The first few, short paragraphs are introduced in order to provide the beginner with a basic understanding of the physical relationship between gold and the gravels usually encountered in placer gold deposits. Next we quickly get into simple gold panning technique.
Included in this Primer is a true account of an encounter I had with a real, lone-wolf character…out in the bush. He actually made his living with his gold pan, back when gold sold for under $300 per ounce.
Also included is a Glossary of Terms and a list of equipment recommended to take with you into the field on your first gold panning expedition. You will come away with confidence in your ability to go into the field, pick up a gold pan and separate gold from placer gravels…post haste!
Let’s begin:
Gold panning was practiced in ancient times, and still to this day, the pan is indispensable to the prospector/gold miner. Gold, in its pure form, has a specific gravity of 19.3. In other words, it is 19.3 times heavier than an equal volume of water. For example, if a given volume of water weighed 10lbs, an equal volume of gold would weigh 193lbs.
*Gravel, for the purpose of this post, will be understood to include any earthy material removed from a stream bed or bank, including fine sand, for the purpose of mechanical separation in a gold pan.
Gold’s specific gravity is 19.3, while common river gravel’s is about three and water is 1.0 (ideal ratios for gold panning purposes). It should be plain to see that being so much heavier than water and gravel, gold, if given an opportunity, will quickly slide to the bottom of a stratum. In order for that to occur in your gold pan, a path must be opened through its mixture of sand and gravel.
Assuming your pan is charged with gold bearing (auriferous) material, optimally not more than ¾ full, lower it into your water source, (commonly a stream), water should cover the pan. Stir the gravel with your fingers to mix it thoroughly, flinging the larger rocks out of your pan and breaking up any clay or stubborn clods; silt and fine sand may rise, swirl in a cloud and float downstream in the current…that’s normal.
Holding the pan level, raise it above the stream and with a circular motion swirl its contents, pausing now and again to tap the palm of your hand against the side of the pan; the action encourages gold and other heavy minerals to ‘shimmy’ through the spaces you have momentarily created throughout the composite medium and descend toward the bottom of your pan. Toss, or scrape out the larger stones and pebbles as they are revealed.
Classifiers
It won’t be necessary to pick out the larger stones and pebbles if you run the material through a panning screen (classifier) first, as many panners prefer to do. Screens are available at mining supply stores, some hardware stores, on the net and on my blog (bottom of page). Alternatively, you can make your own.
But if you do screen your gravels be careful you don’t discard any jumbo nuggets! However, it’s highly unlikely that a large nugget will turn up in your throw out piles, so rather than waste valuable time picking through the screened gravel each time…I recommend dumping and quickly going over it later with a metal detector.
Now, kneeling at waters edge, lower your pan so that its bottom is almost touching the water’s surface, tilt it away from you and swirl its contents with an elliptical motion. Each time the pan approaches its furthest point in the arc (away from you), tilt and thrust (a little) toward the water to cause some of the lighter materials, those in the top layer of sand and gravel, to part and be carried away with the water that is ejected from the pan. Scoop up more water and repeat the process until you have removed most of the lighter material originally in your pan. Be sure to tap your palm against the pan’s side as needed to settle the heavies. Use tapping throughout the process. Watch closely, if you are into “good dirt” you may start to see flashes of gold at anytime now.
Keep panning until all that remains on the bottom of the pan is what are called concentrates, black sands or heavies, and gold if present. The black sands are made up largely of tiny mineral grains with relatively high specific gravities, such as iron. If you’re panning auriferous gravels, you should see at least a few tiny grains of gold, mixed with the black sands, at this point.
With a little practice, you will be able to swirl the water to form a ‘comet’s tail’ of black sands in the bottom of your pan. Most of the gold will congregate and be easily distinguished at its head and to a lesser degree along the outer sides of the trail of material. You can pick out the ‘pickers’ or ‘clunkers’ with your fingers (if you are lucky enough to have any in the pan).
It’s common at this point to stop and retrieve most of the remaining particles of gold with tweezers and a snuffer bottle (glorified eyedropper) that can be purchased at mining supply stores, here at the bottom of the page, or fashioned at home. But I think it’s more efficient to just grab the pickers with your fingers and empty the rest into a bucket…to be worked over later with a concentrator bowl or wheel, back at camp or home.
Those are the basics of panning for gold. If you practice them, you’ll soon become proficient. And, as we all do, you’ll invent little tweaks to incorporate into the process that stamps your unique style and helps you to become the best panner you can be. I for instance, keep the pan submerged throughout most of the panning process, only pulling it out of the water, now and then, to give it a bang or two on its side.
