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How to Recover Gold by Panning
Think for a moment about the old prospectors in the past, in the nineteenth century and on the difficulties they had to go through. The old timers had to endure conditions we probably do not imagine these days. Imagine what it would be like to not have any sort of equipment to help you find gold, except for a simple pan that did not have any riffles on it and their eyes. In the past if the gold could not be seen or if the people were not able to identify gold bearing rocks, they would simply leave them there, it would have been a waste of time for them to have searched through every rock to see if it had gold in it, not to mention the hard work since modern tools were not available.
The prospectors or weekend gold miners these days are able to go out with an electronic metal detector, which is an important prospecting tool in order to supplement a modern gold pan with riffles. The metal detectors today are sensitive, reliable, stable, lightweight and for the modern prospector metal detectors are literally like having another set of eyes to help get the job done efficiently.
The modern metal detectors we have these days and are capable of finding gold in a number of ways such as in:
- Placer deposits that can be either in a stream or in gravel with dry sand.
- Lode or hard rock deposits in a vein that are on many occasions mixed with other materials.
- Pure metal nuggets. These can be found in nature by themselves in veins or as part of a placer deposit.
The type of gold that is usually most looked and sought out for by recreational gold hunters or weekend prospectors is placer gold because these people usually go to get the job done with a panning kit or simply a pan. However, more then ever now, we see a lot of people that are taking metal detectors on their searches with them to help them find placer deposits and to look for nuggets and lode deposits that are rich as well.
In general placer deposits are formed by the effects of the weather on a gold field that is outcropping. After the outcropping has been exposed for a number of years and decades, erosion causes little pieces to start breaking off. Water runoff and gravity then carry them downhill. There are still undetected pieces of ore lying on the mountainside, however most of them are carried down into streams by the water where the bigger pieces become imbedded in the sand and gravel and this releases gold from the lode. Since the gold is heavy it sinks down and tends to work its way down vertically to bedrock of the stream then causing it to become trapped in crevices and cracks, then the gravel and lighter sand sweep over it because of the activity of the water.
Even though most placer gold was originally deposited by water, the changes that have taken place in nature over the centuries has caused a lot of placer deposits dry. There are sand washes in gold producing country that sometimes has a lot of fine or what is known as flour gold that can be recovered through dry panning or dry washing. In many cases it is possible to find little nuggets mixed in with placer gold and this can be effortlessly detected with a good modern metal detector.
