I panned out about a teaspoon of minus 100 mesh Oregon beach concentrates yesterday. Gold recovery was what I had expected for this quantity, which was about 20 or so specks probably worth a tiny fraction of a cent. Oregon beach gold ranges from teeny tiny to teeny tinier.
Oh yeah,this is the rest of the story.
Due to recent monsoon rains, a non gold bearing seasonal creek at the base of the mountains about 2 miles from my house was flowing with sufficient flow to run my home made zook. I took about a quart of minus 100 mesh gold bearing Oregon ocean beach concentrates and mixed it with about 6 or 8 gallons of creek run sand, gravel, etc. When I was done, I sun dried the cons then screened to -50 +100 and -100 mesh. Results? I managed to reduce about 192 teaspoons of concentrates to about 1 teaspoon total. That's good, right? Wrong. Each of the teaspoons of original cons probably had about 20 or so specks of gold so I probably lost 3,820 specks of gold worth about a penny. Now i'm mad! I figured out that I'm probably missing out on about a nickel every time I try to use this thing on the beach. Ignorance is bliss but now I know. Oh well, I have a hog matted stream sluice that probably works equally as well with -100 mesh. Wait til I run that test!