Just a skill learned from trial, error, and a lot of practice. Took me 30 years to figure out a way to pan micro-fine. I knew it could be done and never stopped looking for the breakthrough.
I definitely agree with your method , do it a bit at a time multiple times roughly , rather than do it all in one go methodically . Because no matter how methodical you are you will probably lose more than doing it the other way , also it's just less boring doing it your way . Great idea Keith , now i got two buckets of black sand with micron gold in iv'e had soaking in lye for a while iv'e got to process , so i better get too it , lol cheers .
Very cool and fast for sure. When I'm dealing with fine gold like that when I'm finally crushing ore.... I'll definitely keep this in mind. I'll be finally going to Ak. This summer. Just flying up and plan on Prospecting one mountain while I'm there. I plan on bringing back a small 1.5 gallon bucket of ore from some of the Exposed veins. I'm hoping to have around a gallon of sluice cons at the end of the trip. There's going to be 2 small sluices working material. Don't know the grade of the deposit... Just that it's there 😁
@@hardrockuniversity7283 Yes Sir ! I sure did... That's pretty much what I'll be doing. Only filling up a small bucket so will see ? I'm going to bag up the different samples from each vein to keep em separate from each other. If I can see free mill visible to the naked eye than I'll fill a 5 gallon bucket and ship it home. Figure why not !!!
I live in the desert where, for the most part, most good producing mines have been either exhausted, or are claimed. I basically only get what's left in old timer waste piles. The gold is mostly 300 mesh minus, and about half is 500 mesh minus. The gold is so fine, individual grains are invisible to the naked eye, and stick to the pan. So, just how do you manipulate such fine gold so that it can be gathered without the use of mercury? NOTES: I do this for fun, not to make money. I use a large and cleanup sluice to get my concentrates, and use a pan to get this ultra fine gold. But getting it out of the pan is the hard part, as it just loves to stick to it.
@@hardrockuniversity7283 Wonderful! Snuffer bottles have never worked well for me. I'll order the hardware to make your vacuum snuffer. Thanks for your help
It would depend on the size of the gold and the chemistry of the concentrates. If the cons reacted with the mercury it could become contaminated and lose its metallic surface which would severely reduce its effectiveness. The smaller the gold, the greater the difficulty of penetrating the surface tension of the mercury.. In general,, mercury plates were much less efficient with hard rock ores than cyanide, which is the primary reason for the change over. Tumbling improves the recovery percentage greatly, but drives the throughput down by orders of magnitude in a production setting. Mercury is also a cumulative and persistent toxin while cyanide is unstable at near neutral or acid Ph and therefore much less environmentally harmful or dangerous to use over extended periods. Because mercury is SEVERELY frowned upon by the powers that be I have very little experience with it and have focused on gravity extractions for micro miners. Good question, Keith
Are you getting much gold from the bucket on top of the hydromatic? And are you still pumping water into the bottom of the hydromatic? To fluidize the bottom of that reciprocating unit just before the material going into the tailings bucket? Thankyou and best wishes
The bucket gets the majority of the gold. The hydramatic is not being used with water injection in this configuration. It gets a packed bed of sand with a thin fluidized bed on top caused by the motion only.
Do you ever dissolve any of the tailings to clean the gold, or do you rely entirely on smelting for final cleanup? ~( 'w')/ [as in using any forms of acid to dissolve/digest undesired materials]
Not yet. I have nitric and HCl, but I am concerned that either might dissolve some gold if certain impurities are around. BTW, your comment last night wouldn't let me reply. DK why.
@@hardrockuniversity7283 I have no clue, but I know YT censors some things, maybe YT thought I was giving out some kind of information they did not want the general public to know? I don't even remember what I wrote? I thought I said something like "Great job guys!" or the likes... But yeah I was thinking of citric, acetic or oxalic for carbonates and oxides, they can be gotten easily, and they are relatively safe. And for silicates, there is hydrofluoric [admittedly its SUPER SUPER dangerous, so I would not blame anybody for not wanting to get close to it] but in all, if one is just wanting a quick way to lighten the load out in the field near the final end of the cleanup, they can help reduce the take-home mass. It would only make sense if 1, most of your gold was being hung up heavily in porous gangue, or 2, you could not mill the ore fine enough to effectively free up the gold, or 3, all of your gold was just floating in a homogeneous suspension. On the other hand, if one did dissolve the gold out of the gangue, say with pressurized ammonium hydroxide under heat or with this published method discovered in Japan... www.newscientist.com/article/mg15320752-000-liquid-gold
@@DeliciousDeBlair It might have to do with the text emojis at the bottom also. There was almost a full line of them. The algorithm may have become confused. Thank you for the technical blurb. Not much detail, but it sounds very interesting for final refining, If you see something more detailed I would be very interested. Keith
Thank you for sharing, panning gold is almost an art.
Just a skill learned from trial, error, and a lot of practice. Took me 30 years to figure out a way to pan micro-fine. I knew it could be done and never stopped looking for the breakthrough.
Super cool and no fancy equipment!! You are the Man of fine Gold. 👍👍👍
Thank you.
Thanks Keith your videos have helped me more than any other source to get it done.
You are most welcome.
I definitely agree with your method , do it a bit at a time multiple times roughly , rather than do it all in one go methodically . Because no matter how methodical you are you will probably lose more than doing it the other way , also it's just less boring doing it your way . Great idea Keith , now i got two buckets of black sand with micron gold in iv'e had soaking in lye for a while iv'e got to process , so i better get too it , lol cheers .
Glad to help!
