muriatic acid

The plastic bottle, you hope.

Seriously why mess with that stuff.
 

We have a LOT of mica/muscovite around here, don't know of any other way to tell the difference. I don't trust panning, probably because I don't know what I'm doing! LOL Not sure what's left in pan is gold or mica.
 

Drop a piece in.
A friend of mine has Muriatic Acid and it cleans rusty buildup from artifacts that we find in the creek.
Stand back though, lots of fumes.

We have not tried Mercury covered gold and I don't plan on doing so as I am not sure if it brings it into solution like Nitric Acid does.
 

Nuttn' but pool acid just about the wimpiest acid made. It loves ferrous items as a great deruster. To clean gold try any soap to clean then pop into sodium hypochlorite(household bleach) as it removes the copper,iron,maganese and zinc away and bright gold is left-John
 

Seriously, get a pan and sniffer bottle and learn to use them. While I understand some miners may have a need to use chemicals, it really doesn't sound like you fit into that category. :dontknow:

Get a little gold or some lead and practice. You'll learn quickly how gold behaves in the pan.
 

I just ordered some pay dirt for that very reason. Thank you all!
 

shaman15771 said:
I just ordered some pay dirt for that very reason. Thank you all!
Click to expand...
best reason ever to buy paydirt :)
A lot cheaper than getting addicted to chemicals in the long run ;)
 

I never paid for dirt. Unless you count the 25 gallons of gas at $3+/ gal. Lol. But I learned panning by practicing and going to gold areas. The other thing is to learn what gold looks like and the properties of gold. The characteristics. Remember it's heavy and meleable. Where I believe most of the stuff that'll fool ya is brittle. As far as golds concerned. The main thing is practice and practice so your comfortable with the way the water moves the material. And remember to tap the pan to move the heavies toward the tap. Many vids out there to watch.

One thing you can do is break down your panning into the heavies or concentrates. Like when speed panning. Just shake everything so heavies are down then get rid of the light stuff. Then dump cons into another bucket. May help you keep all your concentration where it needs to be. On the heavy stuff only. The thing about it is you can go as fast or slow as you want. It's up to you.
 

If you spot something in your pan that catches your eye and gets you wondering if it is gold, shade the pan from direct sunlight. If that gold, shiny yellow look disappears, it's not gold. When you shade gold, it still sits there looking a buttery yellow.

Also, if what your looking at moves with a gentle swirl of the pan, it's probably not gold. A piece of gold sitting in black sand will just sit there during the swirl. In fact it sometimes works its way down into the sand with the motion, but it rarely moves easily. When you get down to finishing your pan, it is very obvious what is gold. Even a tiny speck will just sit on the bottom when the water is in gentle motion, while everything else moves a bit.

Once you found some gold, play with it and experiment with how it reacts and moves with different panning methods. Practice, practice,practice....
 

Also gold will not float around all over the place like mica. If it's gold, it will generally stay at the bottom. Like others have said, learn how to pan and some bought cons or lead shavings of various sizes. A good technique to learn is how to tap the pan to get the gold to walk out of the black sands, the mica and anything else shiny will not walk up as far as the gold. You should never need muriatic acid to clean cons and it will not dissolve everything and leave the gold, it will only dissolve the rust, lime, calcium, copper, ferrous metals and other similar build-ups and metals in your cons. As mentioned above, practice, practice, practice, and after you get pretty good at it, practice some more. Depending on the size of the gold, you should be panning down to 95% black sands in about 2 minutes, with the gold sitting at or close to the bottom of your pan. If you have nothing but flour where your at, it might take an extra minute to pan since you are tapping your pan a lot more to keep the gold grouped together. The more of that finer gold you can keep grouped closer together, the better your recovery will be of it. It will also help some to place some lead shot in to keep the fines mixed in under the lead shot. Everything mentioned above is very good advice, you don't need chems for recovery.
 

Actually flower gold will float if you let it dry for even a second. There's times I've walked the gold to the top of the pan and for whatever reason I touch the pan to move a pebble or something. The oils in the skin though they've been in the water for hours still seem to give it buoyancy. Then you touch it and it drops back down again. Jet dry is a great additive to use. I also heard using hydrogen peroxide and fluoride toothpaste will do the same thing. Or that might be to drop clay in water. All that, but fine gold will float on ya. So just keep some jet dry or maybe Palmolive (not even a drop). That breaks the viscosity of the water surface.
 

Hoser John said:
Nuttn' but pool acid just about the wimpiest acid made. It loves ferrous items as a great deruster. To clean gold try any soap to clean then pop into sodium hypochlorite(household bleach) as it removes the copper,iron,maganese and zinc away and bright gold is left-John
Click to expand...

For how long in the sodium hypochlorite?
Thanks Hoser John!
 

Thanks Garrett, I forgot to mention jet dry. I always had some on hand when I lived in Utah no matter where I was working out there. Nothing but flour in Utah except for a couple of spots where there are rice grains and the rare pea sized picker found. I've never heard of peroxide working, I might try it today to see if that does work on my panning cons from yesterday.
 

Prospector70 said:
For how long in the sodium hypochlorite? Thanks Hoser John!
Click to expand...

You can also use cider vinegar or citric acid to clean, leave the cons in overnight and tumble or occasionally mix and stir. You'll get a brown sludge in the end that you want to pour off. Rinse your cons getting all of the brown slurry out then process.
 

Peroxide and toothpaste is to knock down clay and suspended sediment ...not to handle surface tension :)
 

KevinInColorado said:
Peroxide and toothpaste is to knock down clay and suspended sediment ...not to handle surface tension :)
Click to expand...
Thanks Kevin, I didn't think it would, but would have tried out of curiosity. I will remember that though for running a recirc system and I forget my clay be gone. I always haver peroxide incase of injury though.
 

wtetro said:
You can also use cider vinegar or citric acid to clean, leave the cons in overnight and tumble or occasionally mix and stir. You'll get a brown sludge in the end that you want to pour off. Rinse your cons getting all of the brown slurry out then process.
Click to expand...

i may be late on the subject
Shaman shavings from lead fishing weight's and alum foil from the kitchen, cut into pepper size bits, place in pan with some local gravel.have fun
sidenote i built two bat house's for my back yard helps with pesky mosquitoes, also have a tub of water in backyard clean out cons, and seems vinegar is a great deterrent for mosquito larvae
 

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