panning sands

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scott
Joined
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out of curiosity im wondering what this fine white sand is that wont separate from black sand?

1397476444_img_8504_800x533.jpg
 
Its most likely just crushed quartz or other rocks high in silicone. I strongly doubt it being arsenic or lead as they both have a grey metallic luster and your sand is white.
 
Try putting a drop of dish washing liquid or dishwasher rinse aid in your panning water, literally a drop! this may help by dropping the surface tension between the water and the sands and help get them out of the pan. Gold and other heavies will just sink. This is also a good trick if you are trying to deal with very fine or flour gold.

Cheers, Tone
 
TenOunce Tone said:
Try putting a drop of dish washing liquid or dishwasher rinse aid in your panning water, literally a drop! this may help by dropping the surface tension between the water and the sands and help get them out of the pan. Gold and other heavies will just sink. This is also a good trick if you are trying to deal with very fine or flour gold.

Cheers, Tone

hi tone, interesting advice as I have noticed that flour gold will float on the surface of water as by itself is unable to break the surface tension/miniscus to drop. ive learnt that fine golds weight becomes irrelevant to its behaviour depending on its surface area and becomes a micro-golden-sail?

cheers scott :cool:
 
You'll often also get monazite and other brownish or silvery heavy minerals. They're hard to separate.
 
looks like crushed quartz to me, sometime that crap has been run through the leeching process and holds trace elements.
 
gcause said:
Add a squirt of Finish dish washing liquid (Americans call it Jet Dry) to your panning water to break surface tension of water.

Also suggest you try the two bucket method to separate this out:

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3478

Good luck with this :)

hi mate, I need some seriouse advice on separating all this fine gold from the silica sand and black sand. I haven't got a plug to do the 2 bucket method but even before I try it im wondering how efficient it will be and how fast it will do it?
ive been using a home made v-matt mini sluice, ive tried every angle and water flow rate and its useless. because im overloaded with everything gold I sometimes forget to think about the obviouse. today i ran some cons through it and got X amount of gold, i then panned the tailings from that and found ive been blowing HEAPS out the cons sluice :mad:
frustrating to realise at first but the positive is i know im on to something good. that pan of gold pic mixed with black and white sand was 0.67grams, im estimating that that run actually produced many times that. as i dig deeper the colour is getting better and better and bigger and now ive struck this beautiful dark grey clay mixed with red and it sampled up really good.

cons are piling up, after a hard day digging and sluicing i need to minimise time spent on cons. this is turning into an everyday thing so i need the right device???
need help please?

cheers scott :cool:
 
Hi Scott,

Is the black sand magnetic?

If so get a plastic cylinder like an old film canister and put rare earth magnets in it you can get these from Jaycar. Then put the cylinder into a glad sandwich bag and close the ziplock you can get them at Woollies or Coles. Pan off you material to the cons and then use the magnet over the black sand go back and forth in the pan until you have it all. The black sand should stick to the glad bag. Open the glad bag and turn it inside out removing the magnet cylinder as the last step. All the black sand should now be in the bag so seal the ziplock. Keep this bag and process it later through a cleanup sluice.

If the black sand isn't magnetic pan the cons down as much as you can and use a cleanup sluice.

To build a cleanup sluice get a piece of house guttering about a metre or two long. Go to Bunnings and get a black mat with fine ribbing in it they will sell you it by the metre which should be all you need. Line the guttering with this matting. Put the gutter on about a two inches above the ground at the top end with the bottom just resting on the ground siting in a gold pan. Run you garden hose at the top adjusting the water flow or you could get a bilge pump 750gph and build a spray bar if you wish. Then spoon all you black sand from the glad bags into this. I find this much quicker than a blue bowl for clean up but a blue bowl is your other option. Then just roll the matt up and empty it into a gold pan. Also check your gold pan the gutter rests in to make sure no gold is getting to it if it is then your water flow is too strong so back it off until you don't see any gold in the pan. Most of the gold should be in the top of the guttering if the water flow is right.

Hope this helps. :)

Regards,

Grant
 
20xwater said:
gcause said:
Add a squirt of Finish dish washing liquid (Americans call it Jet Dry) to your panning water to break surface tension of water.

