Dry Gold Panning

If you do not have the possibility of going into gold country quite yet, but you still want to learn how to use your pan, you can still practice with it. One good way of practicing is by using small bbs; these will pose as the gold nuggets. Obviously the actual weight of a bb is not the same as the weight of a gold nugget, but they will still serve as good practice and you will get an idea of how to “save” them while you pan out the rest of the material. If you are going to be using real gold or any other type of valuable metal to practice, it is advisable you use drop the “tailings” or “discards” inside another container or another gold pan.

Practicing is a good idea because it will help you gain experience as well as give you confidence and will avoid the fear of losing what you are looking for. You will need to pan the material from one pan to the next until you feel comfortable and get good at it. You can use bbs or any other type of heavier metal onto the top of the dry gravel and this will show you what are the first things you need to do.

Place the pan down over a flat surface and put your hands inside the material and mix the contents inside well and very thoroughly. This will make the bbs or metal (the heavier objects in the pan) to settle down to the bottom of the pan. If you do not briskly mix the material in the pan a good amount of the simulated “gold” (or bbs) will be left in between or in the upper layers of the gravel even after having shaken the pan a lot. In other words, simply shaking the pan will not do the job; you need to get your hands in there.

After this has been done you will need to begin picking out the bigger rocks and gravel. You should tap them or bump them together forcefully so that you are able to loosen gold that could possibly be holding on to the gravel or rocks. Keep on doing this wile at the same time looking closely for any big or large size nuggets or gemstones so that you do not accidentally discard them. You can also shake the pan vigorously a few times; this can be done side to side, circular or up or down etc. At this point doing this to the pan will not do much except settle the smaller, heavier pieces of material a little bit more. The most important thing to do in this step is to keep on stirring the contents with your hand and to keep on getting rid of the bigger rocks and gravel thoroughly by hand as this is what will reduce the weight and lessen the compactness of the material so as to loosen it when you need to shake it later on.

You can also rake the larger sized material in the pan but this needs to be done very carefully. This can be done by raking the debris that is not useful over the edge of the pan while at the same time observing that you do not discard any nuggets or gems. Be careful when doing this and make sure that you permit the finer sand to sift through your fingers back into the pan. You should not lose the heavier pieces of gold this way (or bbs if that is what you are practicing with). When you do this you should make sure that you rake the debris off across the riffles of the gold pan because this will make sure the heavier material drops and gets trapped inside the riffles. Keep on cleaning and getting rid of the rocks, pebbles and unwanted debris until you are left with a little amount of concentrated light gravel and sand.

This can be done quicker and more easily if it is done by hand and there is less possibility of losing any gold than if you were to vibrate and spill the material out before you lightened or loosened it. Continued practice with this will help you to gain more confidence and you will realize that it is almost impossible get the smaller and heavier pieces of metal out of the pan, unless you are not careful about your job.

You will need a little portable dry washer and it needs to have the material screened down in order to fit a specific size mesh before you are able to use it for recovery adequately.

When you have finished this process you should end up with around one or two cups of material left inside the pan.