Baking black sands

Go for it Alex. BUT... remember to do the heating OUTSIDE!!Stay up wind from the stuff until it's reached it's max temp. There was a lot of mercury used in that area during the gold rush days as well as natural stuff from cinnabar. You're a bit young to be going mad as a hatter from mercury!

Crush the sands as fine as you can get them. Heat them as hot as you can and dump them into water that's as cold as you can get it, (short of ice of course) Re-pan them and let us know what ya find. My usual 15% is still in effect. LOL


EDIT: AND DON'T FORGET THE SAFETY GLASSES!!!!!
 

If you attempt to try it let me know because im curious to how it works. Arizona has so much black sand it could drive a man crazy panning
 

Let me preface this by saying I am no rock hound, but many sulfates and pyrites are lethal when heated. Arsenic comes to mind as well as other toxic chemicals
 

ALEX! Don't go baking your black sands! That is more for the advanced group. I don't think you're ready for it. You are young and have a lot to learn. Hold off for awhile on the furnace stuff. Please. TTC
 

I usually take my black sands and put them in a pan on an outdoor heating source like an electric burner. Heat them up really good and have another pan of ice cold water, stand back and dump the black sands in hte cold water to fracture them and release any fine gold they may have.

BE CAREFULL as the hot sands WILL SPATTER IN COLD WATER when you dump it in there!
 

As long as Alex follows some basic safety procedures he'll be fine. It's not like he's trying to smelt ore, do amalgamation with mercury or set up a cyanide leaching pile here. Shake and bake is a very easy thing to do and can give some good results.
 

Roasting sands on a really hot (lots of coals) open fire outside on a piece of tin (how the old timers did it) or in a small furnace or camp stove, is not all that dangerous as long as you don't stick your face in the vapors and breathe it in. Most people do that every year when they go camping. The fire they build in a fire ring on the ground will do the same thing and is just about as dangerous. Danger is low. Use common sense and you should be fine. But being low risk doesn't make it useful...

On the value of roasting and dumping in ice water. I have done it several times, and could not discern any advantage in doing it. The amount of time and heat required (value of your time and cost of fuel), and the 'extra' recovery as a result, at least in my experience is a big fat goose egg zero nada nothing zilch! After I factor in the time and fuel cost, it loses money. Better spending your money on getting a better fine gold collection method, like the sluice I make, or just run a little more dirt.

Roasting if you have a lot of sulfides (pyrite) MAY be of value IF you use chemistry or smelt it afterwards to collect the gold. In sulfides, the gold is locked in on an atomic level and even if you 'release' it, it is too small to collect in any mechanical system anyhow. One needs to smelt it or use aqua regia to reclaim it. And not all pyrite has gold in it. Arsenopyrite is the one that does, and not all arsenopyrite DOES have gold, just some does if you are in the right region for it to have gold.

The idea that sand grains will fracture (like glass) and further reduce the size of the grains and lose attached gold is based on the idea that the expansion and contraction coefficient is different enough between the gold particle and the SiO2 (quartz) or other matrix material. This would then create enough stress to cause them to break apart, or like glass, fracture. Crystalline quartz expands and contracts differently from massive quartz. Most of what I see under the microscope here is ordered crystalline quartz, and less likely to be fractured by expansion and contraction. Check out the expansion and contraction coefficients for different materials and you will quickly realize what I mean.

In short, it is my opinion (for what that's worth), that there is no value to heating your black sands and dumping them in ice water, in most cases except for rare special instances.

If you want the fine gold that is locked in small bits of gold 'ore' in your concentrates, the most useful way is a small ore pulverizer that will crush it to talcum powder fines to release all the micro-bits of gold. This will actually yield good results, with little effort and cost, PROVIDED your concentrates have enough gold locked in fines to be of value.
 

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Ummm he somehow convinced my husband to bake them the other day in a cast iron pan on our stove. Clearly I need to be checking this forum more to see what kind of insane ideas he's convincing us to do :/ glad I wasn't home lol
 

I was reading my husband some of the questions he's been asking on treasure net and I said "he's asking people about baking black sand, people don't him Alex...that's a bit advanced..where does he find these ideas" and my husband said "seriously?? You have to do it on high temps? He convinced me to do it on the cast iron skillet while you were at the movies the other day"
Me: "what?!?!? Are you thinking?!?!? Don't ever listen to Alex without researching first"

We had a good laugh....but now I'm paranoid about health issues. Their justification : "I had the vent fan on the whole time"

See guys....lol we need your advice. Geez Louise...my child.
 

True, baking the sand is low risk but as LP13 said, the very low gain is not worth the cost and effort. Baking tons of the stuff is feasible, though. Many people get carried away IN THE MOMENT on things. Case in point.... Danny, his 12 year old daughter and Dave went out to play capture the flag with the Air Soft guns they got for Christmas. NO shooting at the head... was the rule. ALL THREE got it ... in the head! Dave got it on the tongue, Danny, was bleeding under the left eye, and Bella got a welt the size of a grape right between the eyes! Yes, all three were wearing glasses (so they told me) yet all got carried away IN THE MOMENT! Hopefully, Alex won't get carried away and try these things with baking on his own. Ok, I am getting down off the soap box. TTC
 

Hello. I recomend grinding black sand in mortar and petastal. Then pan out the black dust. btw way that dust will float on the surface tension of the water so a little soap suds in the water might help break it down.
 

