Hi all,
Firstly i want to say what an awesome communuty this is. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time here so far and this is just the beginning of my prospecting journey!
I was wondering if anybody has any tips to seperating fine gold from heavy sand? Panning is working well for me so far, but i find it tedious and have a fair bit of material to work through. Not all of it is magnetic so the magnet is only getting me so far. Is there a more efficient way?
Cheers!
For dredge concentrates (about 50% black sand) I classify it then run it across ribbed rubber, and car floor mats inside a length of spouting, then use a pan + rare earth magnet for the final cleanup.
This is cheap and cheerful but gets the majority of the gold. Obviously if you’re doing big volumes it might be worth investing in a shaker table, mercury, or other systems with higher recovery rate
If you are working thru a fair bit of black sand you can try a few thing. The main thing is to classify down to many different sizes if its worth it. Mercury is the easiest but not the safest. You can try to run it thru a small riffle sluice box. This will redice the gravels and some vlack sand, but very fine riffles like a gold cube, and then pan it off after classifying. There will come a time when what you are losing is exceding the effort/cost to rover it. And that is gold mining. It always comes down to cost to recover.
Classification is the key. Deal with the same size particles at a time. Use sieves of different mesh sizes to do this with your concentrates. By dealing with the fines of the same mass/size the gold will be the heaviest. The loss of the fine gold comes from needing a stronger water flow to move on the larger non gold material. Thus carrying away the finer gold as well.
It can be a tedious slow task dealing with fines. Once down to materials of the same mass/size it is just a matter of getting the right water flow & angle on your box to get the sands to move on. The gold being heavier should become obvious & show to be lagging behind.
You could try a blue bowl. Still pays to classify the material to equal mass/size. That is the “secret”. If you use a Blue Bowl & have a few beers during the process, you could get pretty pissed by the end of it. 
Google is you friend. Do a search on blue bowl use. Here is one, but there are heaps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZXddnyRwo
JW 
Hey @madgoldnz, @kiwijw & @GoldStampX thanks for taking the time to reply to my post, I really appreciate you guys sharing your knowledge, looks like a have quite a few options. Looking forward to researching them further.
Cheers PP
Ive had many a fine evening with pan, snuffer bottle and beer as i refined the fines out of the black sand