how to recover the fine gold. (from black sands)

[markqf1]

Yea Indy,
Your right.
The fragments of my info do not relate to mining.
My youngest girl had a problem with seisures.
Although she did not test positive for mercury, she did test pos for a couple of other heavys.
Dont' take it personal but, I'm just trying to catagorize info as it comes in.
I'm sure a person armed with the proper info could make it work without a hazzard.

 

[anycreekdrift]

:shock: Oh my gosh, First off using mercury to extract gold from black sands, flour gold, ect. Is really not that hard to do or dangerous to yourself or the environment in which it originated if done properly. Mercury touching water, sand, beakers, or other items doesn't mean there contaminated hexed or otherwise DANGEROUS. Get educated before you slam anyone about mercury. Look at the PPM thats parts per million OR PPB for that matter of ocean water multiply that by the volume of the worlds salt water bodies and presto change-o you have more gold or mercury then will ever be mined on the 24% of our planets mass that accounts for .9997(gee that number seems Hmm i've seen that somewhere : ) of all our metals or minerals that could be mined or ever extracted.

If you really insist on NOT having any mercury around your home you should check and remove these following items from your home or diet.

Thermostats, yea that ain't a magic ball of lead in there. Oh wait we have Zone heating and cooling in every room.

ANY florescent bulb Compact or full tubular.
Older thermometers as noted in a prior post.
Tuna Fish, yea the stuff that comes in the can.
Shark meat that's a big no no plenty of heavy metals there.
Many older and newer(the cheap ones) disposable batteries.

A few methods used in the past to recover gold not only from black sands but from mercury recovered reworking old timers tailing piles(thats removing mercury discarded by old timers). There are some creeks in the interior of Alaska where they simply tipped over 75lb flasks into the creek bed to cement the gold in bedrock.

DEFINITE WARNING ABOUT THE FUMES THAT COME OFF THE AMALGAM (THATS GOLD COATED WITH MERCURY WITH LITTLE TO NO LOOSE MERCURY) WHEN HEATING IN A NITRIC BATH OR WHEN YOU ARE SMELTING THE FINAL PRODUCT.

BLACK SANDS.

Remove any magnetic sands from the stock you are going to process, This is simply done by adding a couple of high strength magnets to it and hand tumbling(most batches are using less than 2 gal initial stock). Remove the magnets clean them by hand and repeat until they come out with little to no material attached to them.

Inspect your sands under a microscope doesn't have to be that fancy you are looking for sulfides the most common you will spot is pyrite also referred to as iron pyrite or FOOLS GOLD. While gold doesn't normally associate it's self with magnetic iron it can sometimes get locked in sulfides. If you notice a generous amount thats plenty when your looking at a 1/10th of a teaspoon you should roast your batch. Also if there is any gold in your sands you should see some of it through the microscope some you will not see. A furnace built out of high density or low density kiln bricks works well fired by a propane weed burner, Stack your bricks to form a cylinder shape with a opening for exhaust gases to escape. Your Black sand sulfide stock goes into a cast iron vessel nothing fancy needed a large camping pot works well. Roast the works for about 1.5hrs or until everything is a cherry red and hold for a half hour. You want to be sure that the interior has reached temp. Burner off let the works cool over night.

Next morning dissemble your make shift furnace and remove the pot. The sands might not want to be dislodged from the pot now. Drive a rod, chisel, or piece of re bar into it to loosen it up. Remove the mass in lumps and pulverize it back to sand (a small lab impact mill works good for this but seeing as most people don't have one think of some way to reduce back to granular form). Oh some sands with only a minimal amount of sulfides might not be cemented and will come out with only small lumps or as straight sand.

Repeat the magnet method you will find more iron has become present. It's not horrible to have the iron in the batch but reduces the volume of sands you have to work with.

transfer the material to a seal able vessel that will hold twice the volume. It is nice to have a see through container but not needed unless you really like to watch what is going on. Wet the sands throughly with and excess of about 1-2 in of water regular tap water is fine. Your sand is now ready for mercury. The REAL question is---- Is your mercury ready for the sand.

Mercury can get dirty

:shock:

Just like everything els in our world. You might notice a haze, small particles, fine dust, or a oil sheen look to it. Clean mercury you should be able to see your reflection in it. "note mercury way back in the day was used to make mirrors". If it is dirty take some regular dish soap Dawn, Palmolive, and so on take the amount of mercury you will be using 4-8 fluid oz or so(really the volume is more dependent on the amount of gold present). In a glass or HDPE beaker place your mercury one teaspoon of soap and a couple fluid ounces of tap water. Now with a small rod for agitating like mixing pancakes out at the mine turn it over and over until the mercury is clean. Actually this works really well there are some ways to clean it with acid but this method is the most user friendly. Rinse your batch with clean water until no soap is left. Your mercury is now ready to add to your sand. Dirty mercury you can actually press a piece of placer gold into it and it will only stick on one side rather than being encased withing the mercury. Clean mercury therefor is preferred.

