Question on recovery

[Burdie]

Very new at panning and I am trying to recover what I think is flower gold in black sand. How do you get it out of the pan or seperate from the sand? This is my first hand full of concentrate that I have panned. Excited about the rest. I could use some help please.
Burdie

 

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[warsawdaddy]

Have you got any other equip besides the pan? Do you have a snuffer bottle? You can loose lots of gold if you just try and pan it and you are not adept to it .If you can wait and if I can make it out there,I'll bring a cleanup sluice and spiral wheel with me to the CTH or maybe sooner.

 

[warsawdaddy]

Burdie you can also use a magnet to eliminate a lot of the black sand.Just keep the concentrates light in the pan when you use it or some of the gold can get trapped .Pan it just like you are and when you 'tap' your pan to make the gold 'walk' to the bottom rim and the black sand retreats toward the bottom center,then take the magnet and it will pick up the black sand.Gold is not magnetic.

 

[Burdie]

Burdie you can also use a magnet to eliminate a lot of the black sand.Just keep the concentrates light in the pan when you use it or some of the gold can get trapped .Pan it just like you are and when you 'tap' your pan to make the gold 'walk' to the bottom rim and the black sand retreats toward the bottom center,then take the magnet and it will pick up the black sand.Gold is not magnetic.

I herd that I should place paper between the magnet and iron. Is this true?
Burdie

 

[ericwt]

It just makes getting the magnetic sands off the magnet easier.

Also since you are a beginner you might want to pan over a bucket so you can pan again and make sure you did not loose any gold.

How much material to you have to pan?

Sounds like warsawdaddy has you covered. He knows his stuff.


Eric

 

[Burdie]

It just makes getting the magnetic sands off the magnet easier.

Also since you are a beginner you might want to pan over a bucket so you can pan again and make sure you did not loose any gold.

How much material to you have to pan?

Sounds like warsawdaddy has you covered. He knows his stuff.


Eric

I have two gallons of sand. I put a cup of sand in the pan and I have a teaspoon of black sand with an 1/8 of it as gold.
Burdie

 

[warsawdaddy]

That seems like good cons! It may take a little longer,but I wouldn't put a cup in.Maybe just a tablespoon or two at a time.What size is your pan?And have you roughed up the bottom some with fine sandpaper?You should as it will help the gold to stay put and not travel out with the lighter stuff.If you see any gold floating,put a drop of dishwasher liquid in the water.This breaks the surface and the gold drops.But not more than a drop.You'll be an old 'sourdough' before you know it.

 

[Burdie]

That seems like good cons! It may take a little longer,but I wouldn't put a cup in.Maybe just a tablespoon or two at a time.What size is your pan?And have you roughed up the bottom some with fine sandpaper?You should as it will help the gold to stay put and not travel out with the lighter stuff.If you see any gold floating,put a drop of dishwasher liquid in the water.This breaks the surface and the gold drops.But not more than a drop.You'll be an old 'sourdough' before you know it.

It's the green garret 15 inch didn't have a smaller one. Thanks for the tip on the sandpaper. Thanks a lot WD
Burdie

 

[katyma_minerals]

Well Burdie ; you have already got some great advices.

I am not a skill panner either, but as the visible gold in my claims are pretty fine flour and dust I know about your problem how to pan it out of the black sand.

I use a spiral concentrator, but it leaves some percent of the fine gold in the garbage, so I have to pan the black sand anyway.

Do as ericwt advices; pan over a bucket and you can’t lose anything.

If your paydirt just contains very fine gold you should maybe use a sieve for removing small stones from the material before you start to pan. It’s preferred to put the black sand dry in the sieve.

When the mayor size material is removed is it much easier to pan the rest, as it is about equal sized material – black sand & gold in the pan.

If you pan the black sand cup by cup, as you suggested, over a bucket and the result leaves a teaspoon of black sand and gold in the pan, you have made a kind of “super concentrate”.

