Recovering Gold from the Pan

There are other ways of getting the gold out of the sand however this can usually only be done by people that have smaller fingers; long nails in women are very convenient as it is easy to scoop up the gold or you can also use tweezers if you are skilled at this, however in most cases the brush seems to work quicker and is more convenient.

In some cases there will be little teensy flakes of gold left on the pan, and often times they are very difficult to see. This is what is known as flour gold. Flour gold occurs when the gold has been trapped under some roots or in a whirlpool and have been getting rubbed and scrubbed over and over again by the sand and the gravel that is taking them down the stream.

If you see flour gold you should move a bit further up the stream in the direction you believe the gold is coming from. Usually in these cases when you do the panning the findings will be a bit more irregular as there will be moments in which you will not find anything at all and then other times where you will find bigger flakes.

When recovering the gold from the pan you will need to have another container (glass or plastic) and pour in the black sands. These then need to be saved. Another thing you should always remember is to never place the pan back inside the water to fill it with the sand, instead you should use a shovel in order to get fresh sand. This is suggested so that the little amount that could not be poured out of the pan will become concentrated in the following pan. Rather than losing gold from every pan you will only lose a teensy amount at the end of the day from the last pan.

If you are going to be using a steel pan you may realize that it is a bit difficult to see the gold, the bottom of these can however be heated in a fire until it turns dark blue or black. it is not possible to treat the aluminum pans so in most cases it is suggested to use plastic pans that are already black or the dark green ones.