I worked a claim down on the San Miguel River with my wife and we brought a bucket of river sands home to work with. The sand bar we were digging into was a natural eddy in the curve of a river. The first thing I noticed was that the sand was like concrete mix, very mineral rich and heavy material.

So we bring it home and panning and I am not finding anything, but I am having a problem with the dried sands dirtying up my panning troth. I add a little bit of Special D (Dawn dish soap) like most other panners so I decided to take the scoop of sand and wash it with my fingers 3-4 times until the water stayed mostly clear, and that is when the gold started showing up, but not in the bottom of my pan, but instead on the top of the sand.

What I can figure is that I was washing away the gold because the sands in the material were so mineral rich and fine they form a basic concrete, and in this scenario the gold rises to the surface instead of sinking to the bottom. I can only imagine how much gold myself and other panners have thrown out because none of us are expecting it to rise to the top.

I found one match head picker that literally hovers in a vial mid bottle, most of the rest are some nice sized flakes, but none of them will sink through the sands.

I have an idea for a solution, and would like to ask if anybody else has had this problem;

Because the sands were classified through a 1/8th" classifier there is almost no gravel in the mix, I am thinking that a larger classifier will add enough gravel to the pan that when it is shaken it will create water gaps in the sand and allow the gold to sink. This compared to now when I shake the pan I form a hard compacted concrete body.

Please also understand this is not material that has been through a sluice or a dredge, this is just straight river sand classified to 1/8th".