Pan cup by cup and store the super concentrates – which should contain about 10-15% gold, shouldn’t it.

After finishing panning about 10 cups, pan the super concentrate carefully over an other bucket.
If you do it in this way you will get about a teaspoon of gold with a low black sand content in the final pan, and the fine gold you maybe lost in the final panning is still there in the second bucket with not much black sand. You can easily pan that black sand again, and again and………

Good luck

Mats in Madagascar

 

[Nashoba]

That seems like good cons! It may take a little longer,but I wouldn't put a cup in.Maybe just a tablespoon or two at a time.What size is your pan?And have you roughed up the bottom some with fine sandpaper?You should as it will help the gold to stay put and not travel out with the lighter stuff.If you see any gold floating,put a drop of dishwasher liquid in the water.This breaks the surface and the gold drops.But not more than a drop.You'll be an old 'sourdough' before you know it.

You sure ain't whistlin' Dixie about that being good cons...More like freakin GREAT CONS!

~Nash~

 

[Functional]

Burdie, everyone seems to have they're own methods, so I'll only comment on what I do.

First, classify to remove larger rocks and do so carefully, watching for nuggets as I go. I pan whats left down to the black sand and only pick out any nuggets I happen to notice. Then everything goes into a bucket to finish up on later, either when I get home, or when its raining to heavy, etc.

I get a shallow plastic container, (such as a plastic gold pan), ready by filling it with enough water to nearly fill the container or pan, and add a small amount of water softener, (its cheap and goes a long way), to break the surface tension of the water, (left out afterwards, this becomes a deathtrap for mosquito's). Then I take the concentrate from the bucket and pour it a cup or so at a time into the shallow plastic container or pan.

At this point, we go high tech and build a proper iron, (black sand), removal device using a pill bottle and small but strong magnet that fits across the bottom of the pill bottle. Drill, or cut a small hole in the top of the bottle and connect a string, or piece of wire to the magnet and have the string, or wire thread through the hole on top so that it can be attached to a piece of plastic, (a pull tie works), or a key ring. The idea being, that when you lift out some iron, (black sand), and move the magnet over the container you want to deposit the iron into, you pull the ring on top, lifting the magnet away from the bottom of the pill bottle and the iron drops off.

And after gently shaking the pan and swirling it to get the gold on the trailing edge of the swirl, I hold pill bottle about 1/4 to a 1/2 inch above the iron and lift off small amounts at a time, until no noticeable amounts of iron lift off. Don't let the bottle come in contact with and disturb the concentrate, as this will cause it to lift some black sand that contains gold and has just enough iron to be attracted to the magnet. If you want to be sure you have all you can get at this point, then re-swirl the container, or pan and repeat.

I don't have a mercury retort anymore, as it was stolen along with most everything I owned several years back, but thats another sad story. I do hope to get another one as this next step is more safely done with one. If I had a mercury retort, I would dry the remaining concentrate and heat it in the retort, just in case there is some mercury in it. But, since I don't have one, I use a normal cast iron frying pan with a loosely fitted lid and heat for about 15 minutes on a propane burner well away from myself, or any other living thing. This is done to remove, either, or both, mercury and sulfides.

Once the contents are removed from heat and allowed to cool, you can again swirl the contents in a pan, (you can do this dry), and use a snuffer bottle to draw off any gold flakes, or small nuggets. A good pair of surgical type tweezers are good for this too.

At this stage you should have at least one proper beaker. They sell for only a few dollars and are well worth the investment. Read over the following page and when you get to the bottom part titled "Dealing with black sand", you will have all the info you need for dealing with small amounts of black sand.
http://www.prospectorsparadise.com/html/acids.html

One last thing. I know I'm repeating some of the advice on the page above, but get protective gloves, goggles and apron for use with acids. And work outside in a well ventilated area away from people, pets, or other distractions.

Good luck and be safe.

F.