This is a copy of a post I made in a diffrent thread pertaining to "Black Sand".
I thought that It applied to the subject of this thread, so posted it here as well.
This is a process listed in one of the books that I suggested 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".
