Gold sand

[Minner20]

Thank you so much for all the help so far.

I would like to ask which method is better for my case the sluice or the blue bowl ?

 

[butcher]

For an ole prospector like me, an old pie-shaped pan would be the easiest and best tool for the job, a ford truck's hub cap works too if you do not have a gold pan with you...

If you do not wish to learn to pan, you can build a small sluice from wood. or most anything around.

using a wide board bottom, screw, or nail on two short sideboards, lay down a strip of carpet (outdoor carpet or thin plush carpet which you can easily clean sand from) in the bottom of the long open-ended box, or sluice.
you can get a bit fancier and make wood strip riffles, but they are not always needed especially for classified sands or gravel.
Angle the long box on a slope with the bottom in a big tub (to catch anything you wish to run through your sluice more than once. with water running down the slope from a hose or small pump (reusing the tub water if wanted) the sand will be carried down the slopped carpet with the running water, you can adjust the angle if needed, the gold and rocks will travel down while the gold will be sluggish and stick in the carpet, while sand gravel and dirt are washed out of the sluice into your tub if you had the water too fast or slope to steep you can recover the sand make adjustments and repeat to get your gold.

Blue bowls are nice for cleanup for production work used by some people to pan the concentrates from their sluice boxes, or where you do not wish to pan the concentrates by hand, or where their panning skills may suffer, the blue can be made but are much more difficult than a sluice to build, they can normally work better than most sluice's at separating gold from iron ore black sands, but then again that also is depending on the sluice and its purpose or design.

 

[nickvc]

Thank you so much for all the help so far.

I would like to ask which method is better for my case the sluice or the blue bowl ?

Richard has given you a good answer to that question but I would suggest you spend some time watching some of the amateur prospectors on YouTube to get yourself a better understanding of what will work best for your situation, there are loads of ready built sluices some powered that are available but again it depends on your needs and circumstances, if you want to process on site to concentrate your material then perhaps one of the small powered units would be the best choice as you could run plenty of material to create a concentrate which might then need further concentration at home using another device if necessary.
I think the simple answer to your question is there is no one answer but many depending on circumstances and the amount of money you can afford to spend or on your ability to make your own equipment.

 

[endrodwicahyonoldt]

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...

thank you for the knowledge sir, it makes sense and is easy to understand

 

[shrewdly]

I would like to pan for Gold but in Ohio I don't think there is no place to do it that I know of.

Hi jdlcar: Do not despair. Any river will have gold in it somewhere. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on the banks of the North Saskatchewan river. It's a large, slow moving river in the middle of the bald prairie. I have friends who every summer routinely recover an ounce or two, sometimes more from the river. If you are new to panning, you should read Butcher's explaination on how to pan. It's in this same thread.

 

[Edlin]

Hi guys
Forgive my ignorant question but I'm still learning from the forum and from Hoke's book.

I have a metal detector and by using it I got a good amount of soil that contains precious metals ( strongly believe it's gold only )
I used the panning method to wash off all the dirt and got gold with sand ( as in the attached picture )

I'm confused now what to do next!?
Thanks
Aj

If you do have enough gold in your sand to see it, then panning or some other form of gravity separation should work. It does look like you have a lot of sand left in that finishing pan, which would make it difficult to see any gold.