Also suggest you try the two bucket method to separate this out:

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3478

Good luck with this :)

hi mate, I need some seriouse advice on separating all this fine gold from the silica sand and black sand. I haven't got a plug to do the 2 bucket method but even before I try it im wondering how efficient it will be and how fast it will do it?
ive been using a home made v-matt mini sluice, ive tried every angle and water flow rate and its useless. because im overloaded with everything gold I sometimes forget to think about the obviouse. today i ran some cons through it and got X amount of gold, i then panned the tailings from that and found ive been blowing HEAPS out the cons sluice :mad:
frustrating to realise at first but the positive is i know im on to something good. that pan of gold pic mixed with black and white sand was 0.67grams, im estimating that that run actually produced many times that. as i dig deeper the colour is getting better and better and bigger and now ive struck this beautiful dark grey clay mixed with red and it sampled up really good.

cons are piling up, after a hard day digging and sluicing i need to minimise time spent on cons. this is turning into an everyday thing so i need the right device???
need help please?

cheers scott :cool:

Hi Scott, show us a pic of your sluice. With V Mat alone can be difficult to "tune" a sluice, some expanded metal on top of the V mat will interrupt the flow and create eddys - low pressure areas allowing the gold to fall out and the V Mat to catch and hold it.

casper
 
hi casper, thanks for the pics. no need for pic really, its a 1.3m piece of plastic gutter from bunnings lined with v-mat. I tried again but this time I layed it down really flat with just 15mm of fall over its total length, I have a ice-cream container set up as a water hopper so water flow is gravity fed. it was really interesting what this did this time.

oh, and I classified my cons down with a strainer (bout 2mm) before I started. anyway, it did not matter what rate I fed the cons because of this micro-fine white sand substance.
the way it behaves is it just clogs up the v-mat riffles straight away and then the black sand and fine gold forms like a really slow moving lava flow. the gold has no-where to drop and being flour gold WILL NOT penetrate it no matter how liquefied.

I watched it all very closely and the black sand just rotates with the gold and excess white sand and eventually most the gold just blows down the sluice.
another thing I learnt from all this is as soon as ratio's of blondes, white, black and gold is changed from the cleanout of my highbanker it makes it even worse to separate.

there is a VERY fine line that can be achieved with a pan to separate it all but its very time consuming. because of this im pretty sure a shaker table would deal with this problem but im not prepared to spend that much at this stage of prospecting. im not sure if anything else will deal with it properly and efficiently and fast enough for the amount of cons im starting to produce? im thinking of leaning towards a desert fox spiral wheel?

below is a pic of the cons i panned out from the 2nd sluice from yesterdays run...

1398515219_img_8888_800x533.jpg


grant, thanks heaps mate. answer to your magnetic question...

1398515430_img_8875_800x533.jpg


things are changing the deeper I dig and further up the gully towards the exposed bedrock I go into this cut, below is an average test pan of the clay...

1398515629_img_8874_800x533.jpg


a pic of the clay and quartz samples ready for the dolly to investigate further maybe...

1398515808_img_8858_800x533.jpg


first video of everything coming soon ;)

scott :cool:
 
casper said:
20xwater said:
gcause said:
Add a squirt of Finish dish washing liquid (Americans call it Jet Dry) to your panning water to break surface tension of water.

Also suggest you try the two bucket method to separate this out:

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3478

Good luck with this :)

hi mate, I need some seriouse advice on separating all this fine gold from the silica sand and black sand. I haven't got a plug to do the 2 bucket method but even before I try it im wondering how efficient it will be and how fast it will do it?
ive been using a home made v-matt mini sluice, ive tried every angle and water flow rate and its useless. because im overloaded with everything gold I sometimes forget to think about the obviouse. today i ran some cons through it and got X amount of gold, i then panned the tailings from that and found ive been blowing HEAPS out the cons sluice :mad:
frustrating to realise at first but the positive is i know im on to something good. that pan of gold pic mixed with black and white sand was 0.67grams, im estimating that that run actually produced many times that. as i dig deeper the colour is getting better and better and bigger and now ive struck this beautiful dark grey clay mixed with red and it sampled up really good.

cons are piling up, after a hard day digging and sluicing i need to minimise time spent on cons. this is turning into an everyday thing so i need the right device???
need help please?

cheers scott :cool:

Hi Scott, show us a pic of your sluice. With V Mat alone can be difficult to "tune" a sluice, some expanded metal on top of the V mat will interrupt the flow and create eddys - low pressure areas allowing the gold to fall out and the V Mat to catch and hold it.

casper

ide really like to conserntrate my cons as much as possible with a singlw device, I will be thinking about the mini expanded idea. next time I go to town maybe:cool:
 
....... all understood.

Seems to me you need more consistent flow thru the sluice also I'm not a fan of the BUNNINGS Mat 'cos i found like you it didn't clear out efficiently, the channels are shallow, ribs are flat topped and close spaced so i ditched it for the CLARK Rubber ribbed mat (see photo) and the performance difference is significant at my 9 litres per minute flow rate.

1398519749_picture_14.png
 
Nice idea you have running the
(YES! - V Rib Mat is great stuff. My "Bunning's Sluice" has evolved since i first posted the prototype pic early this year and it now incorporates V Rib mat and has improved the capture efficiency hugely).
Could you please give me a breakdown of how you built it eg: what materials and their lengths and have you put it all in a White pvc pipe what Dia.. is the pipe. It really does look like a great idea to help break down the sheer amount of cons you end up with at the end of the day.
Cheers Paul
 

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