Separating Gold from Black Sand

What is the best way to separate gold from black sand? I am having abit of trouble.

There's a few ideas worth investigating in the DIY section https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewforum.php?id=69

Here are a couple of topics to get you started
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4846
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3001
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=491
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=52557#p52557

Nugget.

Thanks mate

This is a question I put to a German guy, who replied with a video.

I posed the question, would an Ultrsonic jewelry cleaner separate gold from black sand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVeCMIzLFyA

You guy might wanna have some ideas or have a crack yourself. You never know, it may work.

Jeff

mmmm at that size gold is easy to seperate from black sand ,,,,its when it get really itsy bitsy teeny weeny it becomes extremely difficult

then i would go for one of those gold furnaces on ebay ...the melted gold will go to the bottom

Haha so basically doesnt work thanks. ..

Was trying to find a different clip but this looks good!

Why not use just a magnet? or if you want to go fancy make/buy a magnetic separator.

Hi Guys,

We are very new to this so we are hoping for some tips..

We have recovered very fine gold and are not sure how to separate it from the black sand.

Any tips?

Magnet to start off with?

I'm quite new myself, but I'll offer some tips from my own experiences;

- magnet to get rid of some
- pan it slowly, carefully and extract smaller sections with a pipette - squirt it out on a blue yoghurt lid and with a magnifier sift through (PAINSTAKING!)
- invest in a blue bowl, or make your own.....
- make your own blue bowl - I tried this but there's a few problems with a DIY bowl. Sometimes it's better just to spend the money!

....I'm trying to work out a better way myself...but like everything just need more time and patience.

Good luck.

I don't have to go through huge amounts of super fines but I find using a large based pan (Garrett Super Sluice 15") very much helps to spread out the material.

So basically I shake the fines down (classify out the larger bits) down to the edge, with a smallish amount of water in the pan. Then shake side to side in small movements level the pan out and spread the material. Then tap up the gold to the edge (ensure the tapping hand is 90 degrees to the other hand [don't hold at 6 and tap at 12]), do so gently so the gold is pretty much all that moves, using a clean snuffer bottle, pick up that gold line. Repeat the process until all gold is removed from the pan.
Empty the mostly clean (never get it perfectly clean first go) gold out of the snuffer into the pan (clean it well 1st), then repeat the process. After 2 runs you should have it pretty darn clean!

Hope this helps! (Or watch this:https://youtu.be/PnBSn-BHzOU)

Once you do 500 pans you will have the swing of it, the gold will sit still while you gently swirl the black sand away, I often wash the black sand out the back of the pan once I get a spoon full free of gold.
Having two snuffer bottles also works one for Gold and one for black, just suck it up as you swirl it free.

I bought a blue bowl, excellent tool :Y: but these days I can swirl the pan and clean the gold with ease.

Biggest tip...... don't over fill your pan, once your down to black sand and heavies it needs to be less than half a cup of material , any more and it will drive you bonkers,
best if it's only a couple of spoon fulls and you need about a spoon full or two of water ,
when you have the material settled in one corner of pan, you only want to swirl waves of water just strong enough to move black sand and leave the gold.

Its all practice.

I use the same technique as rust g ,but i also use a rare earth magnet

put about 1/4" to 1/2" depth of water in the pan and shake the pan side to side gently to spread the material evenly over the base of the pan as thin as possible (one layer of material)

get the rare earth magnet and place it in a plastic bag ,and sit the magnet on the top of the water wave the magnet over the material

don't try and do the whole pan at once ,i use a garret gold trap and move the magnet from one side to the other ,then put it over a flat dish and remove the magnet from the bag and drop the black sands, check the sand for any gold that it has picked up

the idea of the method is that the gold ,if any is picked up with the black sands will fall out of the sand before getting stuck in the sand on the magnet, ie 1/2" water and skim the magnet

i bought my magnet a few years ago and i can not remember what strength it is ,i think it is 5kg hold and is 1.5" diameter by about 1/4" thick

you can get them from (amf magnetics) just google amf magnetics

If you jiggle the pan side to side fast enough the gold will concentrate under the black sand. Light swirl offs until you see a single speck of gold. Stop, then fast jiggle to sink the gold and repeat swirl offs.
Keep the pan steep when ya jiggle so the material packs tight in the corner so when you throw a swirl over it your working a smaller surface area of black sand..