Practice Gold Panning

If you do not live in a location which is not well known for its gold production but you want to practice the washing step with a gold pan to get accustomed to it and become a skilled seeker before going to the field, you can practice in your own backyard. Use a bowl to use it for washing materials coming from your backyard, or any other thing that simulates a creek bed. I suggest using some rocks and gravel along with some sad and dirt so as to have the same consistency as if you were in a real site. Take some pieces of lead, pellets or small fishing weights cut them in several pieces that are in sizes that go from pellet-size to pin-head size. Hit them with a hammer until they are flat. This will make the lead pieces to have different shapes such as gold when found in a creek bed, like flakes. This will allow them to act in the same way in which flakes and grains of gold would. Leave some pieces as they are, so they can look like nuggets.

When starting the washing using a tray put some of the lead pieces in it, starting by introducing the bigger pieces first. Take note on how many pieces of lead you are putting in, so that you can know how well you are doing. Practicing how to wash in this way can be very revealing for a beginner, especially when starting to put smaller pieces each time.

If a person is able to wash completely those small pieces of lead, then he will have no trouble in washing gold (higher specific gravity) in a riverbed. And, who knows? You could end up with some gold in your pan, and from your backyard! It would not be the first time it happens!

Out in the country fields, a sure signal that the way of washing is the correct one is the accumulation of black sands at the bottom of the pan. If you are recovering magnetite with a specific gravity of 5.2, then you will be able to recover gold that has a specific gravity of 19.3.

In large western rivers of the United States which are rich producers of gold there are actually very few places in which one can wash gold and have an empty pan. Focus the effort to the materials of the lower layers of the bed and on the irregularities of the bedrocks.

Many of these rivers, or sections of them, have been estimated to carry a surplus of a million dollars of gold per mile (minimum numbers). So, actually, it is not that there is a lack of locations with considerable amounts of gold on the river and creek shores in which one can improve his washing techniques. If you are just starting and have around you experienced miners, talk to them and ask him to make a demonstration for you. This will help you understand better the basic gear required to carry out the washing and sampling operations, which is the following: a shovel to dig, a screwdriver to break and open the bedrocks irregularities, and to scrape off until clean, a brush or scrub to wash the dry bedrock, a garden trowel to excavate the bedrock traps, a small coffee can for valuable black sand concentrates, a gold pan for processing gold that is inside other materials, a bottle for gold, a snifter bottle and or tweezers for gold, too.

Another tool that is sometimes comes good to have at hand, especially when washing the bedrock is the “suction gun.”

Every once in a while, one will find a bedrock crack, crevasse, or some other type of irregularity in which one cannot comfortably reach to clean it up completely, even the washing basic equipment one is carrying. In these cases, one can fill the openings with water and suction it or also use a dry-land dredge.