# sandstone refining?



## bgp_scrap (Aug 20, 2014)

Hey guys, no experience with ores or minerals. 
But we found some sandstone at the river today (an old meteorite site, so its claimed.) and there's silvery flakes all through it, trying to pan it proved terrible with a small test, but I can seperate the flakes by finger fairly easily with some care.
Any ideas what kinds of metals may deposit in sandstone? I expect a long list, but I luve in northern, alberta Canada and found this at the bottom of the canyon. Cant collect enough to nitric, and im currently out of stannous( tin salts are in the mail soon.) 
My first guesses were silver, or pgm's but no true way of knowing myself at the moment. 
Just looking for a way of seperating it, at the very least from the sandstone.


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## shaftsinkerawc (Aug 20, 2014)

If it won't pan, it's likely muscovite mica. Have you panned a sample down to say a half cup, what does the concentrates look like? Have you looked at any under magnification? Do you have access to a geologic map of the area, are there any other rock types that the drainage runs through? Happy Digging/Panning


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## bgp_scrap (Aug 20, 2014)

I panned it down a fair bit. It looked like,sand.. Lots of black sand in the bottom corner after I swirled it. But these flakes were rather light and only the large ones would drop to the bottom of the pan. Ill try to find a geolohicsl map, but years ago large ounce+ nuggets were mined from this crater, when the gov. Was done its work they opened it as a tourist sttraction


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## bgp_scrap (Aug 20, 2014)

About the best picture I can find.


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## bgp_scrap (Aug 20, 2014)

But its aprox. 100-130 feet down from ground level. Mostly shale, bedrock and sandstone that I can tell anyways. We were maybe 50 fert from.a shallow sloped waterfall.


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## butcher (Aug 20, 2014)

If you cannot pan it is most likely not heavy enough to be gold.

If you can pan, and end up with black sand left in the pan (you can pan gold) the black sand is heavier than the other rocks sand and dirt, you gold will be with the black sands, with careful panning you can then pan the black sands from the gold, the gold is heavier.

Fools gold easily will float out of the pan, it is not heavy enough to pan.


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## bgp_scrap (Aug 20, 2014)

Thanks Butcher,
But this stuff I know isnt gold, it looks like silver/pgm's 
The pannings near impossible because the metal in question doesnt settle in any specif spot, panned a sample for 20 minutes some,was on top some settled with concentrates
I wish it was gold because this stuff is really rich sandstone! Can count 20+ flakes off a half pan sample (maybe 3x3 inch piece) maybe its a base metal like aluminum ? But I thought that formed much larger. Not in flakes.


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## butcher (Aug 20, 2014)

Silver (which will not normally look like silver, but normally a black material) , and the platinum group metals (which are only found in certain areas of the world, and would not resemble a metal in the pan or would not be a white metal or be silver colored), these valuable metals or ores have a high specific gravity they will also go to the bottom of the pan fairly quickly when panning.

No need to pan for 20 minutes, or to be too careful, a few shakes and swirls and gravity does the work fairly fast, as every thing settles, with the heavy material moving quickly settling to the bottom of your pan first.
Dump off the top layer, add some more water and repeat, once you get towards the bottom with the black sands, you can work more carefully swirl the water in the pan over the black sands to move them from the heavier gold or other metal. revealing anything of value, after getting the black sand to the other side of the dish from your gold, or heavy valuables, you can then begin to wash out the black sand (with the values sitting happily on the other side of the pan), when done, you can pan out almost all of the heavier black sand leaving you the gold or other values in your pan, and the worthless materials panned off. 

Practice panning, use some small pieces of lead, cut six pieces of lead to the size of what you expect the values to be in the area you will be panning.
Lead is lighter than gold or the other precious metals, but heavier than the rocks gravel sand and dirt, you will be panning, including the heavier black iron oxide sands, normally hematite and magnetite.
Fill your pan full of the river bed materials, rocks, sand, gravels, mud (bust up the clumps of mud) use a large wash tub to pan into, as you would the river, or creek, use the tub to catch anything you pan from your pan, put the six small pieces of lead in your pan and mix them up with the sands and gravels, now practice panning off the materials into the tub, if you pan off everything but the lead you can pan for values, if you dump the lead into the tub just (retrieve it ) and keep practicing until you get the hang of it, and pan off everything but the lead, six pieces of lead in your pan and you have the hang of it.
You could pan the lead out of the pan before the values if your good at panning...

Try the piece of lead (with the tub to catch the lead) with this material you think that may have value, if it pans out before the lead it is not as heavy as lead and holds no value.


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## bgp_scrap (Aug 20, 2014)

Thanks!
But I know northern canada is a place of pgm refining, I live 250km from a mine. Lol 
But what does it,sound like being then? Silver at best is what I get from your post. If so whats the best way to retrieve it for processing? Ive dealt with a fair amount of e-scrap and a bit of jewelry but have no experience atall in ores. I got a nice piece of gold ore yesterday, crushed it up 20mesh. Then used hno3( reacted but nacl droped the silver) to remove any base metals.
Washed it. Filtered it.
And put the fine ore powder/pieces into a/r and smb'd. Im just waiting for it to drop to record the weight  I dontl't imagine too much, used 0.5g smb. But is this to correct way to deal with ores? 
I am currently out of stannous chloride, my supplies are being shipped in.


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## butcher (Aug 21, 2014)

If it is silver you can pan it.
PGM ore is also found in my area but even then it is very rare.

If the metal is not really an ore, like free gold nuggets, you can process them with acids like we do with karat gold.
If it is an truly an ore, processing would be different for each type of ore, acids or aqua regia processes would normally not work, and may not work at all without pretreatment even if they can be processed with acids at all. 

Processing ore is a whole different ball game, than dissolving and separating metals in acids as we do in other processes of scrap metal recovery or refining.
Attempting to process ore with acids as we would karat gold or other metals can be very dangerous, the gases can be even more deadly, hydrogen sulfide, arsenic or other poisons can be easily evolved as gases, one deep breath may be enough to knock you to the death bed.


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## bgp_scrap (Aug 21, 2014)

Yup! Hydrogen sulfide, or h2s is more common here than anything, actually my job is decommissioning and replacing pipes on sour gas lines.(h2s, hydrogen sulfide, sour gas) not too worried as I know its smell and dangerous ppm levels. But thanks for the heads up!
Well this isnt magnetic either, im going to work on it more tomorow and post any new information


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## g_axelsson (Aug 21, 2014)

Sounds like typical mica to me.

Göran


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## butcher (Aug 21, 2014)

http://www.mineralszone.com/minerals/mica.html
Cat gold, or cat silver, named most likely from the color, although it can have these names it will not contain gold or silver.


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## torscot (Aug 23, 2014)

Here's another quick simple test. Silver is metallic. Isolate a few grains of your material on a hard surface. Hit them with a hammer a few times. If they crush to dust you're not going to retire today. If they flatten out, they are metal. Mica will crush to dust. Also, you can pan silver quite easily. The only glitch is if it's small flakes, it may have a large surface area, and may want to come to the top, and float off. good luck.


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