Illusive Gold - The True Mother Load
Throughout the centuries man's quest for Gold and precious metals has been focused on the noticeable or visible material that can be extracted from the earth with minimal effort using gravity and water to harvest these metals from their surrounding gravels and soils.
I am going to speak primarily about Gold in this article. Most prospectors and miners realize that Gold has a specific gravity of 19.5 and that means it is much heavier than surrounding earth particles of its equivalent size. For example, a particle of gold that is 1/8" should easily out weigh a particle of granite, quartz, etc, by at least 4 to 5 times if that surrounding particle is the same size. This type of situation makes it very simple to pan the gold very quickly because of its weight by volume. The problem is this: Particles of gold 1/8" or larger, actually make up a small percentage of the known placer gold around the earth. The fact is: Over 80% - 90% of the liberated, particle, (placer), gold on the earth is smaller than the human eye can see. We are talking about massive amounts of micron sized gold that actually blows in the wind, runs down the muddy rivers in floods, and accumulates in small temporary layers during flood water rescission.
The vast majority of this micron gold cannot be panned or extracted in river or stream water because of the viscosity index of the water itself. The micron gold particles will go into suspension and drift right out of the pan during agitation. Therefore, the visible gold particles that you may capture when you are sampling an area, only represent a small fraction of the gold that you actually put right back into the river or stream. This is especially true in areas where the viscosity of the water is increased by seasonal changes in the water itself. Things like bacteria, algae, and other organic products that make the water less suitable for affective panning.
It is very important to take your known gold bearing concentrates to a controlled water environment for your careful extraction of the gold particles. Many of you already recognize the importance of careful screening, (classifying), the material to increase your odds of successful gold extraction, but there are several more very important things to know if you want to increase your odds even more. In the next paragraph I am going to list several very important steps that will increase your gold yield by possibly as much as 3 to 4 times if you are careful with your material and follow these steps.
- The water environment is important for all fine gold extraction methods including: Hand Panning, Spiral Wheel, Shaker Table, Blue Bowl, etc, etc...
- Clean, Warm water at a temperature above 90 degrees helps to decrease buoyancy and helps prevent the micro particles of Gold from floating away.
- Additives such as thinners and surfactants help control the water viscosity.
There are many other tricks that we will discuss at a later time. For now we will discuss the best way we have discovered for capturing the Micron Gold particles at a much higher percentage than other known methods. This captured material must be taken to a controlled process, not the river or stream. Material separation at the river or stream will absolutely result in measurable loss of Gold.
My wife, Sharon, and myself, have been prospecting for Gold since the early 1980's and we have certainly captured lots of Gold. The thing we were missing was the majority of the illusive micron Gold. In fact, we were losing the majority of the gold that we were sluicing for. We did not realize this until we began studying our tailings very carefully with microscope magnification.
One early spring day in April 2010, Sharon Eckley had an incredible idea about the natural water flow activities in our nearby mountain canyons. She began drawing sketches of the way rivers are cut into the landscape of the earth. She mentioned to me that the larger quantities gold we had captured in the past, had been extracted from the upper layers of the river bends after floods and storm deposits. She had the idea of creating a sluice system that could replicate this natural proven method of trapping and staging the tiny Gold particles in specific layers. I immediately realized she was absolutely right to think this way. It occurred to me that women are often times quite ingenious in their thoughts about relativity or process, specifically where scientific discoveries are concerned. I believe women are more in tune with Gold Prospecting than most men realize.
I quickly recognized a possibility of replicating natural river flow fluid dynamics and so we built a sluice box that induced a reverse spiraling vortex within the mainstream flow path. This first prototype performed so well that we immediately realized vast amounts of micron could be captured in layers. The larger particles of placer gold were trapped on the bottom just like all of the other sluices we had previously used, but now there was another action taking place.
The hidden Micron Gold was now in our grasp and we were taking it home! This often times yields upwards of 4 to 5 times as much gold by capture.