There is another optional method you could do next (charged mercury)but takes some time to explain and this post is already getting long. Charging your mercury will not only allow it to pick up much smaller particles of gold that it would normally miss or only partially grab because of inclusions of native stone rock ect. Yes you can Charge mercury as noted earlier it's use in batteries. If you do use charged mercury in a clear vessel you can watch it attack and break open sands that contain gold and grab it up, on very rich sands this is recommended.

With your sands in your seal able vessel add your mercury place the entire vessel under water and add the cap this will remove any air bubbles from the interior. SLOWLY HAND tumble ONLY hand tumble NO SHAKING GENTLY OR VIOLENTLY. Tumble it horizontally or at a 45 deg angle. Only tumble for about a hour let stand for two hours and re tumble. Too much tumbling or ANY amount of shaking or using dirty mercury will cause your mercury to flour this become a pain in the but as it's hard to get it to regroup in one mass. After you have repeated the tumbling process three or four times open and remove a small sample of sands dry and inspect under a microscope you should not see any free gold if so continue tumbling. When done remove the volume to a plastic gold pan and pan into a clean large panning tub filled with water. You need to have a steady hand and a empty spare gold pan full of water, With everything in your pan shake with short quick motions for a while and then proceed to pan as you would concentrates. As soon as you are panning and notice the middle of your sands shift while you are working tilt your pan over into your spare pan pouring off any excess mercury. continue panning and removing material until you get this down to a loose ball of mercury and gold(amalgam). With a small cup it's easy to rinse off the excess unwanted sand but a tiny bit won't upset the rest of the process.

Next is to retort the mercury (ALL THE MERCURY USED) you can use a heated retort which are nice but can be dangerous due to fumes. The simplest way it to purchase yourself a SHAM like you use on your car to polish it (personally I've never used one to polish my vehicle) and a good pair of rubber/chemical resistant gloves. Chamois I think is the proper term really it's just a piece of tanned sheep skin. Wet the skin with water throughly ringing it a couple of times. Drape the skin over a bowl and depress the middle also get yourself about a 1" quality hose clamp. Pour your mercury from both pans into the sham draped over the bowl. Carefully raise all the edges of the sham until you have them gathered into one, watch the edges make sure you have no places for mercury to pour out of. Place the hose clamp over the gathered tips and tighten throughly. Having this tight cant be stressed more the mercury will be looking for a way out on this next step. Starting at the hose clamp twist one continuous cycle never letting the sham unwind. This will press any free mercury out of the pours of the sham leaving the gold behind with some mercury. After you have reduced it to a loose skin pour the pressed mercury in the pan back in to your original storage vessel for mercury. The sham should now contain only the Amalgam by weight the maximum gold content will be 49% gold by weight the amalgam will be hard but crumbly.

Follow the steps listed earlier in the thread using nitric and heat to remove the excess mercury. THIS will PRODUCE BLACK FUMES DON"T BE STUPID AND EVEN TRY TO GET A WIFF OF THIS STUFF. The heated acid bath will pull 95% or so of the excess mercury off the gold your remaining sponge will probably have a silvery shine to it.

Remove the Amalgam gold sponge place in a fluxed bone ash cupel with added flux over the gold and fire in a outdoor furnace or under a fume hood. Due to the mercury usage I would never recommend removing the cupel from the furnace. Smelt Cool Break off the cupel and soak the gold with warm water and a sos pad to remove any remaining flux, The product gold should be about 98% but this is mostly dependent on the gold from the area most of the gold i work with starts out 970 fine.

P.S. Anything involving MERCURY should be carried out carefully and with respect to your body and other around you. I take no responsibility for anyones actions for use of the above mentioned process or usage, use at your own risk, AHH there I covered my self.

 

[aflacglobal]

Remove the mass in lumps and pulverize it back to sand (a small lab impact mill works good for this but seeing as most people don't have one think of some way to reduce back to granular form).

Working on that one now. Update hopefully soon. (May)
This one is for Barrick.

 

[Anonymous]

the easyest and cheapest way of getting gold from the black sand is to put your mix into a rock tumbler for a short while to clean any dirty gold then empty into a gold pan and then just pan off the gold its simple and eviromentaly friendly
i do this all the time and i end up with nice clean flower gold which i then melt into a button for storage

 

[aflacglobal]

Update. lol sort of.

