Prospect refining with a #50 screen classifier

[High Etiquette 009]

Currently I classify my material using a 1/8" and then a 1/50" screen. After the #50 screen, it turned out I had a lot of grey/yellow sand leftover. My goal is to classify out this sand and be left with only black sand and Gold dust.

Does anyone have any experience with the 1/100" or 1/200" screens? Or does anyone know of any better method for getting only the black sand + gold dust concentrates? I would like to purchase a #100, but I would like to ask here first.



Thank you in advance.

 

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[winners58]

you have to pan it down, classify with your 1/8 mesh then pan it to get the blond/light sand off,
then screen with 20 mesh, pan the gold out of the plus 20 then you can screen the minus 20 down to 30, 50, 100 mesh...
you can then use a finish pan, blue bowl or miller table if there is enough gold to be worth it otherwise,
save it up till you can run it later and go get some more material, it all adds up...

 

[Reed Lukens]

Currently I classify my material using a 1/8" and then a 1/50" screen. After the #50 screen, it turned out I had a lot of grey/yellow sand leftover. My goal is to classify out this sand and be left with only black sand and Gold dust.

You can't classify out the blond sand as it comes in all sizes too. You need to completely change your way of thinking on this. Just classify to ½" or 4 mesh, then either pan or sluice to separate the heavies from the blonde sands. Then take your heavies and just run them through the 50 mesh. This video will help, it's old and I made it after a friend passed away, but it teaches and shows the separation.

 

[arizau]

One thing you can do with already concentrated material, save buying smaller mesh screens, is simply pan smaller quantities at a time (tablespoon or so for example). That said the use of fractional smaller size mesh screens is always a good thing! If you don't have a huge amount of concentrates then a set of 4 to 6" screen/sieves will suffice and Pioneer or Camel Mining make them and are available from numerous prospecting supply stores (Black Cat Mining is one).
Good Luck and welcome to the forum.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Panning is sorting the materials by specific gravity. Nothing more, nothing less. It is most effective when everything in the pan is close to the same size. This is why there are like 10-11 different sizes of classifier screens out there. You can go smaller than 100 mesh, but the equipment manufactures don't make them so you'd have to build your own.

My way of doing it is as follows:
First I classify my materials down to run through the sluice. With my recirc system I only have to go to 1/2 inch. Run the materials and then I clean out the cons. From there I usually drop it down to a #12 screen and run all of the cons through it. Anything that doesn't make it through the screen gets panned down real quick. I repeat this process always panning what is left in the screen, NOT what makes it through it. I do this until I hit the 100 mesh. Pan what's left in the screen and then pan what made it through. This is a quick way to make sure that what your panning is close to the same size and it seems to make the clean up process go faster. Classifiers are not expensive and by having all the sizes out there and using them correctly you will save a lot of time as well as prevent yourself from loosing gold while panning.