best sources of iron ore and hematite is another. I have been thinking about building a small blast furnace and casting a frying pan from my black sand. Or maybe a steel crevacing tool, either way I think it's a pretty cool way to put that black sand to use. Imagine cooking breakfast over the campfire in a skillet that you made from black sand.

Sure! I will get right on that around the year 4050 when I have enough Black Sand to produce enough Iron for a new World Trade Center.


Frank

 

[Sluice Willis]

Sure! I will get right on that around the year 4050 when I have enough Black Sand to produce enough Iron for a new World Trade Center.


Frank

Nah not trying to make I beams, just a few small items. I can get plenty of black sand, more than enough to make a frying pan and few small ornaments. Hematite and magnetite are actually very high grade iron ore. Charcoal is the issue, I'm not trying to make my own and it takes a bit to produce iron from ore. If I run a second sluice with some magnets I can mine gold and iron ore at the same time.

 

[Jjhall68]

This is the link to one of several videos for Keenes 176 Beach sluice. If there is an advantage to this over a cube I would say its shear volume.
If I were going to invest in equipment to hit the beach with, this would be high on my list of equipment to research.
For me the key would be concentrating your material. Blue bowls are really good at clean up but this material will require someone's full attention for the final cleanup something I would sugjesting doing back home in Arkansas.
Just a quick explanation; Baked dry this material weighs 1.43 ounces per cubic inch. That's 154 pounds per cubic foot or 20.48 pounds per gallon. This makes a half a bucket of sand plus moisture about 70 pounds. Not my favorite to haul down the beach. I ran about 20 gallons or approximately 590 pounds of black sand. The cons I brought home weighed less than 1 pound. That's better than 99.8% reduction in weight. So if you took 20 pounds of cons back home to process that would represent over 10,000 pounds of black sand!
You could try a magnetic separation and reduce even further but I have to tell you that it takes me at least three times (4 more likely) to separate the magnetics before I quit finding gold that I missed. I'm sure there must be better ways to do this, I just don't know them.
Please take lots of pictures for those of us that will only be dreaming of going to Nome this spring.
All the Best,
John

 

[Jjhall68]

Nah not trying to make I beams, just a few small items. I can get plenty of black sand, more than enough to make a frying pan and few small ornaments. Hematite and magnetite are actually very high grade iron ore. Charcoal is the issue, I'm not trying to make my own and it takes a bit to produce iron from ore. If I run a second sluice with some magnets I can mine gold and iron ore at the same time.

If you want to recover your iron with the least investment you might consider an aluminothermic reaction. The process you referenced using coke, which is a carbothermic reaction, is cheaper on a production scale however it requires a lot more investment on the front end. You can add a layer of CaCO3 (type S lime, unslacked) and really turn up the heat! Use an aluminum plate in the bottom of your crucible to slow the discharge and make sure your thermite doesn't bore through the middle of the charge without getting everything into the melt. I have some great literature on thermite if you want shoot me a message.
All this should come with a healthy dose of common sense, yeah right as common as unicorn poop.
How's this, if you shouldn't even think about doing this, you know who you are, don't do it! You can burn down your neighbor hood, or yourself, go blind from the massive UV produced by these temps or if your lucky enough to get caught in the rain, create something right out of Dante's inferno.
Be safe and have fun,
John

 

[reptwar1]

Jjhall68, thanks for the advice. I am for sure looking to run as much material as possible in the time that I'm there. I will be flying there and back so the material I can bring back will be limited. I think I am going to have to hire some local for $15 hr to help keep the operation running efficiently. Or perhaps a percentage of the gold. I wish there were no limits on sluice size because I am a beast behind a shovel lol

 

[chlsbrns]

Is there a specific part of Nome beach where people can sluice? Or can you sluice on any part of the beach?

 

[KevinInColorado]

Is there a specific part of Nome beach where people can sluice? Or can you sluice on any part of the beach?

Here is what the nome chamber of commerce site says:
State land begins at the mean high tide level. Since the average tide
range at Nome is 1.04 feet, this means that in order to be on state land the miner must effectively be in the water. All of the uplands at Nome are privately owned. Therefore, highbankers can be used in the surf below mean high tide, but not higher up on the beach.
6. Because the uplands are all privately owned, any miner mining or camping on the beach or tundra above the beach will be in trespass unless they have permission from the land owner. Trespass is not allowed, and is grounds for revocation of the miner’s permit.