When i first started researching the barrick thing i thought i knew more that i did. Big mistake. I only knew enough to be dangerous. :shock:

I have been doing research into all kinds of fields. One i ran across was where that they were finding plat and rhodium inside of large tanks that have been used to store fertilizer for many numbers of years, like in the mid west. Hummmm wonder how that happens. Transmutation that's how. It is the decay of one substance to another and the energy released that causes these transformations to occur. During the process of generating electricity from nuclear reactions the uranium under goes breakdown. after the uranium is stored it continues this expelling of energy over the many many years leads to the uranium being converted to i believe rhodium if I'm not mistaken, sometimes the numbers run from 5-13 % .

I believe Chris has even spoken of the times he witnessed this in his venture with alchemists and not being able to explain the reason behind why it worked, he just knew it worked.

I have also been studying about the binding effects of substances(atoms)
in solutions such as water and acids. Acids in physics, water to, is represented by nothing more than potential electric energy. It takes a certain amount of energy to power a chemical reaction, like dissolving metals in a solution of acids. It takes energy to move electrons. Mind you i said energy, not current. Electrons exist where atoms exist ( except in some special circumstances ) Electrons are the current or potential energy. The work you exert to move the electron is consumed in the reaction. the electron remains the same. The electron has mass how close it sits to the nucleus and the force that binds it is a form of potential energy. You just have to overcome this force with a stronger one. Voltage not current does this work. In a circuit the electrons are always there even when the voltage is removed.
Example. a piece of copper wire 6 inch's long. It has a certain number of electrons just because you add it to a circuit does not increase the number of electrons in that wire. It still has the same number as it started with. What you do is apply voltage and the voltage moves the electrons that already exist in the wire. 60 Hertz a sec for American 120 a/c. It moves them one way then another. They don't flow in a continuous path. (D.C not included) they don't move far at all. The ones that started in that wire 20 years ago are still in that wire. Eventually the wire will degrade from the constant agitation to it's atomic lattice structure. Put 10,000 volts across the wire and the results of the lattice structure will degrade instantly. Why? accelerated breakdown. The energy causes the lattice structure to overload causing total separation of the lattice that binds the atoms to one another. Think voltage and time are not related. :wink:

I can see now this has been a Aflac moment. The whole point was leading up to the ore processing. Atoms can exist as single molecules trapped within a complex structure. This trapping can be cause by the electrical binding property's of the substance in question. Them grains of black sand contains plenty of values that exist as single atom molecules but are trapped withing the lattice structure of a complex substance. Megan with her theorys would love this one.

Good example Barrick. You can get to these atoms but you must move the atoms of the other interfering substance that will bind them or encapsulate them. This is where you must exert energy whether it be in mechanical grinding which consumes energy or with acids which are also a type of energy. This is where it starts to become a question of profit.

Update soon.

 

[anycreekdrift]

Black sands from large scale operations or even medium scale operations 50-500 yards between cleanups produces heavy concentrates that on many occasions can't be cleaned to just gold by hand panning. Further note on this is that it does make a difference what condition your gold comes out in(flat flippers or round rollers either extreme is a pain to work with gold in the shapes in between is the easiest to recover). If you are working with placer gold some free of host rock, SOME partially encased in host material you will not be able to reduce even close to 100% gold. This is due to the gold being of heavy density and it's host rock being of low density a very small piece of gold of X weight per volume will be attached to a much larger host rock with <X weight per volume this effects any gravitation separation method. Final note before you try mercury you can try a gold wheel borrow one if you have to but they are nice to own. The optimal method is to use a Micro Wave Table cheap ones that work well are $4500.00 even I don't have one but I dream. Both should be run it two steps one to reduce 90% of your volume, the remaining 10% is then rerun or dried fluxed & fired twice to improve purity.

 

[Harold_V]

the remaining 10% is then rerun or dried fluxed & fired twice to improve purity.

If your objective is to improve purity------you might give some thought to properly refining your gold. It's not all that hard to do, and you can end up with great quality, assuming you follow the proper operations. You'd even recover the silver that's alloyed in your gold.

