Precautions when Using Mercury

If you are considering getting into the prospecting business in a more serious way, you will probably not be content with just scooping up gold flakes as it is a process that takes a lot of time to do and you are probably thinking you could be using your time to get to the real deal. Once you have already mastered beyond the art of gold flakes, which means that you have probably already gotten used to using a sluice or a rocker instead of a pan, you will need to start amalgamating the gold, and then recover it. 

Something important to know about mercury is that it is dangerous. Most of the places or people that work with mercury are the large scale miners. Only about .01 mg in a human’s body can cause death. Unfortunately after mercury has gotten into the body of a human, it cannot be taken out.

There have been some undocumented reports of some serious fines due to the usage of mercury in state and federal recreation areas because it can be very dangerous if it gets lost in the environment. If you do find this, the best thing to do would be to save the concentrates until you have a good amount of them and then give the job to someone who has experience at it.

Amalgamation can be done in a number of ways however the most common technique is by using a regular pan. Around one ounce of mercury is put in a pan along with several pounds of concentrate. The pan then needs to be placed under water and agitated in the same way regular panning is done. When you are no longer able to see free gold in the concentrate, or after you are sure that all the heaviest concentrates have passed over the mercury, the black sands then need to be poured off in the same was, as normal panning would be done. This needs to be done very carefully and you will need to make sure the mercury does not escape over the side when doing this. If you notice the mercury separated during the panning, it usually joins back together.

If this is to be done it is suggested to use a copper pan as they are the most efficient at collecting fine gold and will get particles that are too fine to be seen through a six power magnifying glass. If you are working with coarse river gravel you will not be able to do this procedure, but with black sands it does work. The copper pan roughened with emery cloth and it is then rubbed with mercury until it obtains a bright silver surface. Smaller amounts of concentrate then need to be panned over this and the big wide surface will get the gold right away.

After the mercury gathers the gold, it needs to be scraped off with a knife or a similar item. Then fresh mercury needs to be placed inside the pan and the process will need to start again. Mercury is often times used in sluices where it is usually placed in the first riffle so that if it flows over, it gets trapped in the next riffles. The cleaning up process was more common when mercury was used to make sure it did not escape from the sluice.