Gold Grade Estimate when Panning

The size or amount of the tailings in a gold pan will need to be estimated to know approximately how much gold could be retrieved, however it is necessary to practice it to become more accurate about it. The most common method of doing this is by panning a certain amount of ore, roasting it if it needs to be, so that one is able to get a good tail of gold. The amounts of colors that have been obtained are then counted, with more preference to the bigger ones. A sample of the exact same material is taken from its original grade determined by assay. This way, a relative amount is established between the amount of colors and the real richness of what has been found. The amount of colors that go along with other grades can be determined too by panning and assaying them. Make sure to always use the same exact amount of material when testing is being done. The grades of other samples can then be estimated by counting the colors of the tailings and by comparing them with the ratios that had already been set. Nonetheless, keep in mind that there are a great amount of different issues that involved this whole process and that the estimates are not always accurate, therefore they cannot be trusted in too much. Besides that, there are a lot of occurrences of gold that show their own characteristics to begin with, and even in the case when a good estimate has been done, the chances are that it will not be the same as one has estimated in the first place.