Harold

 

[JOE S (INDY)]

Any Creek,

You might be interested in this for " ...I don't have one but I dream." type self help---

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/scripts/dfid/database/fulldetails.cfm?id=81

Joe

 

[anycreekdrift]

I actually have plans to build one just have never got around to it had the plans for the last 10 years or so. The one I have plans to is quite simple although it does require some milling and some variable speed controls and a accurate incline gauge that handles small degrees. I think the finishing table is 30"x40" when complete. If all of us die only after all our plans are completed we should all be about 115yo when we kick off. :shock:

 

[allanwcoty]

That's some nice looking gold anycreekdrift. Did you recover it from a winter drift as your handle implies? What is this for, "accurate incline gauge that handles small degrees", I'm also in Fbks. so if there's any components you need, let me know and I'll see if I have any. I'd also be interested in seeing the plans that you have. Have a great day. allan

 

[anycreekdrift]

Nice allan ONLY one who has ever gotten that. No this isn't from a drift this was sniped of bedrock on deadwood creek. I am trying to reach bedrock on the creek we are on now, but as you mentioned being in the Fairbanks district WEATHER plays an important role in how much time you can spend on your claim this time of year. We have a heated cabin there but that don't mean I would like to be down some frozen hole for 8 hours a day. We are hoping to make a trip out there later this week if we get a break in the temps, If not then next month we should be getting some serious time in. Our total depth should be 52-72ft 48 feet of that should be Muck and 8-12 feet of gravel fairly shallow considering the other producing areas, virgin ground too.
We had a bad last summer as the creek near the shaft shifted during heavy rains and decided to flood the area we were in so we restarted 50ft from our preferred area.
I have some excellent reports from I think 1920 from weekly logs on cleary creek makes you dream. If you want I can retype them here just let me know.

 

[allanwcoty]

I'm always more than eager to look at old records, would love to see them. I'm within 20' of the creek but only 10' deep so far. Bedrock unknown. My shaft fills with water every year but I don't believe it is from the creek cause I don't get any sluffing of the sides. I'm also waiting on the weather but can't be as selective as I'm about 80 miles out and goes through a State Park and has limited access. I would like to hear about your sinking process. If you've got 48' of muck it's got to be permafrost right. Any chance to bank up the material around the shaft and allow to freeze to be able to reopen your old shaft. Do you keep your shaft closed through the summer to keep it frozen? Have a great day. allan

 

[anycreekdrift]

80 miles out ouch that's a killer in gas, I guess you have to access via a trail I can't remember what the refers to them as. I will try to locate and retype the record account later today.
Your shaft is probably getting water from under the moss if it is present around the portal. Heres our method for a temp portal that is until you or me reach a recoverable amount of gold. Shaft a little more than 4'x4' in the clear four sheets of marine grade plywood with bonded 2x4's liquid nails or similar. Pull your moss back about 2' or so put in your portal with 2" blue foam on the outside. Leave about 1' above the finished surface to keep surface water out. Optimally fill with some thick muck a foot or so pack and then use four bags of betonite (spelling) clay it's impervious to water then fill the remainder of muck. We use a cap of 3/4" plywood with foam mounted on the underside. We have never tried a another trick of cutting 1' wide strips of moss 7' long and draping these over the portal cap to insulate further and keep sunshine off the the lid. Incoming water is a pain we have found even if your shaft is solid permafrost muck the ground acts like a thermal heat sink. The incoming water in summer freezes from the bottom up leaving only the top 2.5' or so liquid.
The first shaft was us reopening an older cribbed shaft the surface around the shaft was already raised by old timers but when the water comes up 2-3 feet 20-30feet wide in the flood plane it's pretty hopeless.

As far as sinking down we have tried a number of methods. Steam thawing, cold water thawing both produce the same results for the material to be removed. Shoveling cold mud is hard as is(suction, weight, removal from shovel and bucket ect). As well as there is the problem with running a boiler and keeping water pumping fuel(wood) going into the boiler.
Actually kind of a funny story there we had a large scavenged steam chest on the stack of our boiler it blew at 130 psi even though we have had it past that a number of times(never hydro tested it as it looked real solid made from 1/4" mild steel. ) Kind of amazing to I think the energy equivalent for each gallon of water at 100 psi or so is equal to 1 stick of dynamite if instantly released. Can't remember where I was reading that but I could believe it. We were about 30ft from the boiler when it let go I will say that it wasn't like dynamite going off but enough to make you mess yourself.

We have gotten away from using steam or water and have switched over to concrete breakers and a genset. Earplugs and full cover ear protection is required for this as you are standing in a solid tube of frozen ground and the pounding can be felt through your entire body. The material slabs up in pieces sometimes as large a 1'x1.5' easy easy easy to shovel. After broken up about a foot in depth it's like shoveling dry coal very light and easy to get out of a bucket. The only drawback is when the material is broken the energy invested into the ground from the breaker point causes some water vapor to be released fogging the shaft some but it rises out of the shaft shortly after starting to shovel. I have a small video of this process but I've never posted a video before.

