Question about micro good in BS

[Timmy Tom]

I have a Gold Cube. This is my primary material running machine. I have caught very fine gold. Some 70 mesh and bunches of -100.

Black sands that I catch in the GC, would these sands possibly contain in the matrix, micro gold or other heavies as to the BS that runs on out of the discharge. as the heavier material pushes out the lighter. Or is it just any weight of BS that is filling the low pressure spot in the mat? Just wandering about other TN thoughts. I am sending a sample off for info. but I am leaving the tiny gold in the sample, so I will not know the actual content either way. Just the gross. I may ask them if they have a microscope to check for me.

Thanks.

TT

 

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[AlwaysBusyJ]

I would imagine that the BS caught in the goldcube might be a little heavier than the BS that gets discharged. Although it might be that the blacksand left over is just the stuff that didn't have time to work it's way down before you turned off the water. But yeah, if the BS has micro gold attached in theory it would be slightly heavier than identical sized blacksand with no gold attached. But the difference would be pretty minimal. Now if you run just straight blacksand through the cube the results might be more accurate. But if it's mixed in with the rest of your cons, then the blacksand thats been in the cube longest will have had more time to work it's way out of the cube. And did you mean you were sending the BS from the cube to be tested, or the BS that got discharged? I guess the best way to know for sure is to send two seperate samples.

 

[goldog]

I was wondering basically the same. How far down to pan my concentrates. Let's say there is two cups of 99% black sand when the blondes are mostly gone. I pan that down to say half a cup or 1/4 as much material. Would I want to save all the bs or some. In other words, what would be optimum.

Scaled up lets assume 20 gallons (4 buckets) vs one 5 gallon bucket a season. Would the gold recovery, be a lot different? I'm sure you'd lose some gold. The 4 buckets would have more total yield but not four times as much.

 

[Timmy Tom]

Thanks ABJ. Did not really think about testing discharge BS. But I know when it sets for a few minutes that the discharge pile turns black. Talked to Mike a couple weeks ago about running 1/8 or 1/20 mesh to make sure I was catching the most gold. He said run 1/8 first then reclassify the discharge to 1/20 and check to see what I may have or not lost. I really don't think I'm losing any or very little. I have not done this yet. I think that a 5 five gallon bucket run then clean out will be my standard for operation. I have thought about a plastic rain gutter with ends and make it into a fluid bed at the discharge.

Well, Goldog. I would consider running it back through at 1/20 or 50. This is something I will do later on to see for myself. Now I ran 20 gallons of material and ended up with three ounces of cons, after finish panning. I am guessing that 12 to 14 gallons went through the GC.

TT