Should I process yellow/white sand and other questions.

[Jehu]

Howdy everyone.

I'm going out panning/decting i a few weeks time with a mate of mine and I thought I might ask a few questions here first.

The place where we are going has gold in it (obviously) but the sand there is not black. It's a yellow to almost white colour. Now my mate has gotten some nice match heads out there and is also building a sluice box to get a bit more out than just panning. He also said that there is some specks that are too fine to pan out there.

The questions I have are.

Does anyone have some photos/plans of sluices and dredges?

Should I try to process the sand after it's be through the sluice to get any finer materials out? If so, how do I? Any links aound?

Can I use AP to get the PMs out of this sand? Nitric is a bit hard to come by around here so I'd rather stick with the AP.

I will be checking google anyway and I'm reading Hoke's book but I thought I might ask here first. Sorry for the noobish questions but I'd thought I'd ask.

Thanks.

 

[butcher]

have built my own sluice,simple ones of wood, another trick for finer gravel sand is cut in half longwise a black plastic corragrated drain sewer type pipe , have made a nice aluminum sluice box for a dredge I built, its not hard but you need a sheet metal break and welder for hungarian style riffles, i dont try to process any sand that gets past my sluice box, it should catch anything worth processing, pan your sand to see if it is heavy enough to keep, a trick would be to put very small pieces of lead in pan, if you keep the lead in pan(fill pan with gravel sand dirt rocks ect)you are doing it right(you can test yer yeller white sand this way if it is light not worth keeping(golds density is more heavy than lead (you will pan out lead before the gold, now that is not to say gold wont float it will I have seen it many times usually oils are the problem here and very fine gold, you need to dig to bedrock and break into its cracks to do any good, this could be few feet deep or more after 9 foot deep I find another location, you may find few fine particles in sand on surface but not much , Gold at bottom of hole and its were you find it. there are web sights were people build sluices do a web search. you can save your black sands Magnetite to process but unless you can fill a 55 gal drum not worth it . uless you want to just for fun, the sulfides will need roasted (Oxidized) before acids.

 

[qst42know]

AP= HCL acid and peroxide is for dissolving base metal.
AC= HCL acid and chlorine bleach is for dissolving gold.

 

[Jehu]

Ahh ok thanks.

So if I wanted to process any sand I collected I should first burn the backside out of it and then do an AC leach? And should I do the AP before the AC to rid the sand of the base metals? What about other PMs that maybe present?

Apparently alot of the gold out there is very flowery and will float right on top of the water without any oil present which made me think that it might be worth it to process the sand.

Thanks for the info.

 

[qst42know]

From what I remember native Australian gold is about as clean as you can find anywhere 23K as found if I remember correctly. But if its floating already perhaps that is the way to collect it. Several members around here can advise you on froth column collectors. It sounds easier than treating a bunch of sand with chemicals.

 

[Jehu]

Ahh, ok thanks. I'll go check out froth colums as well.

But what about any other PMs that may be present?

 

[qst42know]

I think pgm's are collected this way as well. But check with someone who knows for sure.