Pan it out!

Happy birthday to me!

        Blogging this week isn’t coming easy… surprising to those of you who know either of us well.  Seems we always have some subject to expound…

        I’m going to talk a little about panning.  We’ve discussed before the different pans used and the merits/drawbacks of each.

        A weekend excursion included a test run of Jim’s mini-trommel.  It really ate up the gravel and by the time I arrived there was a 5-gallon bucket with about 3 inches of concentrates to be panned.

        First off I will re-state that I have small hands (which the majority of my life have occupied a keyboard).  Jim’s larger pan weighed too much with all those concentrates, so I fetched my smaller pan and split the concentrates into smaller amounts. 

        Next mission was to find a relatively quiet place in the creek with enough water to submerge a pan.  I had already soaked off most of the clayish material in the larger pan, so I was ready to pan.  The next obstacle presented was a large number of nodules which we decided to screen off with a classifier.  That made life so much easier!

        Some will ask why so much fuss just for panning?  I can pan down a test pan in a matter of minutes and tell you if there’s gold or indication of gold!  Concentrates, however, demand utmost attention because you are panning black sands almost as heavy as gold and the gold can creep out with every swirl.

        Then there’s clay.  Clay can rob your gold faster than anything.  If you do not completely break up clay particles you can easily pan out your gold with the clay.

        The nodules can be eliminated with patient panning, but the type of small, flat gold we were processing can ride right out of the pan under a shield of nodules.  It’s quicker and easier to screen them off, check for oversized gold and trim down your panning time.

        Concentrates are tricky to pan because they contain a concentrate of gold!  Caution from the start is necessary.  Don’t ever hand your concentrates to a rookie panner… you could lose a lot of gold!

        We also spent a little time this past week panning some of Felix’s gold from Alaska.  That is easier panning because there’s a relatively small amount of black sands and nodules.  Most of the material washes away with a minimum of effort, leaving you with a nice bit of gold to show for your effort!  I think I would recommend this for off-season practice if you have the money to spend.

        Our advise is:  practice, practice, practice! Oh, and use a catch pan… even accomplished panners can lose gold.