# Black sand is the object of my desire



## jsargent (Nov 4, 2008)

Odd as it may sound, black sand is what I WANT. I don't want to separate it from whatever "free" gold may be there because it's not worth the effort. My strategy is to crush it all and let chemistry sort it out. I just need to get rid of the silica sand/non-metallic fraction as efficently as possible. I need to do this in a continuous process without having to clean a sluice every 15 minutes. I'm considering the helical concentrator sold at Goldlands.com (the Microblaster 100) as it appears I could adjust it to pull out ALL the heavies, not just the PM's. I'm open to other suggestions so what do you guys think?.


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## ChucknC (Nov 8, 2008)

As a small scale miner, I do things like this on a shoestring budget. I have posted a vid about the popandson cleanup sluice. It's a homemade sluice that is riffleless and captures the heavies without keeping the light gangue.
Try to find my posts on this and give it a try. It's really cheap and works extremely well.

Here are a couple of ideas to try. Instead of just putting the concentrates in the working sluice, add a six inch slick plate to allow the materials to stratisfy. Most,precious metals will be captured in the first couple of inches of the sluice, with other heavies in the first foot.

Another idea is to use polar fleece as the captureing media verses miners moss. Polar fleece is available form Hobby Lobby. I've read reports on it's properties from Alaskan as well as Austrailian and New Zeland miners. It's definately a viable alternative to miners moss.

Here are those vids. Pay special attention to the cleanup sluices used to really concentrate the materials. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdikUKNLCHY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jXGbp8KJAo
Where they put in the "cons" is where you'd put the slick plate.

This is not an advertisement, but this site will give you an idea of how well this technology works, even though there are still alot of mainstream miners who don't believe it does work.
http://www.damnfinesluice.com/

All these devices will do is concentrate the heavies so you can get an accurate idea of what your doing and can work with safely and economically.

PM me if you have any questions about this.

Chuck


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## heavymetal (Feb 22, 2009)

my wife hates all the 5gal buckets of black sand i have, hate going through them, since it's been around 4 yrs sinced i have dredged.


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## Richard36 (Mar 22, 2009)

Black sands are a profitable venture, if you are in the right place. The magnetic portion often contains PGM'S. Both portions can, and quite often have a thin layer of gold bonded to the grains of sand. For recovery of the magnetic portion, I have found that a magnetic strip (of the same material used for fridge magnets and magnetic business signs) placed along the bottom side of a sluice works quite well for recovery of black sands. The sand itself acts as a collector for fine gold using this process because it lines up in a moss bed like pattern with the lines of magnetic force created by the magnetic strip placed against the underside of the sluice box. As far as processing goes, check out my post under usaman65's post about arsenopyrite ore.


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## Richard36 (Nov 30, 2009)

Here are a couple of books that I recomend for those wishing to process "Black Sands".
Good information, and well worth reading for those who intend to do this.

Simplified Black Sand Recovery 
By Clark Sable
Hulette Mining Company
P.O. Box 364
Reseda, CA. 91337

How to Process your Black Sand Concentrates
By Vern H. Ballantyne
ISBN 1-877700-07-X
Mountain Publications
P.O. Box 8008, Suite 252
Gloucester, MA. 01931

I hope that these books help, and they should. 
I have used the methods described within them.

Sincerely; Rick. a.k.a. "The Rock Man".


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## Richard36 (Nov 30, 2009)

This is a copy of a post I made on another thread pertaining to "Black Sand". 
I thought that it was pertainent to post it here as well.
This a method out of one of the books on "Black Sand" that I listed in my previous post.

The best method that I know of would be to put your sand into a Rock Tumbler, or a modified concrete mixer with steel balls and a small amount of mercury. Turn the unit on, and let it operate untill all the sand has been crushed flour fine to recover all the visible fine gold, as well as any encapsulated gold bound up in solid solution with the black sand into the mercury. 

Once the sand has been crushed flour fine, carefully pour off the water. The remaining sand can be ran through a "Blue Bowl", "Spiral Concentrater", such as a "Gold Wheel", or carefully panned in order to recover your mercury. 

Place a piece of cotton, or filter paper inside a 500cc or larger syringe, then carefully pour your mercury into the syringe, then replace the plunger and depress it, forcing the free mercury out through the tip into a container. 

The "Gold Amalgam" will be left inside the syringe against the cotton, or filter paper. Carefully Remove the cotton or filter paper with the gold, and place it into a pyrex dish, and cover with a solution of one prt nitric acid, and 4 prts water. Place the dish on a hot plate from an electric coffee maker, and let gently heat up. The remaining mercury will go into solution, and the gold will remain. Place a coffe filter in a plastic funnel, and then place the funnel into a glass dish in order to support it , and act as a resivior for the solution containing the mercury. Pour the solution from the dish with the gold into the funnel, and let filter. Rinse the dish with some extra water to make sure that all the gold has been removed from the dish, and is now into the filter. Spritz the filter and gold with clean water to remove any remaining nitric solution containing mercury, and let drip, as well as sit untill dry.

Once dry, The filter and gold can be smelted with Borax to produce a single mass of gold.