Throughout the centuries man's quest for Gold and precious metals has been focused on the noticeable or visible material that can be extracted from the earth with minimal effort using gravity and water to harvest these metals from their surrounding gravels and soils.
I am going to speak primarily about Gold in this article. Most prospectors and miners realize that Gold has a specific gravity of 19.5 and that means it is much heavier than surrounding earth particles of its equivalent size. For example, a particle of gold that is 1/8" should easily out weigh a particle of granite, quartz, etc, by at least 4 to 5 times if that surrounding particle is the same size. This type of situation makes it very simple to pan the gold very quickly because of its weight by volume. The problem is this: Particles of gold 1/8" or larger, actually make up a small percentage of the known placer gold around the earth. The fact is: Over 80% - 90% of the liberated, particle, (placer), gold on the earth is smaller than the human eye can see. We are talking about massive amounts of micron sized gold that actually blows in the wind, runs down the muddy rivers in floods, and accumulates in small temporary layers during flood water rescission.
The vast majority of this micron gold cannot be panned or extracted in river or stream water because of the viscosity index of the water itself. The micron gold particles will go into suspension and drift right out of the pan during agitation. Therefore, the visible gold particles that you may capture when you are sampling an area, only represent a small fraction of the gold that you actually put right back into the river or stream. This is especially true in areas where the viscosity of the water is increased by seasonal changes in the water itself. Things like bacteria, algae, and other organic products that make the water less suitable for affective panning.
It is very important to take your known gold bearing concentrates to a controlled water environment for your careful extraction of the gold particles. Many of you already recognize the importance of careful screening, (classifying), the material to increase your odds of successful gold extraction, but there are several more very important things to know if you want to increase your odds even more. In the next paragraph I am going to list several very important steps that will increase your gold yield by possibly as much as 3 to 4 times if you are careful with your material and follow these steps.
- The water environment is important for all fine gold extraction methods including: Hand Panning, Spiral Wheel, Shaker Table, Blue Bowl, etc, etc...
- Clean, Warm water at a temperature above 90 degrees helps to decrease buoyancy and helps prevent the micro particles of Gold from floating away.
- Additives such as thinners and surfactants help control the water viscosity.
There are many other tricks that we will discuss at a later time. For now we will discuss the best way we have discovered for capturing the Micron Gold particles at a much higher percentage than other known methods. This captured material must be taken to a controlled process, not the river or stream. Material separation at the river or stream will absolutely result in measurable loss of Gold.
My wife, Sharon, and myself, have been prospecting for Gold since the early 1980's and we have certainly captured lots of Gold. The thing we were missing was the majority of the illusive micron Gold. In fact, we were losing the majority of the gold that we were sluicing for. We did not realize this until we began studying our tailings very carefully with microscope magnification.
One early spring day in April 2010, Sharon Eckley had an incredible idea about the natural water flow activities in our nearby mountain canyons. She began drawing sketches of the way rivers are cut into the landscape of the earth. She mentioned to me that the larger quantities gold we had captured in the past, had been extracted from the upper layers of the river bends after floods and storm deposits. She had the idea of creating a sluice system that could replicate this natural proven method of trapping and staging the tiny Gold particles in specific layers. I immediately realized she was absolutely right to think this way. It occurred to me that women are often times quite ingenious in their thoughts about relativity or process, specifically where scientific discoveries are concerned. I believe women are more in tune with Gold Prospecting than most men realize.
I quickly recognized a possibility of replicating natural river flow fluid dynamics and so we built a sluice box that induced a reverse spiraling vortex within the mainstream flow path. This first prototype performed so well that we immediately realized vast amounts of micron could be captured in layers. The larger particles of placer gold were trapped on the bottom just like all of the other sluices we had previously used, but now there was another action taking place.
The hidden Micron Gold was now in our grasp and we were taking it home! This often times yields upwards of 4 to 5 times as much gold by capture.
