Fine Gold Recovery information and questions

[G0lddigg@]

here ya go mate shot a quick video for you, bit hard to pan with a camera over your shoulder but you will get the method.

 

[TenOunce Tone]

Practice practice practice

 

[Redmanti]

Powerful magnet does a lot of the work easily. Takes out the magnetic material.

 

[G0lddigg@]

Powerful magnet does a lot of the work easily. Takes out the magnetic material.

hey Redmanti

I was using an earth magnet in the early days but found that the black sand will pickup quite a lot of small gold, I suppose it depends on how ground down the mineral is. In the areas I work most of the black sand is not magnetic either so it only removes some of the sands. a good set of sieves and a bluebowl would be the best scenario but who can be bothered carrying that down to the creek

 

[Greglz86]

Great vid golddiga. That is actually very similar to the method I have been using. However rather than hold it up I was holding it down. I think ag man has hit the nail on the head though. I think im just to impatient and doing the lot in one go.
I use a garret supersluice and after the lighter stuff was gone I still had quarter-half the pan with black sand.
I ended up just taking the cons home so I will bd giving that method a go for sure golddig.
I will let you all know how I go.

 

[G0lddigg@]

the super sluice is too big to get a nice soft action mate without letting the gold dry out and float I have found. good luck hope you nail it,

 

[Ag Man]

the super sluice is too big to get a nice soft action...

I use that "hold at 9 & tap @ 12" method too. Works a treat.

Although I prefer a big bottomed pan for final clean up, finding I get a nicer swirl with the 15" pan or my trusty old big steel pan.
I guess it's what ever one prefers or what works for them.

 

[G0lddigg@]

your right agman its certainly whatever suits with prospecting, i find that the smaller the pan the easier it is is for me.

 

[bazza2210]

Great vid golddiga. That is actually very similar to the method I have been using. However rather than hold it up I was holding it down. I think ag man has hit the nail on the head though. I think im just to impatient and doing the lot in one go.
I use a garret supersluice and after the lighter stuff was gone I still had quarter-half the pan with black sand.
I ended up just taking the cons home so I will bd giving that method a go for sure golddig.
I will let you all know how I go.

I bring my cons home to put through a bluebowl - best bit of gear for that flypoo gold I have ever used.

 

[Guest]

For what it's worth I always take my black sands home. use a large pan filled with water and pan of my Black sand from the gold in a small pan in front of the tv. when there's no hurry! If your in a hurry you loose gold ! Once iv got only gold in the small pan I leave it in the sun till dry' fold a A4 sheet in half open it up shake the gold onto it then poor it into my jar.

Simple cheep effective.

 

[Greglz86]

I might start looking into making a blue bowl if I start getting to much cons and not enough time to go through them. For now I will stick to the cheaper method

 

[slowflow]

Use the search as the dimensions are on here.
There is also a miller table & a shaking miller table which can be DIY, gotta find what suits you best.

 

[PJ Gibson]

Looking forward to spending many hours reading these.

 

[Chimpy]

G'day

Get some medium grit sand paper and scour the bottom of your pan in all directions to give it some 'teeth'. The black sand and fine blonde sand will move down the pan over these fine lines a lot easier than your gold will

Cheers

Chimpy

 

[Shumba]

Hi

I was wondering if the greater knowledge here on this site, can give me some pointers on recovering super fine gold. In the order of 5-10 microns and less. Typically it is mixed with black sand and other common minerals like copper.

Any help will be much appreciated...

Have a great day

 

[TenOunce Tone]

Keep on seiving it down until you find that most of the gold is getting through and the sands etc are staying behind.
At that level of fineness you could invest in a loupe or decent magnify glass and then separate with a nail file or something.
If I have gold that fine, I dry out the gold bearing sands, spread them out on a sheet of light blue paper then check with a loupe, I then use a plastic cuticle stick that I liberated from my daughters room to separate the gold from the sands. this is tedious work but it works. here is a pic of the the results.

It is quite amazing how fine the gold can be, this sample above shows about half micron and smaller.

Good luck with it.

Cheers, Tone

 

[Jen58]

There is another trick you can do, I was told,
First have it all dried out
Place a magnet inside a plastic bag. ( this is so it's easy to remove sand from magnet)
Run it over the gold and black sand..
Hopefully most of the black sand will stick to the magnet, through the plastic leaving most of the gold behind.

Good luck with it..

 

[Shumba]

Thank you!

I knew that there would be some good responses! But the gold at 5microns is about 1/20th the thickness of a piece of A4 paper... so it is hard to even see.... and lots of it too.

 

[Ben78]

at that level of fineness try googling 'miller table'

 

[jethro]

Or you could try a chemical recovery such as chlorination which will work wellas long as there aren't any lesser base metals such as copper zinc or lead or iron in your concentrates.