Learn Gold Panning

After you have around one fourth to one half a cup left in your gold pan, you will need to carefully check the dry concentrates that are left for gold nuggets, flakes, gems, mineral specimens etc. This can be better accomplished by spreading the concentrates thinly over the bottom of the pan. You can also very gently and carefully blow off the material on top so as to uncover the small pieces of gold so you are able to see them. You can also use a magnifying glass, as this will help you see the gold pieces better. It is important to check your concentrates so that you do not take back concentrates that do not have anything in them to your home (where you will later check them). Due to the fact that there is no better way of panning than to wet pan, we suggest you take these concentrates home with you and wet pan them.

It is obvious that through dry panning and dry washing you usually are only able to obtain heavier pieces of gold. If this was not the case and it was easier to recover this way, you would most likely see tons of people doing it. Recovering fine light gold is not an easy thing without water. There are a lot of areas that could be worked on and that would probably be very profitable if water were present so that it could be sluiced. Wet recovery is definitely and easier and a more productive way of getting to the gold and because of this factor, dry washing can only be done on a large scale basis in richer mineral zones.

As a result of this, there are a lot of dry areas where there is gold in small quantities, the problem is they are too small quantities to make the exploration really worth it. However, as we said before, if you are the type of person that enjoys this kind of setting or likes the desert and knows that in most cases a lot of gold is not going to be recovered, well, go for it!