fine gold recovery from black sand

Welcome To The Canadian Gold Prospecting Forum. Please consider registering to gain full access! - Its free and only takes a few seconds to complete - Click Here.

Gold Prospecting Forums, Gold Prospecting Forum

[Guest]

A A A A

[ramdu]

Help; I have a problem seperating my extremely fine gold from black sand. I am reducing the initial concentrate to about a cup from 5 gallons with a pro camel spiral wheel. I can't get clean gold from the camel as the black sand is much larger and heavier and I am losing the fine gold if I set it to remove the black sand. I have heard of cyanide leaching but have never played with chemicals since my chemistry set when I was 12. Any sugestions?
                                                                                                         Randy

[johanssonsan]

Classify your material to like 30, 50 and 100 mesh and run it separately. That will help a lot. Anyhow it is hard to get down to 100% Au.

[GollyMrScience]

As Johanssonsan said classifying will help a lot. Keeps the bigger particles from bullying the little guys amd seperation is easier. A Miller Table will get a cleaner con as well. There are some plans for a Miller Table somewhere on the site but I can't seem to find them. Gary put up an ADOBE report on them that is excellent.
Don't forget magnetic seperation but have to be careful to not grab fine gold along the way. Dry cons and classified helps there.

[Manicminer]

You could always try grinding what you have left of the black sand smaller in a tumbler or similar. The gold will then be larger than it and be easier to pan.

[Traveller]

ramdu
If, as you say, your black sand particles are a  good deal larger than your gold particles, has it occurred to you to put the gold wheel aside and do some experimenting with classifying screens?
What I mean is this. If your smallest black sand particle is, say, 125 mesh and your largest gold particle is 150 mesh, the solution is pretty obvious. A sample sent to an assay office with instructions to assay various screened sizes would quickly tell you if this were going to work.
Regards
Bob

[Chuxgold]

I have a post on the tips page. Titled. Speed panning flower gold. And is exactly what you need. The technique will remove in stages of separation. By using the mass of the larger material to remove only its self.  Not by any definite degree of mesh. And not entirely of only size. As gravity plays a role in giving the finer more cohesion to the surface. With gold the heaviest. It dues not mater how much practice you have. As it lodges first. No matter its size. Even the smallest grain will settle out. Leaving the larger waist material scoured off the top. Taping the board in a downward direction causes everything to jump. The larger shifts further than the smaller. As it has more mass to be cast further from the larger impact. Were a peace of gold half the size but twice the weight dues not have as much surface. So is struck just as hard. It just dues not have the same effect.
Anyway The larger is bounced higher. So can fall further acrossed a grade. With separation happening really fast. So one cup batches. Ads up fast. 
Ones dun the gold just falls out clean.
Chuck.

[Chuxgold]

Just looked for it. And found it. But it was a different process described under the title. Ill do a fresh take on it in the next couple days.
Chuck.

[Saage]

Try a Rare Earth Magnet to remove the sand, as it is usually magnetic.

[drpop]

 leaching is hard, expensive and dangerous. Unless you want to try it for fun it not worth it.  Smelting is a better  (i did not say good) option. 

Kim

[astrobouncer]

I would also say a miller table is the answer here. They are fairly cheap to make, and very effective.