Prospecting equipment: gold pans

      We’ve stated before that we use different pans for different things, but any pan is better than no pan!

      Guess that would be our first guideline:  always have a pan available.  I don’t know how many times we’ve been out and about, not really planning on prospecting and found ourselves wishing we had anything we could use for a test pan!  I liken it to photography, in which I also have a little experience.  Always have a camera available because if you don’t…

      In the good old days J, the most readily available pans were steel pans.  Now a popular belief is that old-timers used their pan for everything from cooking to recovering gold.  The fault we find with this belief is that one of the most common gold-robbers is grease… whether it be an oily pan or greasy fingers from food. 

      We digress for a second to the subject of grease and gold.  Your hands, pan, sluice and any other mining equipment you might need should be grease-free.  Don’t have a greasy snack and go right to panning, and don’t wash your hands, utensils or dishes upstream from the sluice!

      Back to panning… These pans are bought looking pretty… shiny and all.  If you are “breaking in” a new pan, metal or plastic, they need to be roughed up with some water and gravel that will take off the factory finish and give you a pan that will actuary hold your gold, not send it on downstream.  New pans are pretty, good pans are the scuffed up ones. 

      Teresa finds a metal pan a real pain for one reason… they are rusty!  The rust rubs off on clothing (just try hiking into an area carrying a rusted pan and not get dirty), your hands and anything it comes into contact with!

      So our first preference is a plastic pan.  They come in a variety of sizes and shapes from different manufacturers.  They imcorporate molded riffles which are quite helpful but tend to vary with pan design. 

      Bob’s pan of choice is an older 14-inch green Garrett pan. The texture of the plastic is heavier and easier to control and grip.  The texture is also “rougher,” which keeps the gold in place in the pan.  The riffles are designed for easy elimination of “rough” material and gets you down to concentrates quickly.

Teresa’s first preference is a 12-inch pan from Keene Engineering (Keeneeng.com).  My hands are smaller and a 14-inch pan requires two hands to pan because of the weight.  I like the design of the riffles and a lighter-weight pan.  There’s times I pan a dozen or so pans in an outing and strength in my 5 ft. 1 in. frame is limited, to say the least!  I really like the riffle design in Bob’s Garrett pan, but again I’m two-handing it and tire quickly.

      For a test pan Teresa will use any pan available.  Highly portable because of their size are a quantity of cheap 10-1/2 inch black pans our daughter acquired a few years ago.  These are the pans you often see at pay-to-pan sites and you can actually get a fair quantity of material in them.  A test pan is just that… a test!  I always pan carefully, but once the material is saturated and the heavier materials have settled I can pan it out quickly to look for evidence of gold-bearing material.  This is indicated by black sands, nodules and bits of quartz.

      A friend of ours has what we call the “monster pan,” which holds a lot of material but is tiring to pan.  By the time you get to concentrates, you’re too tired to pan carefully.

      Andy, a follower of our website and blog, emailed to say,

"I use a 15" Garrett Super Sluice. It's a big boy, but I like it because the riffles are steep and have an inverted angle, its almost impossible to lose any worthwhile, gold in my opinion anyway.. (I've actually panned out gold in it that was light enough to float on the water surface! Might I add, for $10.95 and tax, it was a thrifty buy for the quality job it does!"

      We have no experience with some of the more trendy pans: square and hexagon shapes.  They come in a variety of colors, as do round pans.  We haven’t been motivated by the shape or the color to make an investment, but if someone wants to send us a free sample to try out, we’d be happy to comply!

      Andy's comment also made me think we hadn't mentioned anything about price!  Pans cost from $3.95 up to the $20 range... so if you calculate that you get a decent show in your first pan, YOU'VE PAID FOR IT!  That's what $1400/ounce gold prices return.

      The best way to get a good sample is to use a classifying sieve, or what we call “screens.”  This eliminates the larger rocks allowing more material in the pan.  We usually screen everything we put into the sluice box also, but that’s another blog…

      A snuffer bottle uses suction to remove gold from the pan.  Bob prefers using a snuffer bottle, I just transfer using my fingers.

      So if you’re a greenhorn looking for your first gold, we recommend bringing along rubber boots, a pan, a gold vial to display the gold you find, sieve, No. 10 shovel and maybe a rock pick, a 5-gallon bucket that doubles as a carrying device, drinking water and greasy snacks!  While you’re at it, bring along a sluice box because you’re all set up to sluice! 

     

     We’ll talk about our sluice boxes at a later date… happy panning!