Very informative!!!! Ill be trying that asap !!!!! Well done again!✅👍🏻🍻
Thank you.
Nice bump technique. I
ll have to try that. Thanks for sharing!
You're welcome. I hope it comes in helpful.
Great Prospector Great Job
Very cool and fast for sure. When I'm dealing with fine gold like that when I'm finally crushing ore.... I'll definitely keep this in mind. I'll be finally going to Ak. This summer. Just flying up and plan on Prospecting one mountain while I'm there. I plan on bringing back a small 1.5 gallon bucket of ore from some of the Exposed veins. I'm hoping to have around a gallon of sluice cons at the end of the trip. There's going to be 2 small sluices working material. Don't know the grade of the deposit... Just that it's there 😁
Have you watched my 'Speed prospecting" videos? That would be very helpful in a situation like that.
@@hardrockuniversity7283 Yes Sir ! I sure did... That's pretty much what I'll be doing. Only filling up a small bucket so will see ? I'm going to bag up the different samples from each vein to keep em separate from each other. If I can see free mill visible to the naked eye than I'll fill a 5 gallon bucket and ship it home. Figure why not !!!
@@chrissaucier9386 The speed sampling and panning will get you focused on the best stuff real quick in most cases.
Nice job.
Thank you
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 Bravo!!!
Nice Job
Getting to be simple with this ore. They all won't be so easy. :-)
I live in the desert where, for the most part, most good producing mines have been either exhausted, or are claimed. I basically only get what's left in old timer waste piles. The gold is mostly 300 mesh minus, and about half is 500 mesh minus. The gold is so fine, individual grains are invisible to the naked eye, and stick to the pan. So, just how do you manipulate such fine gold so that it can be gathered without the use of mercury? NOTES: I do this for fun, not to make money. I use a large and cleanup sluice to get my concentrates, and use a pan to get this ultra fine gold. But getting it out of the pan is the hard part, as it just loves to stick to it.
Use suction. About a dozen videos ago we showed the vacuum flask setup we use. It is a lot better than a snifter bottle.
@@hardrockuniversity7283 Wonderful! Snuffer bottles have never worked well for me. I'll order the hardware to make your vacuum snuffer. Thanks for your help
Any vacuum source that can take accidental moisture will work, but I found a mini shop vac for $35 that works great.
I hate snuffer bottles also.
Funny I’m panning material out in my garage in Alaska and this kills it
Excellent. Glad to help.
Why does it have to be dark outside now!!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhh!!!!!! New techniques I must try!!!!!!!!
Because!
How would tumbling the heavies with Mercury work to get fine gold out? How much would be missed ?
It would depend on the size of the gold and the chemistry of the concentrates. If the cons reacted with the mercury it could become contaminated and lose its metallic surface which would severely reduce its effectiveness. The smaller the gold, the greater the difficulty of penetrating the surface tension of the mercury.. In general,, mercury plates were much less efficient with hard rock ores than cyanide, which is the primary reason for the change over. Tumbling improves the recovery percentage greatly, but drives the throughput down by orders of magnitude in a production setting.
Mercury is also a cumulative and persistent toxin while cyanide is unstable at near neutral or acid Ph and therefore much less environmentally harmful or dangerous to use over extended periods. Because mercury is SEVERELY frowned upon by the powers that be I have very little experience with it and have focused on gravity extractions for micro miners.
Good question,
Keith
Are you getting much gold from the bucket on top of the hydromatic? And are you still pumping water into the bottom of the hydromatic? To fluidize the bottom of that reciprocating unit just before the material going into the tailings bucket? Thankyou and best wishes
The bucket gets the majority of the gold. The hydramatic is not being used with water injection in this configuration. It gets a packed bed of sand with a thin fluidized bed on top caused by the motion only.
Thankyou you are very good teacher
Do you ever dissolve any of the tailings to clean the gold, or do you rely entirely on smelting for final cleanup? ~( 'w')/ [as in using any forms of acid to dissolve/digest undesired materials]
Not yet. I have nitric and HCl, but I am concerned that either might dissolve some gold if certain impurities are around.
BTW, your comment last night wouldn't let me reply. DK why.
@@hardrockuniversity7283 I have no clue, but I know YT censors some things, maybe YT thought I was giving out some kind of information they did not want the general public to know? I don't even remember what I wrote? I thought I said something like "Great job guys!" or the likes...
But yeah I was thinking of citric, acetic or oxalic for carbonates and oxides, they can be gotten easily, and they are relatively safe.
And for silicates, there is hydrofluoric [admittedly its SUPER SUPER dangerous, so I would not blame anybody for not wanting to get close to it] but in all, if one is just wanting a quick way to lighten the load out in the field near the final end of the cleanup, they can help reduce the take-home mass.
It would only make sense if 1, most of your gold was being hung up heavily in porous gangue, or 2, you could not mill the ore fine enough to effectively free up the gold, or 3, all of your gold was just floating in a homogeneous suspension.
On the other hand, if one did dissolve the gold out of the gangue, say with pressurized ammonium hydroxide under heat or with this published method discovered in Japan... www.newscientist.com/article/mg15320752-000-liquid-gold
@@DeliciousDeBlair It might have to do with the text emojis at the bottom also. There was almost a full line of them. The algorithm may have become confused.
Thank you for the technical blurb. Not much detail, but it sounds very interesting for final refining, If you see something more detailed I would be very interested.
Keith
I have a six pounds pure gold where can I sell it
It would depend on the country. In the developed world you can sell to a refiner or a dealer. Best price would usually be at a refiner.