Place a piece of copper plate into the nitric solution, and let sit overnight. The mercury will drop out of solution as free mercury within the solution, with some adhereing to the copper plate, which can be scraped off, and the solution filtered to recover the rest.

I hope that this has been of some help to you and others.
Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome, and appreciated.

Sincerely; Rick. "a.k.a. "The Rock Man".


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## blueduck (Dec 30, 2009)

the key to getting the microfine gold out of the black sands along with the other higher value precious metals and minerals is classifying to size and using what you can afford to work the stuff. 

One of the best things ever invented was the Archimedes reverse helix some 2000 years ago. there have been a myriad of folks who in the past 50 years produced for market a version of it, the dixe doodlebug being one of the more compact units needing 3 people to keep filled shoveling [yeah ive run one that was given to our gold prospecting club] another version though in my opinion not as well built is the goldscrew. there are a couple new competitors out including a couple 12 volt units that wont run a very large volume but will run a couple buckets an hour of classified material

My absolute favorite reverse spiral is being built again in California, Tri-R Engineering designed by the father-in-law of the fella building the current machines and they are nice to talk to on the phone. The one my digging partner picked up for us that i found in Utah, will run a 5 gallon bucket classified under 2 inches in less than 2 minutes and bring the gold right to you.... it is said they are 4 times faster than a table and a whole lot easier to use taking up less room as well. used and not beat up you can pick them up for under $3000.00 and new they are around $10,000.00 you can run 2-5 yards per hour through the units so you can see why I like them for placer gravels. the added bonus is you do not need mercury if you set the units up correctly!!

the only problem with the spirals is they along with most other forms of recovery wont touch the brown and black tellurides which are only unlocked with heat, but ya cant have everything.... only wish for it. One day I may try a huge fresnel lens and focus the intense heat on a bucket of blacksands and see how long it takes to melt it down, but til i can afford a good big one, I can only wonder if it will work [try explaining $150.00+/- to yer wife for a sheet of plastic that if the kids drag into the sunlight it more than likely will result in the fire department coming to visit]

there are a few patented processes that might work on small scale, or smaller scale that a person may look into and play with too, just depends on how much time and material ya have and how much room you can dedicate to the process on the bench/floor or the entire shop area ya have! though being able to get the different chemicals to try out gets increasingly harder with each new terrorist attack, as someone might use those chemicals in trying to harm someone else and not for scientific extraction of metals or minerals.

But after all is said and done it comes back down to classified size of material to extract the smallest particles out of any ore material, if ya have a piece of 100 mesh gold and 30-50 mesh black sand, the amount of force it takes to remove the blacksand from your gold will indeed remove the gold along with it..... so size matters!

William
North Central Idaho - clearwater river region


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## Richard36 (Jan 11, 2010)

Hello blueduck,

Thanks for the post. 
Size does matter, and a "Gold Screw" type of set up will work, depending on how fine the gold is that is to be recovered. 

Almagamation is the way to go for low tech, low cost recovery. 
Screening, and magnetic seperation is also a sure way to lose values. 
Some will be lost within the magnetic material being removed via magnet, and even more will be lost by screening due to gold being bound up in solid solution with the black sand. This gold bearing sand needs to be crushed as fine as Talkum powder, in water with mercury in order to recover it. If mercury is not used, the grind in water can be transfered to an appropriate container or leach pad, and leached in order to recover the gold from it. 
I have been down this road before, and know this to be fact.

Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## whsnare (May 3, 2011)

Richard36 said:


> Almagamation is the way to go for low tech, low cost recovery.
> Screening, and magnetic seperation is also a sure way to lose values.
> Some will be lost within the magnetic material being removed via magnet, and even more will be lost by screening due to gold being bound up in solid solution with the black sand. This gold bearing sand needs to be crushed as fine as Talkum powder, in water with mercury in order to recover it. If mercury is not used, the grind in water can be transfered to an appropriate container or leach pad, and leached in order to recover the gold from it.
> I have been down this road before, and know this to be fact.
> ...




What type of leach would you recommend with such a high iron content?


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## Militoy (May 3, 2011)

Richard36 said:


> ... I have found that a magnetic strip (of the same material used for fridge magnets and magnetic business signs) placed along the bottom side of a sluice works quite well for recovery of black sands.....



I'm curious whether you mean on the inside or the outside of the sluice? It seemed to me an inside magnet would be hard to pull magnetite off of during cleanup - so our recirculating long-tom has a row of neodymium magnets just stuck onto a steel plate JB welded to the underside. I pull the magnets off when I do a cleanup. I also have the same kind of rare-earth magnet JB welded to the underside of the Estwing rock pick I use for meteorite hunting.


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## Richard36 (May 3, 2011)

Militoy said:


> Richard36 said:
> 
> 
> > ... I have found that a magnetic strip (of the same material used for fridge magnets and magnetic business signs) placed along the bottom side of a sluice works quite well for recovery of black sands.....
> ...



Hello Militoy,

I meant on the outside, under the box.
You're method works fine.



whsnare said:


> What type of leach would you recommend with such a high iron content?



Unless I'm wrong, Cyanide should work with less than 3% concentration.
Thourea and thiosulfate might work as well. I'd have to re-read to give a for certain answer.

Sincerely, Rick. "The Rock Man".


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