Gold sand

[Minner20]

Hi again,

I definitely don't have the same level of experience and knowledge as the forum members ( yet ) but I as a beginner got already a big frustration after some skeptical comments on my first post that what Igot is absolutely no gold.

I decided to never give up so I made a new trial, this time only with borax.
I took about 100g of sand and melted them with 30g of borax.

I got these tiny little shiny golden balls. I still strongly believe that I got gold in my sand, but I still need help on how to get it out and recover it.

Aj

 

[jmdlcar]

What you did it look like Gold to me.

You just gave me a idea so if I ever that kind of sand I will know what to do.

 

[rickbb]

If you have free gold in sand, the first step is to use a water floatation method to concentrate the gold and remove the sand. That means panning or sluicing it, depending on how much you have.

After you have concentrated it down to mostly gold then you can think about melting it and don't use straight borax as a flux. Search for common flux mixes, they are a blend of soda ash, feldspar, etc.

You don't have to melt the concentrate at all, you can sell it to a refiner after you remove the sand.

 

[butcher]

I agree to use gravity methods to concentrate the gold and separate it from the sand.
If what you suspect to be gold is in quartz rock you can crush the rock to powder and then pan it to separate the gold from the quartz sands.

You can learn to pan for the gold or you can make or buy a blue bowl or one of the many other different devices used to separate the gold from the sand or rocks.

If you can crush it to pieces it is not gold. Gold is malleable and will smash flat under a hammer blow.
if you do a streak test scratching the material on the bottom of a porcelain or ceramic cup, and in this test the streak left is brown or black it is not gold, if it is gold, then it will leave a gold mark on the cup.

If during panning or using gravity and water to separate the sand and gold, If what looks like to be gold is lighter than sand or other rocks, and even lighter than any lead bullets in the pan, and if the material floats out of the pan faster than the sand rocks or lead, it is not gold.

After panning the gold, if it will not melt into a metal lump it is most likely not gold, if it is gold it can be melted into a larger piece or clump of metal...

 

[Minner20]

What you did it look like Gold to me.

You just gave me a idea so if I ever that kind of sand I will know what to do.

Best of luck.
Aj

 

[Minner20]

If you have free gold in sand, the first step is to use a water floatation method to concentrate the gold and remove the sand. That means panning or sluicing it, depending on how much you have.

After you have concentrated it down to mostly gold then you can think about melting it and don't use straight borax as a flux. Search for common flux mixes, they are a blend of soda ash, feldspar, etc.

You don't have to melt the concentrate at all, you can sell it to a refiner after you remove the sand.

Thank you for your comment,
I already used the pan and this was what left, since the density was high enough to doubt about PM presence.

Could you please explain to me more about the flux mix you mentioned, why is it better than the borax?

Aj

 

[Minner20]

I agree to use gravity methods to concentrate the gold and separate it from the sand.
If what you suspect to be gold is in quartz rock you can crush the rock to powder and then pan it to separate the gold from the quartz sands.

You can learn to pan for the gold or you can make or buy a blue bowl or one of the many other different devices used to separate the gold from the sand or rocks.

If you can crush it to pieces it is not gold. Gold is malleable and will smash flat under a hammer blow.
if you do a streak test scratching the material on the bottom of a porcelain or ceramic cup, and in this test the streak left is brown or black it is not gold, if it is gold, then it will leave a gold mark on the cup.

If during panning or using gravity and water to separate the sand and gold, If what looks like to be gold is lighter than sand or other rocks, and even lighter than any lead bullets in the pan, and if the material floats out of the pan faster than the sand rocks or lead, it is not gold.

After panning the gold, if it will not melt into a metal lump it is most likely not gold, if it is gold it can be melted into a larger piece or clump of metal...

Hi Butcher,
This is not a quartz rock, but it's the borax after melting it with my sand.
I scratched one piece, of the golden balls, on a purity testing stone to get a golden line. Then added on this line a drop of the purity testing acid. The line was still visible after 18k acid, so added a drop of 22k acid ( on another line ) it stayed visible for about 10 minutes. Until now everything seems fine and as it should be, right?

I just need some help now on which way shall I use to get the gold and any other PM from the sand.

Aj

 

[Minner20]

Hi again,

Today's experiment was different and got me confused a bit.

30g of sand, with 120ml HCl and incremental doses of nitric ( had to use about 40ml nitric )
I filtered the solution and then added about 15ml Sulfuric acid and afterwards I used SMB until all the nitric was killed.

I took a drop of the solution and added a drop stannous and got a positive result 3 different times on 3 different tests!!

Is it possible to get a positive result after adding SMB to AR ?
I read that nitric must be killed before testing with Stannous, is this correct ?
And if this was correct, is there another way of precipitation gold like copperas ? Or I have only to wait for the SMB to take its affect ?

