Flux Recipe

KevinInColorado said:
Sorry to hear you are struggling with fine gold separation from black sand. It's definitely an art! Have you tried classifying your cons with 12/30/50 mesh screens? How about using a magnet? Jet dry?
...with these tools you can really zip thru the cons!
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I do ALL that. You know the type of gold that comes out of the the Arkansas. It's almost all -50. I can get the bigger stuff easy, it's the smalls that kill me.

I screen all my cons, then pan out the over-size material, just in case there's a picker in there, or any under-size that didn't go through.
Then I put all those -50 in a tub one scoop at a time and run a magnet through it (under water since its all wet already).... it's about 75% magnetics.
Then all those iron sands are dried in the sun and re-magnet screened because material always gets stuck in there on the wet pull. There is always good gold in this!
Now, all that non-magnetic material gets run through the concentrator sluice to give me my super-cons.... but all that is the easy part. BTW, all that reduces about 5 gallons of cons to about 1/2 of a gold pan full of super cons.

Next comes finish panning all my super-cons, and it has to be done a kitchen-spoon full at a time, at probably 1/2 hour per spoon. Why does it take so long? The super cons are 90% non-magnetic blacks, garnets and gold. The flour gold doesn't settle to the bottom easily. SO it goes.... shake the cons, slowly wash away the top material until specks of gold begin to show, rinse out the stripped material, re-shake the cons...etc. etc. If you go too long, the flour gold begins to move and wash into the stripped cons.

Every spoonful has 100 or more colors in it, so it's either work it slow or wash the majority of my gold away which brings me back to my post.... take the time by hand or melt.

If you have some super-secret method I'd love to hear it.
 

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You are definitely on the right track!

Not super secret but, yes there's a specific technique for the -50 material you are fighting with. Learn the shake and tap method and you'll clean a couple tablespoons of that material in a few minutes instead of 1/2 hour!

You can see videos of the method on the gold cube website or the gold hog website. Check out video 9... http://www.goldcube.net/fine-gold-challenge/4586029192 for one version of this idea. Search YouTube for more versions of shake and tap panning to see some options and develop a version that works for you :)

At 36 minute mark of this video, Doc demonstrates the other version of this method. I do some of both. [/QUOTE]

It takes a little practice but these methods are sooo much faster than traditional back washing, you'll be thrilled, I promise :)

Like you, and unlike Mike's demo, I separate the magnetics wet. If you get a strong magnet and pull the iron sand up thru an inch of water to the magnet you can avoid catching gold with the iron sand. This works even better if you classify first. That said, I do still dry the iron sand and re-separate it just to be sure ...and some times I find a speck or three that way.

Good luck and let us know how you do with this...it confounds a LOT of people!
 

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Marmentman said:
Is it really worth it to smelt your gold or leave it powder or melt it all in to one button?
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It's more profitable to not smelt the gold. A buyer will pay based on the weight and karat of the gold. I'll use jewelry as an example. One oz of 14k has .585/oz of 24k so a buyer will pay based on .585/oz. If you smelt and are lucky enough to get .585/oz the buyer will pay based on .585.oz. The difference... It costs you money for the smelting equipment, supplies, flux, time, ect.
 

That is an interesting looking technique, I've only used tapping at the very end to make snuffing easier. I'll have to give that method a try tomorrow, since I still have about 1/4 pan of material to work. Thanks for the video tip!
 

Shaker table to concentrate n clean, amalgamate concentrates, digest HG with acid Save acid for next use, smelt cleaned gold you end up with a fairly pure product, at the least good enough to sell, my method for hardrock cons, they are a little differant beast than placer stuff.


just buy a flux already made save the trouble of asking folk you dont know what they are really doing. action mining sells a good flux and whatever else one needs for gold refining.

learn to use the Hg process saves much time, as for smelting, us hard rock miners end up with buckets of metalics and heavys, all of it sooner or later must be smelted its just our end process, the last step before it gets turned into cash.

GT.................
 

GT is right of course but none of those fancy tools are needed if you have modest amounts of material and get good at the tapping techniques.

Jason, I found a video of Doc's technique and added it to my prior post. Try that too, the price is right...free!
 

KevinInColorado said:
GT is right of course but none of those fancy tools are needed if you have modest amounts of material and get good at the tapping techniques.

Jason, I found a video of Doc's technique and added it to my prior post. Try that too, the price is right...free!
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OK, I'll have to watch that one in a minute. Mikes #5 video just explained something I didn't understand but suspected. 75% of my gold was in the bottom-right of my pan tail, so I'll have to modify that technique too!

I'll add, that I have figured out a way to make the pan into a mini-wave table. When you get down to a very small amount of cons and shake them into the edge, you can hold the pan flat and move it in a very fast, tight circle for a few seconds. Most of the material will separate and you'll have mostly clean gold left at the edge. The down side so far is that it can pull some gold with it because human (or at least my) technique isn't perfect. Then exact movement and exact amount of water in the pan makes a big difference. I'm still playing with it, but it's an interesting technique.
 

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Hey Kevin thanks for the comments. By the way I used the Gold Hog razorback matting in a 6" wide rec. sluice with what I thought was exhausted black sands 50- and came up with about two more grains of gold dust 50 to 300 mesh. The matting really helps, and I think gold hog has a special clean-up Matt just for this kind of heavies
 

KevinInColorado said:
It takes a little practice but these methods are sooo much faster than traditional back washing, you'll be thrilled, I promise :)

...................

Good luck and let us know how you do with this...it confounds a LOT of people!
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Well, I gotta say.... a tiny change has made a HUGE difference! My "wash and tap" still needs work, but I can see it working. Locking my wrist and working from the elbow has made the biggest change. I cna now work twice the material in 1/4 of the time!
 

I also have a #70, and 100 screen to classify to. There is a video called Mercury Free Gold Recovery From Black Sand Concentrates, that helped me a great deal. Next Step Mining | Welcome I will loan it out to you if you PM me with your address.
KevinInColorado said:
Sorry to hear you are struggling with fine gold separation from black sand. It's definitely an art! Have you tried classifying your cons with 12/30/50 mesh screens? How about using a magnet? Jet dry?
...with these tools you can really zip thru the cons!
Click to expand...
 

Well I see this thread has gotten a little off topic but I guess the goal is to make cleanup easier, so with that said here's my 2 nuggets.

You might give this thread a look and watch the videos. Most of them are less than 4 minutes long until you get to the last 2 which Doc of gold hog does, they are about 15 - 20 minutes long.
Anyway give them a look, it might be something to make your life easier on the cleanups.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/panning-gold/459664-art-gold-panning.html
 

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I run a couple hard rock mines and always smelt off the garbage. I would never think of not doing it, then we sell off the bars. I would also never sell gold on ebay that's amateur in my opinion. Plenty of co. that will buy your gold. I see no problem with someone or anyone wanting to smelt the gold they get lode or placer if its small fine and not a specimen melt it and sell it. I don't get people who keep there gold? What's the point of mining to admire the gold? I want the money and I will admire my bank account. Just my 2 cents.
 

People seem to be getting smelting and melting confused. Smelting is a chemical reaction. Lots of good comments though in among the noise.
 

One of these days I may try this.
 

johnedoe said:
One of these days I may try this.
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For Beach gold it would be a good thing because every time you pour it out to see it, you lose a lot. So melt it all together into buttons, then you can put them in your pocket and show them off :)
 

I sell it all. I have no need to look at something on the shelf I am in it for money and thats also what the old timers did mainly to live on. Best of luck out there.
 

Fluxes.

Hello
This is a little late to this thread topic. Would suggest looking at Ricketts and Miller's Notes on Assaying for the best answer for a type of Ore that is being assayed. For example the ratio charts are different for Quratz rich compared to Iron pyrite low / high.
There is also a 'Process for fusion in the crucible' and this is the reason for the different fluxes. This process also happens in nature if all the elements and factors are in place.
 

Part of a post -

"I need the ratio weight or percent for the following flux:
Borax
Sodium Nitrate
Sand"

I would strongly suggest dropping the Sodium Nitrate from the mix. Reason is simple... sodium or potassium nitrates are extremely strong oxidizers. They will burn off as an LOI when the ignition temperate is arrived at or worse yet combine with iron oxide and aluminum to form thermite. In other words, nitrates can literally "light" up your day. Caveate emptor.
 

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