Floating gold

[shivan]

G'day all.
Was doing a bit of an experiment tonight looking at how mercury acts with gold(i dont use mercury for cleanups). However before i even got that far i poured 1.053g og gold dust into a pan of water. I made sure i sprinkled it as i wanted to see it float. Well float it did i was allmost worried i somehow got a heap of mica mixed in with my gold but as i started tapping it it dropped. But some of it was so fine and so hard to drop i could not believe it :8 Even after a little rinse aid i still had to chase a few specs round the pan to get them to sink.
Got most of it on film so i will try to post later.

 

[Tommtb7]

That would be a helpful one to watch shivan, cheers mate

 

[shivan]

Here is the video

[video=480,360]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifD8uyMGU_k[/video]

 

[HeadsUp]

i would have liked to see the floating gold left there and then introduce organic products which would break down the water surface tension to allow it to sink immediately
( into the bottom of my riffles )

its a serious question , especially for shoalhaven and other fine gold areas . there must be a biodegradeable detergent or other organic green-safe product we can inject into our water flow through our sluice to lift our recovery rate.

 

[Chimpy]

G'day

I'm not so sure any additives are needed. The fact we catch this gold in the first place means it has more to do with angle, flow rate, cavitation and turbulence, as well as riffle design. Any cavitation or air bubbles forming on the bottom of the tray or around matting and riffles will deflect fine gold and keep it moving down the sluice and if you had an almost laminar flow of water that had a surface tension you would lose fine gold, and too fast a flow of any kind speaks for itself. I reckon it's a case of reducing flow rate and angle to the absolute minimum required to just keep the riffles effectively cleared and the right amount of turbulence, though that pretty much comes down to your initial design of riffles and matting and not really adjustable. Fines I have no trouble catching in the highbanker give me all sorts of trouble in the pan by floating as it naturally forms a tension layer. Only my opinion and observations but the bottom line is I've increased fine gold retention a bit by tweaking how I run the sluice

Cheers

Chimpy

 

[shivan]

HeadsUp, i was not really ready for the amount of gold that was floating, i was expecting a few specs here and there. When you see me grab my snuffer bottle to put some water in i did this as i knew there was a drop of rinse aid in that snuffer, but i still had to get another drop from the kitchen to get everything to settle.

I do agree with chimpy, all that gold that was floating was captured with my highbanker and would not normally float like that in a highbanker. It is more of a swim effect when gold makes it through a sluice rather than floating i believe.
The pan is another matter

 

[Ag Man]

You don't have to worry about it floating away in your sluice or highbanker I thinks.
It's my understanding it only floats in the pan once in calm water & once the water laps up to the gold where it then is able to get onto the water surface.

Eldorado gold is well known for floating in your pan.
I got about a gram of the Eldorado good stuff -yep, you can get it floating easy peasy.

 

[Danielkrupski]

I agree with ag man, my last trip to tuena found heaps of fine gold. My highbanker caught it and as an extra precaution used Wals design at the end to see if I was loosing any gold at the end of 2 days found 2 specks in Wals design. My biggest problem was trying to get it at home. Used my home made blue bowl thought I had it all then to reassure myself panned that! All the gold that I found after that floated unless I used a spray of detergent. It was painful. But I hope I got it all. Cheers daniel

 

[Willo]

An interesting watch Shivan thanks for posting the video mate.

Ian

 

[user 794]

As a detectorist and not a panner I found that interesting. Thanks Shivan.