The shake and tap method works great, that's what I do all the time. You can see videos on YouTube by either Mike Pung (of gold cube fame), Doc from gold Hog or Ryan Finley of Goldstrike Adventures so get your search on!
On the microwave oven smelting, I recently got the gear to do this but haven't tried it yet myself. The core idea is to melt your combined black sands and gold with some flux. The flux makes the melt thinner aka more runny so the gold can all easily sink to the bottom. After it's cool you just smack the glassy flux off and there's your gold. I'm skipping a lot of steps here and this has multiple safety issues so I suggest you start by learning the shake and tap panning method.
Pro tip: shake and tap works best with everything bigger than 50 mesh removed from your cons. Also just a few spoonfuls of cons at a time if using a ten inch finish pan.