One heavy bucket!

[Capt Nemo]

Just finished panning out the tailings to black sand from my last trip of the year to Lake Superior. Out of 24 gallons, 4 gal are fluid bed cons and 6 gal are black sand. Broke the handle on the 5 gal bucket. I then weighed it...



Not the heaviest, as I've weighed a 6 gal bucket at 175, but still a gut buster!

 

[Capt Nemo]

And the gold out of that black sand.

 

[smokeythecat]

Very nice.

 

[BobM]

What do you use to process the black sands? Gold cube?
I ask because I'm heading to the UP in the spring, I got permission to detect a Rail road stop, and wanted to collect some Black sands during my trip

 

[Hunt4gold]

Nice clean looking gold - very well done. Am also interested in how you processed that much black sand...

 

[Capt Nemo]

Well, after selective digging on the beach, I classified to windowscreen. I then ran each bucket on my model 4 fluid bed, and took a cleanout. I then run all the cons through my model 7 fluid bed for supercons. I then run the supercons through the miller table. Then I separate the magnetics and clean for sale. Then I pan or table the cons again. Had about 10 flat pieces that blew off the table in this batch.

Tailings get panned down to black sand, check panned for blow-outs, magnetic removal, and dumped down a muskrat hole with the light sands. Magnetics get cleaned and sold to a blacksmith. I may use this batch to test a magnetic seperator sluice idea.

Here's what I was digging. The layer ranged from 1/2"-3" thick.



This is the model 4 fluid bed (6"x14"x2 1/2"). The model 7 is just under 1/2 the volume of the model 4.



Model 7. (3"x12"x2 1/2")

 

[wildminer]

Pretty gold. Your fever level and work ethic is admirable as well as your fabrication skills!