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This is PART ONE of a three part series on FINE GOLD.
Part one: Will deal with the GOLD itself.
Part two: Will deal with proportional force and exchange issues in sluices.
Part three: We will break down the SuperHog as an example.
Part One – Fine Gold Let’s Take a Look
Most of the images in this article can be clicked to view larger.
REMEMBER… this is Part One of a three part series on Fine gold.
Trust me……….I get it……… there is and always will be an obsession with fine gold with prospectors; probably because fine gold is so prevalent in so many areas and for so many people. Often prospectors and miners are in areas where fine gold makes up 99% of the gold they see in a given season. I spent last week working with a crushing / milling operation that dealt with only 400 – 500 mesh gold and at that point you are talking about gold the size of a white blood cell. So, please… don’t “lecture me” about how fine your gold is. Instead let’s take a look at gold sizes and terms.
Fine gold is often called “Flour Gold” and is very fine gold that looks like “baking flour”. For most it’s in the 100 – 200 mesh range. Most “fine gold” that prospectors deal with is in the 50 – 100 mesh range.
There is a pretty common rule I use about fine gold. The bigger the water… the more fine gold you’ll

have. That rule applies about 80% of the time. The biggest water… the ocean. Beaches usually have nothing but super fine gold in the 100 – 300 mesh range. Large rivers or WHERE LARGE RIVERS USED TO BE… lots of fine gold. When you get into areas like the south east you see less and less “concentrations” of fine gold. Yes, you’ll find a few areas where it’s prevalent, but it’s not like Canada and BC where LARGE rivers create vast amounts of super fine gold.
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How many pieces of fine gold make up a gram?
Rather than base our numbers on someone else’s results, we did our own count. We took ½ grain of SUB -100 mesh gold. Within that total count we found just over 750 pieces. Do the math, and that gives you roughly 23,145 pieces of gold in one gram. Do more math and that’s 719,809 pieces in an ounce.
It’s important to KNOW these numbers when doing testing. You’ll need to know piece counts when performing controlled tests.
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Mesh Sizes
I shot these pictures yesterday just for this article. I REALLY think they help someone get a good visual feel for fine gold. I want you to better understand 200 mesh gold.



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Thanks to Utah Bio Diesel Supply for letting us grab some of these images.

As prospectors and miners we usually use only the straight weave on meshes.

Conversion Chart for Microns to Mesh
Mesh Pictures
Other fine gold pictures.
3 grams sub 100 mesh gold.
Fine gold in GoldHog mats.
Roughly 58 grams of fine gold.
Fine Gold Video
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20 Comments on "Fine Gold and Mesh Sizes – Part One"
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Great Article. I usually only screen down to twenty mesh, so i have a lot of larger piece’s in my fines.
Nice video doc
Great Article Doc. I too only screen down 20 mesh before running it thrown washer mat for the last time.
Good stuff, EXCELLENT recovery #’S and percentages! Very Nice..
That was a really great and informative article and I enjoyed the video as well.
Awesome article. Always good info to have. Thanks
Very well explained and easy too follow
Something I just realized. Years ago we would use mercury to recover those kinda fines. So think of the live this man is saving by finding these alternate ways to recover the fine gold
great job on this video
Great article. I also screen to 20 mesh. I use a multi sluice so I am cartching 200 mesh gold but I keep my black sands as I am probably not panning it all out.
Yikes , how do you clean black sand from such fine material. Is it possible to pan it?
after you have recovered as much as you can is there still gold in the black sands? would it not then be time to use a borax flux and smelt it to melt the last and then it will pool in the bottom as a button of pure gold
Great article Doc. This was really helpful to understand the mesh sizes. The pics from Utah Bio Diesel Supply was awesome. Looking forward to part 2.
GPA – only down to 20 mesh? Would you consider anything finer? – why not? Something like the Fine woven or twilled seen here in stainless steel: http://www.bwire.com
Was up in Michigan recently – and took in a LOT of flakey “fly poop” – very successful trip.
that’s great. thanx I do live in alberta and I tell you we have very fine gold some is smaller than you can see in the pan. but with what I learned from you ill be able to recover more of it