Using magnet to remove black sand. Good? Bad?

C

Colorider

Greenie
Aug 11, 2013
19
9
Westminster co
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
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They can suck up a little flour gold.

They say using it on dry cons will help prevent the gold from being sucked up with the blacksands. I'm not so sure though. I've seen gold attached to blacksand and gold with iron on it.

Maybe use it but save the magnetics for inspecting and processing later.
 

It is a very helpful tool. I just always keep another pan nearby to drop the sands in so you can check for fines that were picked up.
 

Think of a oreo cookie with your gold btween the black sands. Couple a issues back GPAA mag cover had a huge pic of a pound or so of nuggets stuck to a pick with a magnet on it. Great story too on magnetic nuggets, ie iron matrix mixed in and ADIOS ORO PURO. When using magnets keep them disguards as DEFINATELY not 100% process-John
 

Sweep the magnet as high above the cons as you can, and sweep slowly to reduce clumping. Bear in mind that unless you're using a strong magnet about all you're picking up is magnetite, hematite requires more flux to lift.
 

Save your black sand to play with. Try this



You can make your own cleaner with some pill bottles, 35mm film cases or smaller Rubbermaid storage containers. Something like this



Kinda long destroying the harddrive, skip towards the end.
 

You have to save your black sand because some gold is covered in a dark substance like the black sand. Years from now, you may recover gold by doing some methods talked about in the GPAA. Georgia used to have a website that taught this method that has to be done outside because of caustic fumes. I have about 2-3 gallons of black sand. I will burn it off one of these days to see what I get.

Mercury is still present in the waters around here. I would treat any mining area like there is mercury present. This is one of the reasons for the cautiousness needed when burning your black sand to catch this invisible gold or black gold

Flour gold is the bread and butter of getting gold in my opinion. I can pan anywhere in the Chestatee in Dahlonega and each pan will have flour gold. If I get a picker or a nugget it is just icing on the cake. Flour gold is always what you are after around here now. It is easy to get a lot of flour gold and it is pure alluvial gold at about 22k.
 

Just use a small amount of bleach-sodium hypochlorite to remove oxides,iron stains,maganese and other coatings. Cheap,safe and no cost beyond a few cents and presto done after a good soak and bucket agitation-John
 

When panning down cons I've found that the magnetics will actually "lock up" some of the regular sands and keep them from stratifying as you shake everything down. After cleaning out the magnetics much of those "locked up" sands will be easily rinsed out of the pan leaving just the non-magnetic black sands and your gold.

When cleaning out the magnetics I do it with water in the pan and draw them up from as far away as possible. Place them into another pan or container with water and when done cleaning out the pan, go though the magnetics again and place them in another pan to dry. Once their dry, I use the magnet to pick them up to go into the plastic coffee can(s) I use to store them. With each stage of this cleaning stages I usually find regular black sands that had stuck to the magnetics as well as some small gold on occasion. It's a little time consuming but this triple cleaning makes sure I get all the gold out of my materials.
 

goldenIrishman said:
When panning down cons I've found that the magnetics will actually "lock up" some of the regular sands and keep them from stratifying as you shake everything down. After cleaning out the magnetics much of those "locked up" sands will be easily rinsed out of the pan leaving just the non-magnetic black sands and your gold.

When cleaning out the magnetics I do it with water in the pan and draw them up from as far away as possible. Place them into another pan or container with water and when done cleaning out the pan, go though the magnetics again and place them in another pan to dry. Once their dry, I use the magnet to pick them up to go into the plastic coffee can(s) I use to store them. With each stage of this cleaning stages I usually find regular black sands that had stuck to the magnetics as well as some small gold on occasion. It's a little time consuming but this triple cleaning makes sure I get all the gold out of my materials.
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YES! Exactly the right method. Then still save to process in bulk as Hoser John says. Then still save for whatever you learn later ;-)

...still learning, KevinInCO
 

That's the righteous thang about mining and chemistry,as technology advances, I still get to learn' new things after 57+ years a prospecting and mining...John
 

drywallman said:
Hey Kevin, you staying high and dry? I see Colorado has some major flooding going on.
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Big flooding but me and mine are fine thanks. Scary but also moving fresh gold down hills into creeks and filling in any holes left by local miners. Pan accordingly! Put this rain to good sluice too! ;-)
 

Magnetic devices are gimmicks. They're junk. The 49'ers used gravity and wind to seperate black sand from gold in a process called winnowing. They'd throw the black sand on a blankey and two guys would flip the material up into the wind. The sand blew away and the gold fell back on the blanket. Same thing would probably work today. You could even improve on the technique. I saw a guy at Point Bar, Colorado using a variable speed Wet Vac and clear plastic hose to seperate very fine gold from black sand. The hose was duct taped to the Wet Vac and coiled into several loops as big around as a beach ball. The black sand was sucked over the top of the loops and the fine particles of gold fell back to the bottom of the loops and collected there. I asked to pan the sand in the Wet Vac and was surprised to find not even one speck of gold in it. I carry a small portable automobile hand held Wet Vac whenever i go to an area where lots of "Week-End" Gorrilla miners are digging. These guys almost never sweep their holes clean when they leave. Saves me a ton of digging and prospecting. I just go in on Monday and vaccum up the dirt and run it through my sluice. Remenber, "Time is Money". Any process, technique or strategy that is too time consuming, is wasting time you could be spending "getting more gold".
 

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