TerryC said:
True, baking the sand is low risk but as LP13 said, the very low gain is not worth the cost and effort. Baking tons of the stuff is feasible, though. ... TTC
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Please note I said it is low risk IF conducted outdoors! The risk would go up significantly indoors, and the same would be true if you hauled in some random dirt from outside and piled it on the floor and made a fire on it!

I have done it a few times indoors myself (at the beginning), but I had all the doors and windows open!

Maybe that's why I have been seeing aliens creeping around nights?? But I ordered a new tin hat and night vision x-ray glasses combo off the internet, so once they arrive, I should be ok then :) I think you should watch yourself for symptoms. One of the first ones to show up is that you believe Obamacare is a good thing and that Obama is the savior of the world! :BangHead:
 

Well it seems that Little Alex can't follow instructions yet guys. Looking back over the thread EVERYONE told him that it needed to be done OUTDOORS. Although it's a simple thing to do, it's not without some risk. Alex pretty much hornswaggled his dad into doing this while mom was out of the house. That he got him to do it in the house shows that he's not paying attention to us.

I for one will no longer be going out of my way to teach Alex anything but the most basic of things when it comes to prospecting. Until he can show his parents and they give their blessings (That's BOTH of them Alex!) no more advanced lessons will be coming from me. You disappointed me and I'm sure many others here by not following our instructions to the letter. We don't say that there's things you have to do to be able to do these things in a safe manner just to hear ourselves talk. It's for your safety as well as those around you! I'm sorry if this sounds harsh Alex, but a point needs to be made and this is the best way I can think of to make you you get it.

MOM and DAD... Sorry if this caused any problems. I know that military life isn't always easy having served myself. From now on if Alex wants to learn something from us, have him discuss it with you first and then let us know that he has the green light from you. If need be, I'll send you my ph# so we can all be sure just who is making the request for information.
 

I would've but my dad insisted that it didn't have to be done outside and if he had the stove fan on high that it would be ok but I insisted on doing it outside. Alex
 

Actually, Alex listens to you, by date it appears he asked that question & immediately him and his dad decided baking it inside was what they'd do. I talked to him about it this morning, let him know its a bad idea and harmful. He said my husband was the one who insisted they do it inside!!! Then Alex told me my husband had to clean some gunk off the vent fan, which my husband failed to tell me....as I was frustrated last night hearing they did this without researching/waiting for advice!!
Argh.
 

goldenIrishman said:
Well it seems that Little Alex can't follow instructions yet guys. Looking back over the thread EVERYONE told him that it needed to be done OUTDOORS. Although it's a simple thing to do, it's not without some risk. Alex pretty much hornswaggled his dad into doing this while mom was out of the house. That he got him to do it in the house shows that he's not paying attention to us.

I for one will no longer be going out of my way to teach Alex anything but the most basic of things when it comes to prospecting. Until he can show his parents and they give their blessings (That's BOTH of them Alex!) no more advanced lessons will be coming from me. You disappointed me and I'm sure many others here by not following our instructions to the letter. We don't say that there's things you have to do to be able to do these things in a safe manner just to hear ourselves talk. It's for your safety as well as those around you! I'm sorry if this sounds harsh Alex, but a point needs to be made and this is the best way I can think of to make you you get it.

MOM and DAD... Sorry if this caused any problems. I know that military life isn't always easy having served myself. From now on if Alex wants to learn something from us, have him discuss it with you first and then let us know that he has the green light from you. If need be, I'll send you my ph# so we can all be sure just who is making the request for information.
Click to expand...


It's sad, but apparently Alex was being smart and told his dad outside. His dad apparently decided vent fan would suffice.

Also, I check his emails, but I failed to check forums until yesterday. That's how I found out half the story of the baking black sands. (Alex was asleep) I thought it smelled funny when I came home from the movie theater. When I was posting about Alex being 11 years old, naive & not understanding sarcasm, I was referring to the people who were being impatient with him. On a forum about old dimes, someone got annoyed with him because he said "wow cool" I guess they didn't understand why he would say this and got offended. He really finds that stuff "cool"

Trust me...Alex is responsible & even if he wanted to bake black sands, he wouldn't ever plan it to be sneaky without me knowing. This was just an instance of "dad, you can bake black sands" and my husband being like "ok fine lets try it" completely failure on their part & I knew that right away after seeing all the warning posts about it from you guys. lol I want to be mad about it, but part of it is so completely ridiculous, it's kind of funny (minus the dangers)
He woke up the next day eyes hurting, not sure if it was related, but it could've been. I thought that was quite odd but figured maybe he had a headache and didn't sleep well.

I appreciate the warnings, even if they failed to heed. Sometimes...parents mess up. Once I thought it would be fun to fill a soda bottle with vinegar and baking soda and throw it behind our house to hear a little pop. This was after doing a volcano activity or another similar activity. This was at ft Carson, Colorado. Ummm I had no idea it would sound like a sonic boom. My husband was so mad at me and I thought for sure the military police would come. I would totally do it again, just not on a military base or in the middle of crowded housing. lol I don't think I would've baked black sand on a iron skillet on my stove though. But military guys do crazier stuff all the time, I'm sure. my husband should've did a simple search, instead of just being like let's do it.

lol @ aliens. There's a lot of sightings round here. :)
 

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