To test your efficiency, toss some bird-shot or BBs into the panning material and mix them in before you begin the panning process. When you can quickly pan your material down to concentrates while retaining all of the BBs or shot, every time…you have become a competent gold panner. Congratulations!
Panning is a fun, relaxing and a just plain healthy way of spending a day, week or even longer. And it can drop a nugget or two into your poke too. In fact, it’s one of the few recreational pastimes that have a very real potential to pay for itself.
Generally speaking, professional miners consider panning an indispensable prospecting tool…not a mining tool. Once they locate a placer deposit with their pan, that promises to ‘pay’, they bring in production equipment, such as sluice boxes, high bankers, dredges or heavy equipment (when justified) to process their discovery efficiently. Yet, for every serious miner, there are hundreds of happy, amateur panners who never aspire to step-up to more productive methods of gold recovery. However, it should be noted that from their ranks, many successful, professional miners have emerged.
When selecting your first pan, you can select one made of metal (the old standard) or go for its modern plastic clone… they both do the job. Plastic is lighter than the metal and is a little easier to find on the market. However, you can’t throw it on your campfire to heat water for washing and shaving, or bang on it to call your camp-mates to dinner.
The plastic pans are available in an array of colors. If plastic is your choice, consider how well tiny particles of gold will contrast with the background color of the pan. A yellow colored pan for instance, may make it more difficult to spot tiny specs of gold.
What size pan to get?
The common pan sizes on the market today are: 10, 12, 14, and 17-inches in diameter.
I recommend a 12 or 14-inch for prospecting. I’ve used them a lot for sampling material along streams; whenever I located a spot that panned well, I marked it so I could come back later and test it with a high banker, sluice box or dredge. I usually tried to locate several promising spots before bringing in equipment. If at least one of them paid, I felt pretty good about it.
I use the ten-inch pan for small clean-up jobs.
When you develop your panning skills, and it won’t take long, you’ll be able to work down a 12-inch pan in a minute or two, and not much longer for a 14-inch model.
Many recreational panners use the 14-inch pan for panning material from crevices and gravel bars. The 17-inch, when loaded with a full charge of material, is a bit heavy for most people.
My advice…if you can afford it, get several pans to test in the field, they don’t cost much. If you’re only going to purchase one pan, I advise the 14-inch for most people, smaller for children.
If you’re lucky enough to find a hot pay streak that looks like it’ll last awhile, rather than trying to increase your production by stepping up to a bigger pan…setup a sluice box, you’ll be ahead in the long run.
He Made His Living with a Pan.
I met a fellow who actually eked out a living strictly from panning. He was a hard-core gold panner, an old hippie in his mid-forties that considered Portola, California his home-base; he called himself Clair. I first stumbled upon him while out prospecting back in the early ‘80s. The man was camped in a remote section of Plumas County, California, deep in the backwoods. A scraggly beard sprouted from his face and long frizzy hair from his head; he was of medium height, lean and muscular. His sun baked face was deeply lined. A stained, T-shirt draped his torso; scratched and skinny knees popped through holes in his threadbare jeans and calloused, hairy-toed feet poked out the bottom; I never saw him in shoes.
Camped beside a creek, he slept in his old, rusty, ‘60s van. With a cheap brush and house paint he had plastered it with colorful wavy lines and odd symbols. Beside his van he had built a rock fire pit, open at the front and covered on top with an old rusty sheet of iron the old timers had abandoned. When I stumbled upon him he was squatted in front of a crackling fire, Indian fashion. An old blackened aluminum coffee pot steamed on the stove beside a large sourdough tortilla that was smoking a little and turning splotchy brown.
Clair invited me to sit on a log and join him in a cup of his strong blend of coffee and grounds, together with a tasty, if slightly burnt tortilla, covered with a thick layer of peanut butter and jam…good stuff.
It didn’t require much money for him to live on since he had few needs out side of the necessities, and many of those were filled from Mother Nature’s own store.
I stopped by his camp a few times that season to visit. There was no question, he was a hard worker and knew what he was doing.
One day after the leaves had turned and winter was blowing into the country, I stopped by Clair’s camp. He was packing up in readiness to pull-out until next season. It was then that he showed me the gold he had managed to put aside, after expenses. As he watched me pick through and admire his hoard of nuggets, his eyes twinkled with pride and his lips parted in a smile, revealing dark empty spaces between rotting teeth.