 

[chlsbrns]

Thanks Kevin!

I was wondering why all of the pics of people sluicing at Nome were close to the water when the heavy black sand deposits are near the tree line. I was assuming it was because of hose length.

It's worth the effort to get landowner permission!

 

[Jjhall68]

Here is what the nome chamber of commerce site says:
State land begins at the mean high tide level. Since the average tide
range at Nome is 1.04 feet, this means that in order to be on state land the miner must effectively be in the water. All of the uplands at Nome are privately owned. Therefore, highbankers can be used in the surf below mean high tide, but not higher up on the beach.
6. Because the uplands are all privately owned, any miner mining or camping on the beach or tundra above the beach will be in trespass unless they have permission from the land owner. Trespass is not allowed, and is grounds for revocation of the miner’s permit.

That's really interesting Kevin,
I never researched the tides in Nome, right now on the coast here in WA we are running close to 9' shift high to low tide. I have seen some huge tides in South East Alaska and well you know what they say about assumption.

Thanks for the insite.

John

 

[Jjhall68]

Jjhall68, thanks for the advice. I am for sure looking to run as much material as possible in the time that I'm there. I will be flying there and back so the material I can bring back will be limited. I think I am going to have to hire some local for $15 hr to help keep the operation running efficiently. Or perhaps a percentage of the gold. I wish there were no limits on sluice size because I am a beast behind a shovel lol

Ron,

If you want some Beach gold from here in WA, to practice with shoot me a PM and I'll send you some unprocessed material. I think this would be similar to the material you'll find in Nome, but that's coming from someone who's never been, lol.

John

 

[Sluice Willis]

If you want to recover your iron with the least investment you might consider an aluminothermic reaction. The process you referenced using coke, which is a carbothermic reaction, is cheaper on a production scale however it requires a lot more investment on the front end. You can add a layer of CaCO3 (type S lime, unslacked) and really turn up the heat! Use an aluminum plate in the bottom of your crucible to slow the discharge and make sure your thermite doesn't bore through the middle of the charge without getting everything into the melt. I have some great literature on thermite if you want shoot me a message.
All this should come with a healthy dose of common sense, yeah right as common as unicorn poop.
How's this, if you shouldn't even think about doing this, you know who you are, don't do it! You can burn down your neighbor hood, or yourself, go blind from the massive UV produced by these temps or if your lucky enough to get caught in the rain, create something right out of Dante's inferno.
Be safe and have fun,
John

"You can burn down your neighbor hood" I couldn't get that lucky!

The early iron furnaces ran 24 hours a day 7 days a week, but I would only need to run mine for roughly 12-14 hours. I live in the Rust Belt so I could get coke from the coke plant, but I want to do it with charcoal and crushed limestone like they did in the Kentucky furnaces. No aluminum plate in the bottom either, they lined the bottom and the troughs with a sand clay mixture that turned into a ceramic from the heat. Water is a big no no, they burned a fire in the old furnaces to cook off any moisture. I could just use a modern kiln with modern materials but there is no fun in that for me. I want to build a small scale early iron furnace, maybe three feet tall or so just to produce the iron and steel.

When they starting using coke it increased production and quality, I agree it's a better fuel and source of carbon, it's made by roasting coal. I want to master the the early process of iron production, wrought iron was first produced in a campfire, so it is a fairly simple process. You never know it might be knowledge worth having one day, but I'm in it for the fun of reliving history and playing blacksmith.

 

[johnedoe]

Rept: Black sand, being heavy by nature, is going to
be somewhat expensive to ship. Best way for smaller
quantities is to use one of the USPS medium or large
Flat Rate boxes.

Unless that black sand is really loaded with super-fine gold
you might make back the shipping costs...at best.

Got a gravel quarry near by? Go buy yourself a yard of
1/4'- and pull all the black sand out of it...probably be
plenty for you to test out your new gear on.

BTW, Ya didn't hear it from me, but as best I recall you're not
supposed to buy or sell on the site unless you're a Charter
Member.