We considered blasting but getting explosives after 9/11, well it's harder to do. After 9/11 the state required a blasting licenses to purchase from Pacific powder Supply. I've never looked into getting one really, Prior to 9/11 it wasn't that hard to purchase from Pacific Powder Supply state Id and some simple forms plus $$$ for blasting media.

Our 48' of muck is frozen solid no live water old reports confirm this. Funny about 2' down we found a pelvis from a Moose calf the funny thing is there was gravel packed in and around the bones we defrosted these in the cabin and there was fine gold present. It's funny because there isn't any surface gravel to speak of on the claim.

I understand about the weather we keep a digital indoor/outdoor thermometer that records the record highs and lows it has shown 49F below when we went out for a couple of days. Plenty of visits show 30F below. The winter problem we have is the valley we work is narrow about 1 mile +/-. The low winter sun for a couple months never touches the valley floor keeping the temps lower than in town.

P.s. Have fun in town today the morning news said it was -44F. I'll sit at home for the day and force feed the wood stove.

 

[anycreekdrift]

Oh on another note were only about 10 miles out but 8 miles off the pavement.

 

[anycreekdrift]

This is only a portion of the report by B. Earling November 19, 1937.

Drill Line #40 on the Crackerjack #2 claim, indicates the widest portion of the pay channel where values are reasonable and bedrock grade favorable for working the largest block of ground from one shaft Hole #10 on this line showed good values, and to check these and bedrock as well, it was decided to sink a working shaft.

HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT AND EXPLORATION WORK

in the early part of June 1936, a temporary camp was established and suitable equipment installed for shaft sinking. The equipment consisted primarily of a steam hoist, a fated 30 HP boiler, and a "Fairbanks" type carrier. This equipment was all at hand, having been salvaged from early mining ventures and represented a negligible investment. Shaft sinking was started on June 13th, 1936 by picking the frozen muck by hand for the first ten feet. Blasting was then started and continued until gravel was reached at fifty-two feet. Blasting was used to mitigate the sloughing of the muck at this warm period of the year. This fifty-two feet was then cribbed, using local green spruce averaging four inches in diameter, making a shaft seven by seven feet in the clear. Ten foot steam points were used for thawing while sinking through the gravel. This was accomplished by driving five of these points and steaming for nine hours. Two crews fo two men each working eight hour shifts, sank and cribbed an average of five feet a day. Bedrock was encountered at one hundred and seventy two feet. Ten points were put into thaw the station, which, when completed was eight feet into the bedrock and eight by eight feet in the clear. The total depth of the shaft collar to station is one hundred and eighty feet. The gold bearing gravel taken out while excavating the station comprised one hundred and forty four square feet of bedrock and when sluiced, thirteen point sixty five (13.65) ounces were recovered which checked the drill hole value per square feet within a few cents. The station timbering was completed on August 19th, 1936.

This is only 3/4 of one page of a 37 page report. On this particular claim although pan samples consisting of per square of bedrock confirmed reports of the drill holes there was considerable loss due to the type of extraction and recovery methods employed. The mining done at this claim tried a mining method that had been attempted twice in the interior before and failed on both occasions "Underground Hydraulicking" some of the cuts opened up with roof height of 60 feet. Most of the drill reports and the pan samples from the main drift giving a value of $0.82 per square foot of bed rock cleaned. The dollar value was based on $35.00 per troy oz. That gives an average value of .0234 ozt per square or 2.106 ozt per cubic yard on bedrock. The average recovery for the entire operation was 0.251 for the first stope and 0.374 for the second stope.

It wold be nice to sink a shaft and find $11,000 sitting just at the bedrock operating area.

 

[allanwcoty]

Can't say I've seen that report. Hope you're on that ground and they left some for you. I'm 6'2" with a bum back so my shaft is 6' dia. started by fire pit and continued with misc. I work alone mostly so stay away from steam, I did make a barrel stove with pipes running inside to warm my water a little as I recirculate and try to run 3 thaw points. Don't think my small pump is enough. Are you talking electric jackhammer for concrete busting? Do you rent them or did you buy one? I also looked into blasting but too many hoops at this time. Did you start on your shaker table at all or just start to collect components? I'm supposed to run some micron flat gold, sheelite, pyrite & ? on a modified wifley table when the Prof. gets back. Do you by chance show up at the AMA Miners breakfast on Friday mornings? Have a great day. allan

 

[anycreekdrift]

The posted report isn't the claim I'm on. The report for the claim I'm on is only about 150 words very short to say the least. If you are having trouble getting water into your boiler you should see about getting a penberthy (spelling) injector. No moving parts as long as your generating steam it will inject water, Kinda operates on the same principle as a suction dredge nozzle. I don't really participate with any mining orginizaions locally.