Ohio landscape sand yields Gold.... barely

GoldReport · Jun 16, 2026

Hey all just wanted to share some midwest gold fun. I built a sandbox for my kids this weekend and instead of buying bagged sand from the store I went to the local landscape yard for a ton of Mason sand. I figured this stuff would be fairly soft and nice for the kids. After shoveling their sandbox full I had three buckets of sand left... and an idea. I set up my sluice to recirculate and started my first bucket. About halfway through I decided to adjust the sluice angle and accidently washed the whole thing out... Oops. Anyways I finished off the bucket and panned the cons. I found one small speck! I was overjoyed and buzzing about it at work today. So when I get home I decide to run another bucket and sure enough this time I got TWO specks! Whoo!!

arizau · Jun 16, 2026

Sand screw cleanout muck from sand and gravel ops have been reported to be a pretty good source of glacial gold. Some heavy black sands concentrate on the bottom of the trough, beneath the screw, and slide back to the cleanout area and eventually need to be mucked or washed out. Nutten better than working with preconcentrated feed material!

Tesorodeoro · Jun 16, 2026

GoldReport said:
Hey all just wanted to share some midwest gold fun. I built a sandbox for my kids this weekend and instead of buying bagged sand from the store I went to the local landscape yard for a ton of Mason sand. I figured this stuff would be fairly soft and nice for the kids. After shoveling their sandbox full I had three buckets of sand left... and an idea. I set up my sluice to recirculate and started my first bucket. About halfway through I decided to adjust the sluice angle and accidently washed the whole thing out... Oops. Anyways I finished off the bucket and panned the cons. I found one small speck! I was overjoyed and buzzing about it at work today. So when I get home I decide to run another bucket and sure enough this time I got TWO specks! Whoo!! View attachment 2257068

That’s pretty much on par for Ohio isn’t it? Good work.

GoldReport · Jun 17, 2026

arizau said:
Sand screw cleanout muck from sand and gravel ops have been reported to be a pretty good source of glacial gold. Some heavy black sands concentrate on the bottom of the trough, beneath the screw, and slide back to the cleanout area and eventually need to be mucked or washed out. Nutten better than working with preconcentrated feed material!

Yep done this before at multiple operations with good success. Although I suspect much of the gold leaves the screw as material packs in and doesn't allow for further concentration. My evidence for this is as I dug these corners out I would find a layering of sorts, not the gradual increase in black sands I was hoping to see. We'll see next cleanout I suppose!