I would really like to try out my cleangold sluice on the stretch of beach.......
I haven't really used it and I picked it up for a heck of a deal so I figure no loss if it turns out to be a bogus sluice.

 

[Jjhall68]

Johnedoe

How is the beach gold down toward the dunes? No shortage of sand but how about black sand and gold?

All the Best,

John

 

[johnedoe]

Johnedoe

How is the beach gold down toward the dunes? No shortage of sand but how about black sand and gold?

All the Best,

John

There is plenty of sand and it contains a good amount of blacksand but very little gold here.
There is a beach not too far from me that also shows a good amount of garnet with the black sands but so far what I have tested has little to show for the effort..... just a few specks per bucket load.
Also I have not run much of it and I really need to ...... With that said the cleangold sluice had proven to show some good possibilities, it does require a pretty controlled water flow and angle. Feed rate is fairly flexible and pre-classifying really is a must but that is not a problem with beach sands.

I lived up in Nome for a couple years in the 80s...... Wish I would have had that sluice then.

 

[Oregon Viking]

Is this the "cleangold" sluice you have?
Sluice Boxes - Cleangold Sluices - FOSSICKERS - Micro Gold Recovery

 

[johnedoe]

Is this the "cleangold" sluice you have?
Sluice Boxes - Cleangold Sluices - FOSSICKERS - Micro Gold Recovery

Yup.... I got the big beach sluice and the small prospector 8x8, I made a slick plate for the prospector.
I met David (the designer of the system) and spent some time talking with him and running the sluices.
Interesting fellow........

 

[arizau]

The Fossicker was one of the dealers who was demonstrating and/or selling their prospecting equipment and supplies at the GPAA Gold and Treasure Show in Mesa, AZ this past weekend. Along with his, familiar to most, pyramid pro pan and maverick finishing pan, he also had his cleangold products/ sluices on display. He demonstrated with a handheld cleangold item ($45) and the results were impressive in it's ability to quickly test "pan" for gold larger than about 50 mesh prior to production runs as the gold was clearly visible on top of the black sand remaining on the device at the end of the demonstration. However, one would probably have to conventionally pan the concentrates captured by the device to see if there is gold smaller than about 50 mesh since I'm not sure anything that small or smaller was visible in the demonstration. Maybe just a result of my vision? Of course this same testing can, and usually is, done by conventional panning so I'm not sure the device has a real advantage for testing but it does have potential for a quick method to really super concentrate magnetic black sands particularly those of a size smaller than about 50 to 70 mesh. Here is the patent to give you the theory of how cleangold devices work. http://www.google.com/patents/US5927508

There was no demonstration of the pump powered sluices or the stream sluice. If you go to his site there are videos of them in action but none for the handheld device. The concentrates collected from the sluices can then be quickly further concentrated using the handheld device mentioned above. By looking at the devices, I guesstimate that the resulting concentrate reduction of black sand to be about 4 to 8 times in volume depending on what size cleangold sluice the concentrates were collected by. There would be no real loss in gold in the re-concentration as, in most cases, the reject concentrates are tested and rerun anyway if one detects gold in them no matter the recovery method. Thus the use of this device could be a real time saver by reducing the volume of material one runs in the final cleanup efforts. In my, and many others opinion, the less material one has to pan, miller table or blue bowl for final gold recovery the better. The Fossicker said that there is an ingenious secret method to extract most of the gold from those concentrates in about two minutes time!?!? He also said the inventor (who he called a prodigal, I think he meant prodigy) made him promise not to disclose the "secret method" to others, prior to contracting him to sell the patented product. The "secret method" is shared only with purchasers of the cleangold devices. He alluded to other wondrous things about cleangold but would not divulge them since they were part of the secret. Who knows what they are.

I have no doubt that the cleangold sluices capture gold pretty well BUT I have no idea how well they actually compare to other types of sluices/devices including the gold cube as far as overall capture efficiency goes. I have not seen anywhere comparisons of cleangold vs. ... If you get a chance to see the Fossicker demonstrate his equipment in person take the time to do it. He is pretty entertaining but obviously proud and opinionated about his products. After his demonstration(s) you can form your own conclusions.

The above is just a report and is what I observed, heard and have since thought a lot about.