Don't Pass It By, Classify!
Many prospectors are throwing away gold. Yes, that's right, just throwing it away.
Do you think for one minute those hundreds or even thousands of specks, flakes and pickers will grow when you discard them into your tailings pile? I have news for you, they will not grow into the large nuggets that you had hoped to find, not ever!
An ounce of gold is an ounce of gold whether it is one nugget or 1000 tiny specks. Gold as of today is priced at $1340 per ounce, plus or minus. So, why do you throw it away and go home empty handed? Our intention is to help you go home with some of that beautiful, valuable yellow metal.
Classification - All the placer claims we sell are in dry, desert areas. The reason we classify material is to increase efficiency. Gold is heavier than other material, within reason. For example: In a bucket full of marbles, a marble made of solid gold would certainly sink to the bottom. If that same gold marble is put into a bucket of baseball sized marbles it probably wouldn’t sink, the baseball sized marbles would be heavier than the small piece of gold. When material of different sizes is processed at the same time it is not effective; the fines and flakes pass by landing in the tailings pile. For classification to be effective the material you work must be dry. We suggest screening the first run of material through minus 80 mesh, set the plus 80 mesh material aside. Process the minus 80 mesh material through a dry washer. Run your dry washer concentrates through a Desert Fox Gold Wheel or a similar device. You should see a large number of very tiny specks of gold if you are working in a gold bearing area. Without using a 20x loop to see the fines, you will be missing gold! Next, screen your stockpile to minus 50 mesh. The gold you recover now should be minus 50 mesh and plus 80 mesh. This gold will be easily visible with the naked eye. Now screen the material through a 20 mesh screen. This material will be minus 20 mesh but above 50 mesh. If you are still recovering gold run the next stage though a 10 mesh screen. If you are still seeing gold increase the mesh size. Most dry washers are set up to handle ¼ inch material with all the oversized material discharging into a waste pile. If you have a metal detector, pass it over the waste pile in the event you missed a nugget. You can experiment with different mesh sizes; the above is just an example. The key is to test until you find the best gold bearing area on your claim and then work the cracks, crevices and fractures on or near bedrock. Try to avoid wide, deep desert washes unless you speak Chinese. Lastly, remember to classify your material and get that gold.
BLACK SANDS - Save your black sands (magnetite) as they are often gold bearing. In fact, awhile back I assayed a sample of black sand and got a 2.7 opt (ounces per ton) gold. You can easily break down the black sands by running the material through a small impact mill and then screen the material through an 80 or 100 mesh screen. Most of the black sand once pulverized will pass through the screen while the gold will tend to flatten out and easily be recovered when running through a gold wheel or panning. Yes, I know this requires a little extra effort but well worth the time to take home some gold rather than go home empty handed or with only a few specks.
If you have any questions, please call our office at (623) 374-5413
