Beginner prospecting help needed

[CiscoKid]

I'm quite new to this and need some technical help. I have a farm located right in the gold/pyrite belt that runs through Virginia. At one time there were around 18 to 20 working gold mines within walking distance of my property. So I went and got a detector and some Garrett pans and went down to one of my spring-fed creeks and filled a couple of five gallon buckets. I got as deep as I could in the creek bed and it felt like I was hitting solid rock at the bottom. Lots of light brown rocks and a bunch of quartz. Some rocks were half dark and half quartz. Not a geologist so I don't know what that means. Anyhow, I trucked the stuff up the hill and filled a plastic wheelbarrow in front of my barn with water. I filled a pan and started to pick out the big rocks. I waved each in front of the coil of my Minelab X-Terra 705 set in prospector mode and it hit on half a dozen which I set aside and ignored the rest. I started panning the way I had seen it done on television and on You Tube videos. Pretty soon I got down to black sand which kind of amazed me because I didn't think I had put any black sand in the pan. I've got it down to a handful of black sand and the detector is sqealing on it but I don't know how to get it any further broken down without losing whatever gold may be in there. Can anyone help? This is my very first panful and I guess I will just start putting the black sand in a container until I get further instruction. Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed on this situation.

[user244075]

I am also relatively inexperienced but the question to ask is what does a metal detector do? A detector will find metal. Black sand is iron ie metal. If your detector isn't tuned to miss iron it will detect it. So you could take a small bit of black sand by itself and see if you get a hit reading then you know it is also picking up iron. Well lets assume anyway that there is gold in the sand, then pan a small bit of it. You should be able to see some really small gold or gold flakes. Now you also have hit the common problem of the "black sand". Try googleing it and find a method that works for you. Some people say using a blue bowl works well. Hope this helps, good luck.

[ME Co.]

There are many ways to deal with black sand but first you want to determine if there is any gold at all. You can get a small black mortar tub at your local building supply, take a small amount of black sand and pan it into the tub- same as before just with more stratifying and more patience. You won't lose anything as it will be in the tub. Take that down to a very small amount and feather it back in the pan, now tap on the side of the pan away from you and any gold should (with practice) walk up to the edge faster than the black sand. You can also use a magnet to pick up most of the black sand but be aware that gold can be trapped when the magnetics clump to the magnet. You can use a jewelers loup or magnifying glass to aid seeing very small pieces of gold- you should have panned all the pyrite off with the brown dirt. One more thing, next time you go to the creek if you take your wheelbarrow or tub and do your panning there you can save your back by just bringing home the black sand.
HH Mark