Gold Prospecting Cleanup in Arizona: Using Tweezers and Paper Towels for the Very, Very, Final Gold Cleanup

Most of you reading this are here because you are motivated to learn a lot about prospecting. You probably know how to get water out of your little glass or plastic vials filled with placer gold (OK, maybe not full!). the common way is to put your flake in a flat bottom pan or pot and put it on the stove. You steam the water away and collect the flake.

 If you are like me, you head out for some recreational prospecting and spend a day or two digging and sifting and shaking and wind up with this much gold.

Here is my way of drying out Arizona placer gold. I may not be the first person to develop this, but I started doing this alternative method and it works out well. I use plastic suction tweezers (shown in the next photo) to carefully suck out most of the water in the vial. At the miners' store I frequent they are sold for 50 cents per. Here is a link to a miner supply site that sells them: http://www.goldfeverprospecting.com/plsutwforfig.html

As you get closer and closer to the bottom (and hence, near the gold) tip the bottle at a horizontal to the your surface placing the end

of the tweezer at the top of the glass bottom being careful not to stick the tweezer in the gold. 

Then, twist a piece of kitchen paper towel to a point and insert it carefully in the vial not to touch the gold at the bottom. It should suck up nearly all moisture, but not everything.

There will be basically damp gold in the bottom. I live in Arizona and with the dry climate I can leave it on the table for several hours and it will be dried out. Then I bend open a paper clip and loosen it (it can cake from any residue). You could also place it in front of a space heater if you are impatient. 

Then I pour it in my mega big container of gold. HAHA

If you like to cook your gold, that's fine. I just thought I would share this idea. It was a long explanation about something that doesn't take long.