He was looking for a spot to pan for the winter; I invited him to follow me to a gold bearing creek below the 3,000 foot level; it had been a good nugget producer and I planned to winter there. We set-up camps. A couple of weeks later the rains came, the roads got muddy and Clair headed for milder climes; I never saw or heard of him again
As previously mentioned, most hard-core miners that hope to support themselves in the trade, favor more productive methods of gold recovery than panning…methods that process higher volumes of material, such as sluicing and dredging. (Even so, panning remains a very important part of their prospecting and cleanup operations).
Why Clair wasn’t sluicing or dredging was a puzzle to me, because as hard as he worked, and having such a good nose for gold, he would have done far better. However, I don’t think money, beyond his modest requirements, was very important to him. And he really seemed to enjoy panning and his minimalist lifestyle.
Clair, was able to support himself by panning for gold because he had learned, from trial and error, to become a better than average gold sniper. His trained eye could quickly spot places on or near bedrock that were potentially good gold catches. And he worked hard, day after day, with his few simple tools. But, perhaps most important… his financial needs were minuscule; therefore, he was able to set a low bar for success.
He’d probably be in his 70s today; I hope the old geezer is still at it and rakin’ in the gold! Lofty or low by societies standards, it doesn’t matter a whit, I love to see a man, or woman, living their dream. That’s truly success!
Basic Tools to Take into the Field on Your First Panning Expedition.
1. Don’t forget the pan!
2. Buckets (one or two)… If your source of panning material is not near the water, they come in handy to transport material to the stream-side for panning, and as a container to screen gravels into.
3. High topped rubber boots. You’ll need them if you want to keep your feet dry. In summer, I usually just wear tennis shoes. I don’t care if they get wet, and the water isn’t unbearably cold. I always take along a dry pair to change into.
4. Pick and Pointed shovel…explanation not required…I hope!
5. Screw driver and bars for cleaning out crevices and breaking up loose bedrock.
6. A container…for all the gold you will find. (Fill it up!)
That covers the bare necessities. Of course, you’ll add more tools to fit your personal skill level as you gain experience. An example would be knee pads, a viewing glass, a come-along for moving boulders and pulling bushes out of crevices (a come-along is a hand operated ratchet lever winch).
While in gold country, keep your eyes peeled for “sourdoughs” panning along streams. Most are cordial and eager to help a fellow enthusiast by answering questions and offering valuable tips.
1. Specific Gravity
The specific gravity for liquids and solids can be defined as the ratio of the density of any liquid or solid to the density of water. Gold (when pure) as an example has a specific gravity of 19.3, meaning that any volume of pure gold is 19.3 times as heavy as an equal volume of water. Water of course, has a specific gravity of one.
2. Black sand
Black sand is composed of a mixture of fine-grained particles of high specific gravities that are usually partly magnetic. Black sands or heavies are collected as a concentrate during placer mining activities.
3. Concentrates …see Black Sands
4. Heavies …see Black Sands
5. Highbanker
A Highbanker is essentially a freestanding sluice box that uses a pump to suck water from a source (usually a stream) to deliver water to its box. Gravel is shoveled into the box and is washed over riffles and out of the other end by water under pressure. Gold, black sands and other heavy minerals settle on the downside of the riffles and are retained in the box. They’re often used high on a bank where gold bearing gravels are discovered some distance from the stream, thus earning the name “Highbanker.”
6. Magnetite
Magnetite, Fe3O4, is an oxide of iron. Small grains of it occur in most rocks, and as the rocks degrade through natural processes, the grains are liberated. It is usually the predominating component of the materials called concentrates, black sands or heavies that remain in the pan after the panning process. It is highly magnetic and commonly abundant throughout placer deposits.
7. Pay Streak
A pay streak in a placer deposit is a zone or layer of enrichment in sand and gravel that is mineable at a profit.
8. Placer
A placer is a deposit of precious metals and or gemstones in the sands and gravels found in ancient and modern streambeds.
9. Sluice Box
A sluice box is an elongated metal or wooden trough fitted with riffles. The device has been used for centuries to wash auriferous gravels through the box and over the riffles in order to recover gold.
10. Suction Dredge
A suction dredge can be defined (for our purposes) as a machine used to suck gold bearing gravels from stream-beds and run them over a set of riffles to trap gold and other valuable minerals.
Now, to conclude this post, here’s a free to watch… instructional, gold panning video, embedded from YouTube.
This is an excellent demonstration video for the beginning gold panner…highly recommended.
To view a wide selection of Mining Supplies, “How To” books & maps, visit my gold prospecting supplies page.You can expect fair prices and friendly, professional service. Click Here
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