Now, I’m happy to report, I finally found a pair of tools that work on every type of sample possible, including extremely fine beach sands. Reader and inventor Bill Martsolf contacted me recently and asked if I would be interested in trying out the Gotcha Water Table and the Magna-Two magnetite remover. I had collected many concentrate samples over the last couple of years, so I agreed, and he sent them to me right away.
Magna-Two Magnetite Remover
First, I checked out the Magna-Two, which works on dry material. I dumped a few pounds of beach sands into my largest plastic pans, let them dry for a week, and then ran them through my fingers. The material was dark, heavy, and powdery.
Whenever I’ve used magnets to clean sand, I’ve always been nervous about pulling out gold. Indeed, about every time I’ve panned the magnetic sand removed by a magnet, I’ve found pinpricks of gold in there. Maybe you’ve tried it and found the same thing – you grab your big magnet, drag it through the concentrates, and create this big, long, black beard. You just know it’s robbing you.
The Magna-Two solves for that by adding vibration to its magnetic system. You can see from Figure 1 that the contraption is simple. It works on gravity and electricity, and is easy to operate. Turn on the power source, made of eight 1.5V batteries, and the action begins. Powerful magnets reach through the sheet aluminum, while the motor rattles the tray vigorously, vibrating away any non-magnetic material.
Figure 1. Magna-Two magnetite remover, sitting in a shallow plastic tub (not included).
When I worked with my beach sand sample, several big, dark magnetite “blobs” or “islands” soon appeared, as black magnetite was pulled to the magnet, while the pay dirt poured off the end into a tub or tray. From Figure 2, you can see that the magnetite starts to grow spikes and tendrils when it’s ready to dump. Once you have built up a lot magnetite, you stick a small pan or plastic tray under the ramp, lift it from the magnets, and the magnetite runs off.
Figure 2. Small magnetite "islands" starting to build.
It doesn’t take long to figure out how to sprinkle your concentrates lightly so that the magnets can work most efficiently.
I ran my beach sand material through the Magna-Two several times and got it as clean as I could. Finally, it was time for the Gotcha Water Table.
Gotcha Water Table
The water table works on gravity, with a water pump in a large tub that re-circulates constantly. Once you get it set up, following the easy instructions, you add a few drops of Jet-Dry automatic dishwasher conditioner, which serves to reduce the surface tension of the water. This makes sure that your finest gold doesn’t float away.
A very thin sheet of water flows across the green table surface, fast enough to carry away light material, but not so boisterous as to move the heavier gold. There are no riffles – the surface rough enough with its painted surface, full of micro pits and bumps. Bill painted the surface with the familiar green chalkboard paint, which gives the surface a little roughness, and improves your ability to see even the tiniest gold colors. Refer to Figure 3.
Figure 3. Gotcha Water Flow Table.
After so many years in the field, I had collected quite a shelf of concentrates from all my travels. In additional to my big bottles of beach sand, I had saved material from Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, some marked, some that only I knew, and a few “mystery” jars that I could only guess about. Some of the bottles in Figure 4 were themselves collections from a weekend trip or from an entire summer. It was time to throw caution to the wind and start working them down.
Figure 4. Full sample jars from various outings.
All of these samples were still wet, but they were quite small, and I didn’t think they’d choke the Water Table if I was careful. I was right. By just sprinkling material onto the top of the table, I could control how fast the system worked. The water flow pushed slowly but surely against the concentrates, and the lighter material flowed quickly downwards.
Sure enough, I could tell almost instantly if there was significant gold present. I had watched Bill’s YouTube video about the process, located at http://www.youtube.com/user/nuggetbill#p/a/u/1/16REqjjWGKw, and it helped a lot. (I know that’s a long URL; you can just search on “nuggetbill” and pull up his four videos.) I found that it wasn’t that hard to figure out how to use the included paintbrush to move material around, and because it’s a closed system, you can’t really lose anything.
By treating the side closest to me as “the gold zone” and moving material toward it carefully, I soon began to accumulate a small pile of gold from my first sample. There were some bigger flakes, and I started to wonder where this bottle was from. Then I realized it was a ringer – I’d picked up a sack of Tom & Perry’s gold concentrates at a recent gold show, and cleaned it using my Gold Magic panning machine. No wonder it was so rich. See Figure 5.
Figure 5. Carefully brush the clean gold to one side for easy pickup.
Still, using a sample with gold in it really helped me learn the system. I slurped all the gold into a small snuffer bottle, which I tested to make sure had no gouges or scratches. Otherwise, you’d have to sand the snuffer end smooth. The green surface is really sensitive, and you can easily scratch it if you have big rocks or a rough snuffer bottle tube. I put a scratch in mine just unpacking it.
As I kept cleaning up small sample jars, old snuffer bottles, and other odds and ends, I got the hang of the action really fast. The paint brush revealed buried gold with a small flick, and the water pushed the waste material away with brutal efficiency.
Some of my samples were devoid of gold, and some had just one or two tiny pieces of flour gold. The water table was cleaning everything up quickly, and it was fun to go through bottles that I’d been saving for just such a day.
Soon, I felt confident enough to try the beach sands I’d collected the last time I was at the coast. The entire process was as follows:
1. Collect material and put into pop bottles
2. Dry the material in a big gold pan
3. Remove the magnetite with the Magna Two unit
4. Run the concentrates through the spiral pan
5. Run the remaining concentrates through the Gotcha Water Table
I cleaned five pounds of black beach sands down to a half-cup of what I hoped was pretty good stuff. I started slowly sprinkling it out, and sure enough, I began to see small pinpoints of gold in the material. There wasn’t much, and it was all very small, but I could see them. I began slurping them up with a snuffer bottle, and saw that I was getting a really clean sample. At last, I had found a way to liberate gold from beach sands without using mercury, nitric acid, or any other environmentally questionable method.
Here’s the result of all my labors for the afternoon in Figure 6:
Figure 6. Clean gold extracted in a single afternoon from multiple samples.
Some of my ideas would probably run the cost up, and Bill is trying to keep the unit affordable. According to the ad at http://gpex.ca/ads/gotcha.html the unit costs just $215, plus shipping, which is a bargain as far as I can tell. There is a very nice discussion there, where experts argue the advantages of blue bowls, spiral pans, water tables, and plain old-fashioned panning.
There is also a discussion about the Magna-Two: http://gpex.ca/smf/index.php?topic=2685.0;wap2. The cost for the Magna-Two is $142 plus shipping. If you want more information, Bill’s email address is martsolf22@msn.com.
Summary
Back in the earliest days of the GPAA television shows, founder George Massie used to tell a story about cleaning up his concentrates in an outside shack, where it was cold and drafty. He didn’t mind too much, he said, and he’d take his time, cleaning up buckets of gold-rich black sand with all kinds of contraptions. Still, he admitted, it would be better to be able to do his cleanup inside the warmth of his own house.
If I remember the story right, when he found a big bonanza hole on the Stanislaus River, and recovered about 800 ounces of gold in one summer, he was finally allowed to do his clean-up in the front room. Which just goes to show – if you find enough good material, a lot of your problems will be solved.
Garret Romaine has been writing for GPAA since 1996. He is the author of Gem Trails of Oregon, Gem Trails of Washington, and Rockhounding Idaho.
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