Time for black sands clean up and a sample of things to come

[Jeff95531]

It rained all last week. It rained all this week. Forecast for next week? You guessed it. So I dug out the Miller Table, took notes on what was wrong/needs to be fixed and there it sat. In the mean time, I gathered my super fines from the last trip to dial in the table once I get around to it. Then, my good buddy Delnorter PM's me with an offer of not only a few pounds of gold bearing black sands to feed my table, he also had concentrates from a recent gold/platinum and silver producing solo prospecting spot he discovered. Was I interested? Oh yeah!

Mike brought everything over and as he pulled out baggies of dart black sand, he also shows me the coolest plastic mini classifier set I've ever seen. He also lends me his black sand magnet/plunger which is something else I must have. As the new list of must haves roll in the background, he offers up this latest spot of his is accessible even now as flooding surrounds meaning it just may be an old river channel with good to moderate access. OK, now I'm excited...

But, first things first. The table taught me a lot since I got it, especially what not to do. One big problem is I never got full side to side coverage/discharge. I also let the pump sit in fines which reduced it to next to nothing for flow, even with attempts to revive it. So, I replaced the pump, put it in the filter/container and discovered the discharge hose was way way longer than it needed to be so cut it in half. Also used a different/courser scratch pad along with the denser stuff it came with.

I finally got it to be full and flat board (as a baseline) not to mention his black sands are freakin heavy! After lots of tweaking yesterday and today on the table, it's about right. I still have to reduce the amount of spray bar diffuser material I added in the head cuz max flow is not just not there yet. So far I'm finding 8% to 10 % loss in the discharge pan so not bad for not done.

The water diffusing pads where packed with fines as shown in the pics. I took advantage of the rain to flush out "the mats".



There may be some extra pics...can't confirm deletes.

 

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[mytimetoshine]

throw those clean magnetics in a bucket till it's half full. then run that in a Gold cube and you'll get a 1/4 gram easy

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[KevinInColorado]

what do you do with the magnetics after you pull them? beacuse I don't care how many time you swirl them in the water if your dealing with anything more then a teaspoon there WILL be gold trapped.

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I always dry them, separate them again and repan what remains. I generally find 0-2 small colors. My method works

...yours does too I'm sure. More than one way to plumb a sink!

 

[mytimetoshine]

I always dry them, separate them again and repan what remains. I generally find 0-2 small colors. My method works

...yours does too I'm sure. More than one way to plumb a sink!

the amount of gold we are talking about is laughable but I would not through anything away until it's cubed. Cube it or lose it

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[Oregon Viking]

Now remember Jeff, you have a few beaches close to you with -200 black sand......

 

[Jeff95531]

Now remember Jeff, you have a few beaches close to you with -200 black sand......

Sure. Let me know when you want to go and I'll pack my surf rod and reel.

Been fighting a cold. Was doing pretty good too till it started counter attacking me in my sleep. But still plan to run the cons on the table today if I can stay awake.

 

[N-Lionberger]

I use one of those spin it off things, I dry the sand and lay it out in a shallow tray and I run that thing over it fairly high, whatever gold that gets carried up through the air like that is going to be so far between that it isnt worth bothering with. If you used a plunger magnet or just jammed the spin it off in there yes you will entrap gold in the magnetic structure. I have a lot more than a half bucket lol. All my 20- 30+ magnetics I'm thinking about using it for hour glasses. I have been battling a cold myself.

 

[Jeff95531]

Got a link or a pic of the spin it off thingy?

 

[arizau]

Here is one.

 

[N-Lionberger]

Thanks arizau. I wouldnt run it wet, a great way to lose gold.

 

[Jeff95531]

I got the table fired up and dialed in. (Don't laugh at the rock at the end...it flowed perfect with it). I started with some gold I had yet to process from my last trip last year. Worked great!



delnorters sample was next. All -100 here and slow going for sure. I tried a magnifying glass and it almost worked but you can see... it's some fine fines.



The platinum slowly flowed out and gold was left but gonna have to clean up this dollup tomorrow.

 

[delnorter]

Looking good Jeff. I'll try to stop by this weekend if I'm not working. I'll call before hand to see how you're feeling.

Mike

 

[Jeff95531]

OK Kevin. Here's the deal...see? I got this cold and it's humbling me a plenty...so I didn't feel up to the final cleaning today BUT...I did find the leftovers from delnorters sample and after the run on my Miller Table...about a table spoon's worth And it's all there in all it's magnetic glory. Course, it'll take a few days before it will dry enuff to ship out in this neighborhood. PM me a mailing address, do that Kevin Klean thingy you do so well and give us a report back!

 

[KevinInColorado]

Happy to. I'm curious what is this sample exactly?

 

[Ragnor]

I'll tell yah what. I don't trust a magnet one bit. Maybe it's just my area but i have stuff almost picker size that will stick to a magnet. Not to mention when the black sand bunches up it can grab a hold of fine gold and take it with it. I use magnets for sorting cons for inspection under the microscope, but I always check both piles. More often than not there will be gold that carried over with the magnetic heavies.

 

[KevinInColorado]

I'll tell yah what. I don't trust a magnet one bit. Maybe it's just my area but i have stuff almost picker size that will stick to a magnet. Not to mention when the black sand bunches up it can grab a hold of fine gold and take it with it. I use magnets for sorting cons for inspection under the microscope, but I always check both piles. More often than not there will be gold that carried over with the magnetic heavies.

Then you are doing it wrong.

 

[Jeff95531]

Happy to. I'm curious what is this sample exactly?

It's the sample I've been working with here in this thread Mike got this sample near the Smith River. It is a known producing area for gold, nickle and platinum. I did the best I could with it on the Miller Table, so I was wondering if I missed any gold fines.

 

[Jeff95531]

I'll tell yah what. I don't trust a magnet one bit. Maybe it's just my area but i have stuff almost picker size that will stick to a magnet. Not to mention when the black sand bunches up it can grab a hold of fine gold and take it with it. I use magnets for sorting cons for inspection under the microscope, but I always check both piles. More often than not there will be gold that carried over with the magnetic heavies.

I know how you feel. Sample before this one was so tough, I started this thread and it helped me a lot...

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/521816-wth-am-i-doing-wrong.html

 

[Jeff95531]

OK. I been SICK! Karen too. Slow recovery's for both but getting there. I was pretty sure that sudden and uncontrolled coughing, wheezing, sneezing, etc would not be a good thing for a final final clean up. So, that is still pending BUT...I did manage to collect all of the -50 to -100, dry and ship all the cons from the Miller Tables' latest runs to Kevin in Colorado for a final analysis of clean up. I feel it was dialed in 100% so I ran it all only once. Pretty confident. We'll see.

 

[KevinInColorado]

OK. I been SICK! Karen too. Slow recovery's for both but getting there. I was pretty sure that sudden and uncontrolled coughing, wheezing, sneezing, etc would not be a good thing for a final final clean up. So, that is still pending BUT...I did manage to collect all of the -50 to -100, dry and ship all the cons from the Miller Tables' latest runs to Kevin in Colorado for a final analysis of clean up. I feel it was dialed in 100% so I ran it all only once. Pretty confident. We'll see.

Hope you both bounce back 100% and I find 0% gold in your sample!

 

[Rob in KS]

We've had that crud here too, it takes a while to get back to full strength.
Just so he didn't ship you any of his germs...LOL