Processing Concentrates & Cleanup
After a good day of panning, sluicing, or high-banking, what you carry home is almost never clean gold. It's a vial of heavy concentrate — mostly dark "black sand" with whatever gold the ground gave up. Cleanup is coaxing that gold out from the heavy company it traveled with, and here's the lovely part: you already have everything you need. A pan, water, a magnet, and a little patience finish it safely at your kitchen sink — no chemicals. It all rests on one friendly fact: gold is extraordinarily dense, around 19.3 against roughly 2.5 for waste rock, so gravity does the sorting — the gold stays while the lighter stuff washes away.
What's in Your Concentrate
A concentrate is the dense leftovers after the light stuff has washed away, and "black sand" is the catch-all name for that dark, heavy fraction. The color comes from heavy minerals that settle alongside gold — magnetite is the most common, often with ilmenite, chromite, garnet, and sometimes monazite. Gold rides with these heavies because it resists corrosion and is far denser than rock, so it sinks and stays. Just know that fine, flat "flour" gold is the easiest to lose and the hardest to spot.
Panning It Down
Cleaning a concentrate is finish-panning, not bulk work — you're reducing a cup of black sand to a spoonful, then to just the colors. The humble gold pan is still the simplest, cheapest tool for separating gold from sand and gravel. Work over a tub so anything that escapes is caught. Keep the material wet and the pan tilted only slightly, letting gravity sort rather than your wrist. Agitate gently to settle the heavies, then wash the lighter top layer off the lip a little at a time, slowing as the volume shrinks — those last washes win or lose fine gold.
Reaching for a Magnet
Because magnetite is magnetic and gold is not, a magnet pulls a big share of the black sand aside once your concentrate is small. Dry it first, or wrap your magnet in a thin bag or plastic so you can release the captured magnetite cleanly afterward. Pass it just above the material to lift the magnetite away, then drop that sand into a waste container. Repeat until little magnetic material is left. Remember that not all black sand is magnetic — some heavy minerals stay behind, so the magnet thins the concentrate, it doesn't finish it.
Fine Gold, the Snuffer Bottle & Drying
What's left is a small heavy fraction with your gold in it, and fine flour gold asks for patience and still water. Add clean water and tip the pan slowly; fine gold trails behind the lighter heavies as a visible tail of color. Use a snuffer bottle — a squeeze bottle with a thin pickup tube — to suck up the fine flakes and dust with a little water and squirt them into a vial, and lift larger pieces with tweezers. To dry, let it air-dry in the vial or gently evaporate the water in a clean dish, away from any breeze.
Safety: Never Use Mercury
I need you to hear me clearly here, with no softening. Mercury (quicksilver) bonds with gold to form an amalgam, and historically people used this "amalgamation" to recover fine gold. Never do this.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin. Its vapor is absorbed straight through your lungs and can cause tremors, neurological damage, and kidney damage, and at high exposure it can lead to death. Unborn babies are the most vulnerable of all. Beyond the danger to you and your household, mercury use is restricted or outright illegal in many contexts, and it poisons water and soil.
The gravity-only methods here — pan, magnet, snuffer — recover your gold safely and need none of it. If you ever come across old mercury or amalgam in historic tailings, don't handle it, and seek medical help if you suspect any exposure.
In Lodester
Final cleanup happens off-app — Lodester doesn't process concentrates. What it does is the part that comes first: it helps you read the geology, hydrology, known occurrences, and public-land and claim boundaries so you can choose where to sample. Then you record your finds and the exact spot each concentrate came from, tracing promising ground over time. Remember that favorable geology is an invitation to look, never a promise of gold, and a map cell says nothing about who holds the rights. Before you work any ground, confirm its current land status and check for active claims.
This page is general information, not legal advice. Never use mercury, and always verify the current state and federal rules for your location before collecting or processing material.