Gold Panning

Start out by dipping your gold pan inside the stream and bring it up full of water until it clears the stream. You will now need to do a circular motion with the pan until the sand has mixed in well with the water. You can also occasionally give the pan a rapid jerk, as it will help to loosen the sand and mix it with the water. This will cause the sand to become suspended in the water and will let the materials that are heavier to sink down to the bottom. When you see that the sand has mixed well with the water and while it is still moving well inside of the water, tip the gold pan away from you and allow some water and some of the sand that is lighter to fall over the side. Then dip the pan back inside the water inside the water and go through the process again. This is the real panning that needs to take place and after the main idea is understood, it only takes a few minutes to get a hang of it. The amount of times in which the operation needs to be repeated depends a great deal on the consistency of the sand that amount of clay and on how proficient the actual panner is. There are gold panners that do their whole procedure under the water, while there are others that do their panning above water and allow the debris and sand to escape as they pour out the water. There really is no better method as far as how to pan. Just remember when working under water to be careful with the current so that you do not lose the gold from your pan.

After you have swirled the water and sand around and dipped and poured several times, you will start to notice a little streak of black sand showing up around the outer edges of the sand. What amount you will see is impossible to say as this varies. In some cases you might see as much as a cup full while other times you may see enough to fill a tablespoon.

After you are able to see the black sand you will need to be more careful about the panning operation and in your movements so that you do not lose the heavier materials (that could very well contain gold in them). The issue now is to remove the lighter colored sand and keep hold of the smaller amount of the black sand. One of the best ways is by swirling the sand around in the bottom of the gold pan and make a rough separation between the black sand and the lighter sand. You will need to be very careful while doing this because a lot of the black sand will automatically stick to your fingers. Rinse your fingers off with the same water in the gold pan and it will automatically go to the bottom again.

If the sand you are working with just so happens to be particularly rich, it will show up now as a part of the black sand. In point of fact colors, or indications will be quite easy to see even though the values might be too small for your bare eye to see. You can also try by checking it with a magnifying glass, however since what we are doing is to save the black sand so that it can be concentrated later, this type of operation will just help give you a little more confidence with your job. If you do run across an area that just so happens to have a good quantity of gold and there seems to be enough gold in the pan, you can obviously physically remove the gold from the pan. This is done when there are grains that are a little bit bigger and which in most cases can be removed with a pair of tweezers. In most cases though, the gold does not have a big size so the procedure cannot always be done this way.