Cleaning Up Sluice Box Concentrates

Actually there are not many differences in washing concentrates taken from a sluice box and that of washing materials coming from a creek bed.  The main difference is that the materials from the sluice box are generally more concentrated than those coming from a common creek bed. So you will be working with a larger amount of black sands and with luck even larger amounts of gold.

Washing concentrates will be easier if before starting you first take out the larger stones. This can be done very quickly by pouring the concentrates through a set of mesh screens, and get excellent results. By passing the concentrates first through a ¼ inch mesh screen. Before throwing away the larger rocks and stones that could go through a mesh screen it would be a good idea to inspect them first to be sure you are not throwing away a large piece of gold. These are generally easy to distinguish but it is better to be sure.

The second screening of the concentrates can be done by using a window screen mesh (about 12 mesh). A large kitchen wire screen strainer will do well for this purpose. The separation of materials of different sizes will be easier to do underwater. Concentrates that go through of this last screening are placed in another container than that of materials that do not go through the strainer, and each one will be washed separately.

Black sands (even smaller-sized concentrates) are the ones that in an interesting way turn the large-sized concentrates washing stage into a slow process. Larger concentrates block the washing task, not allowing the extraction of black sands efficiently. So it is necessary to separate and wash them apart from each other allowing the process to be quicker and more effective.

When washing large sized concentrates taken from the screening, beware for presence of gold flakes that could be discarded. Sometimes the shaking is not enough for those thin flat flakes from sinking to the bottom of the pan when working with concentrates that size.

This is especially true when there is lots of gold in the material, which could go through when cleaning a sluice or dredge. Due to the large amounts of black sands that accumulate in a sluice box and need to be washed during the cleaning stage, it would be wise to develop their washing skills with the pan up to when you can wash it directly until the gold or at least near to it.

If you are washing a group of concentrates in which the sands fill more than one pan, instead of working each pan directly up to the gold, it could be faster to take the pans to the heavier concentrates and save the rest for the final wash. That way you will wash at the end for gold and all the light material at the same time. There are times in which setting apart the concentrates according to size (passing them through different sized mesh screens) and work them separately will make the process to speed up.

Many experienced miners carry out the same process, washing the pan up to a point in which at the end one is afraid of losing some of the gold (panning quickly). Following the final concentrates are washed in a tray in order to save the heavier black sands.

The reason for this is that it takes too long to wash a group of heavy concentrates to reach gold without losing some in the process, even when a small quantity. Likewise, some of the grains in black sands could have inside gold or platinum. These are called “locked-in values”, and that is the reason why some of the black sands appear to be as heavy as gold.

While more fine gold the group of concentrates has, more difficult will it be to separate it from the black sand, and it will take more time too. So some experienced miners will do their final wash in a tray, being very careful n trying to get the most amount of fine gold possible, but also, they do not worry much so as to dedicate themselves all day in it. They do not care much if some of the fine gold falls out of the pan and gets into the tray because after, concentrates are poured in a coffee can or similar container and accumulate it to be processed later on using a special artifact for gold concentrates.

There are many things that you could do with a group of concentrates and take advantage of them. You might want to keep it until winter and then recover the gold with the help of mercury. It is possible for you to know or find someone who has a professional vibrating desk that he would be willing t work over a desk of concentrates and extract the existing gold; or maybe you might want to sell your concentrates. There are people that are willing to pay cash for black sands concentrates, even when you may have extracted all the valuable material that it could have recovered from it.

Black sands can benefit you with almost any amount of money depending on the amount of gold and other valuable minerals that they may contain. Black sands sometimes contain considerable amount of gold, even when it cannot be seen (locked-in values). As much as one hundred dollars per dry pound were being paid for concentrates at the time of writing this book. One or two dollars per pound of concentrates is the average amount paid to small scale operators clean up on a daily basis. And it is not a matter to laugh about when what one is washing of the sluice box adds to 10 or 20 pounds per day. That pays the expenses!