Thank you

Aj

 

[jmdlcar]

I have rock from Alaska and it weight is 4.5gams it look like it made of sand I don't want to break it up but if I knew it had some Gold inside I would. Anyone have any idea?

 

[butcher]

Midas gold detector, these small handheld metal detectors work well for small gold fairly close to the surface.

 

[butcher]

Again trying to leach the sand for the gold is a waste of time.


I thought the gold looked funny in the picture you do not normally see natural gold in nature as little balls, I also thought the sand looked like quartz, you were talking about gold in the sand, not gold melted with borax.

Grind the borax pan out the gold and remelt.

Stannous chloride must be able to reduce the gold in the test, high nitric will keep the gold from reducing.
SMB is used to reduce gold free nitric will keep the gold dissolved, or redissolve it back into solution...
Copperas will work better in testing for gold where excess nitric is involved, copperas will reduce nitric.

 

[rickbb]

Yes, you must digest all the nitric BEFORE you add SMB or copperas. Neither will drop the gold as long as there is even a tiny bit of nitric.

I do this with sulfamic acid, this is NOT sulfuric acid. It's a powder, I get it from the local big box home store in the ceramic tile section, it's called ceramic tile cleaner.

 

[Martijn]

Again trying to leach the sand for the gold is a waste of time.


I thought the gold looked funny in the picture you do not normally see natural gold in nature as little balls, I also thought the sand looked like quartz, you were talking about gold in the sand, not gold melted with borax.

Grind the borax pan out the gold and remelt.

Stannous chloride must be able to reduce the gold in the test, high nitric will keep the gold from reducing.
SMB is used to reduce gold free nitric will keep the gold dissolved, or redissolve it back into solution...
Copperas will work better in testing for gold where excess nitric is involved, copperas will reduce nitric.

Butcher, he melted some sand and got a bunch of little golden balls in the sand to prove/test he has gold in the sand. He took a picture of that. It's not a picture of the original sand.
So he basically did a partial fire assay...? More reducing and viscosity increasing flux and a collector metal like lead needed imo if he wants to treat it as an ore, after thorough panning.

Martijn.

 

[rickbb]

after thorough panning.

Martijn.

And therein lies the problem, if it was panned/sluiced thoroughly there wouldn't be so much sand in the first place.

Which is still my advise, pan it better so you have mostly gold.

 

[ReedKidd]

You found sand with a heavy yellow colored powdery substance in it. Since you could pan it to a concentrate. Indicating a high density. Much higher than sand and rock.
No wonder you got exited. I would be.

But later on you dissolved a bit of it in AR, and added H2SO4 to push any lead out as lead oxide.
You did push a lot out.. meaning your yellow sand is probably some form of litharge, also known as lead oxide.
Used in smelting.

If you would cupel it (or fire assay) in a bone ash cupel or some portland cement, it would probably disappear completely.
One form is the one i found a picture of. Look at the wikipedia link and you'll see. Also the density.
But with that little soil you panned, how heavy was the concentrate? I think you may come to mythical ore grades if it were gold.
And you live in sweden, hence the PbO mining sites i looked up. You live near one of them maybe?

 

[Yggdrasil]

ReedKidd:
Did you want to say something and forgot it?
There is no question or additional information here, as far as I can see.

 

[nickton]

You don't need to kill excess nitric for the stannous test to work. It is best to use a piece of paper or cotton swab. I use Q-tips.

Pouring pregnant solution into a spoon uses too much and with a paper or swab the color change is easier to identify IMO.

If there is too much nitric your test will still show positive. I guess some people say it won't stay dark as long because the gold goes back into solution. I wasn't aware you needed the gold to go out of solution to show a positive test however. After all you are testing to see if gold is in solution no?

 

[nickvc]

I have to say that those suggesting further concentration are spot on in my opinion, there are other processes available which should yield a much better concentrate to work with, perhaps build a sluice using corrugated plastic pipe and research the best angle and water flow to remove more of the sand.
There seems to be gold in your material so if you have access to decent quantities then perhaps now is the time to invest in the tools to recover it, I’m far from an expert at mining so others may well be able to advise better what you need and the costs involved, there may even be cheap options but I’m afraid it’s not my field of experience, I personally think trying to chemically recover the gold using acids is going to be an expensive way forward until you have just gold in your hand or at least 10% gold to sand.
It’s time to do some reading and research into methods to concentrate your values, I’m sure it can be done but it’s either a cost or time researching perhaps even both.

 

[Martijn]

ReedKidd:
Did you want to say something and forgot it?
There is no question or additional information here, as far as I can see.

He's obviously a man of few words, and I bet he just wanted to repeat my message. :lol: :lol: 8)

 

[Yggdrasil]

Maybe we will know in the future, or not.. :lol: