Gold Pans!

Reckon I shouldu stayed in bed or gone down the pub
I've heard that people who can pan a piano can play great tin stone

Yep too hot!

someday wrote:yes it's one big learning curve!
that most new to this way of life don't walk far from where they park their car says it all
Cheers
Chris.

Mate how true is that!

James 101

Panning is an art, some will be better at it that others ! But we all should try to master it because without it it will frustrate you no end . It has been great to see the posts in here with so much info about this subject and its like learning to ride a bike! Ya never forget it ,ok sometimes you become a bit wobbly but it doesn't take long to master it again ! It is interesting to see on another forum a method of swirling the cons in the pan and using 2 sniffer bottles to clean up the gold. Now I haven't seen or heard of this for 30 yrs or more ! Last time I saw this used was on the Goulburn river with a dredger, ahh back when it was legal, the idea was to grab the clean gold with one bottle and to grab the black sands with the slightest golden hue with the other one which contained some mercury. I'm wondering if that poster is an old dredger ? Maybe .

Apart from the back wash method being totally awesome for turning black sands into gold "so to speak"

the method in my view is THE best way for recovering gem stones hands down

Met up with a fellow member a couplu months back out at Eldy, he passed me a nice one off pan full of gold and cons, cool! he wasn't using the back wash idea??
I re stratified the pan contents, and started the back wash! Hey man nice rock?? a nice clear Topaz just sitting there at the top edge of the black sand

sucks when you find gemstones when your main aim is gold Slows the process down no end

Cheers
Chris..........

I know I have been banging on a bit about the art of panning. The reason I have been doing this is to make the new chum aware that prospecting is not as clear cut as some make out. Anyone can put dirt through a bit of plant but the trick is in knowing if that dirt has gold in it or not. Why work all day for zit when you can spend the same amount of effort and get a good result for your toil. I can at times spend months testing & researching a new area I avoid the more popular areas with easy access due to the amount of work been done within their boundaries. But then at times if I need to test gear I have been known to visit such an area for an overnight or day trip it all depends on what I am testing at the time. What I am trying to say here is in wet water prospecting the GOLD PAN is the most important bit of gear in your kit hence the consistent banging away about this point. You only have to look back through the above post to realize just how important it is to a prospector. By test panning first this will show you weather the area is worth working. As a new chum you must master the art of panning and master it completely.

Cheers
James 101
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For me time and kids are a HUGE factor I would love to spend more time testing and exploring areas but the fact is i can normaly only get out about 1 day a week if iam lucky and by that stage i just want some yella So we end up heading out somewhere we we know we will get some color reguardless of where we dig even if it is only a bit sometimes Though maybe it is just a bit of a noobie thing
Every now and again we head out to some new places to explore and do some testing (hopefully it will pay off one day) especially if i can get away for a few nights but if i only have a day out so long as there is color in my pan at the end of the day iam happy.

Probably if i improved my panning sampleing wouldnt be so painful but i think i also need to work on how i test pan

Ian the best advice I can give you, is to pan over a bucket so you can't lose anything! then try like hell to rid your pan of gold?? it soon becomes apparent that it's actually hard going to lose gold! grasp that concept and your on your way
Trust your pan man, the most important part is reading the water and how the cons are moving about! just open your eyes then let your hands do the work

Cheers
Chris

P.s. keep using your eyes

shivan wrote:For me time and kids are a HUGE factor I would love to spend more time testing and exploring areas but the fact is i can normaly only get out about 1 day a week if iam lucky and by that stage i just want some yella So we end up heading out somewhere we we know we will get some color reguardless of where we dig even if it is only a bit sometimes Though maybe it is just a bit of a noobie thing
Every now and again we head out to some new places to explore and do some testing (hopefully it will pay off one day) especially if i can get away for a few nights but if i only have a day out so long as there is color in my pan at the end of the day iam happy.

Probably if i improved my panning sampleing wouldnt be so painful but i think i also need to work on how i test pan

Interesting that you make mention of time. It is the time taken to test an area that will deliver the rewards if time is not taken to test than all that will ever be got will be a bit of color. Before setting up your plant test the area you think may have gold check first then set up. If very little gold is present then check another area. As someday has said learn to trust in your pan and reap the rewards.

Such as this.

Dont get me wrong Whiskers, iam sure we could be doing things alot smarter We have had some success test panning as we found a spot that got us allmost 2g for a days dig out at Oallen for us that was our best dig to date but further trips out there and more testing we have not found another spot like it
We will normally still drop a few pans in from a couple of spots to choose which seems more likely, but just dont test like we should and also setup on gold we know others wouldnt but like i say sometimes i just need that gold fix

Hopefully this year(new years resolution) we will start trying to work a bit smarter and do a bit more exploring and work out how to sample an area properly.

Chris, i was getting confident with my panning but i think i overloaded a pan or two and the gold in my catch pan got me scared again so kind of went back to square one

That's the right thing to do ! Go back to the basic princables and start again ! As you said ou may have overloaded your pan as if we all don't do that sometimes but it is the fact that you realised this and corrected it! As you said you now need to put in the hard yards of how to look at a spot and read it ! The fact that every man and his dog has been digging all over Oallen makes this a daunting task indeed . I have spots that get attacked like that by newbies out for a week end and it is a challenge to read the line after the kids have been digging all over the place! God bless their little hearts but that is just another challenge to a,prospector . Good luck for the new year

shivan wrote: Hopefully this year(new years resolution) we will start trying to work a bit smarter and do a bit more exploring and work out how to sample an area properly.

Now your on the ball and i wish you the best of luck. Working smarter is much better than working hard for zit. Ark's post is spot on the money.
Cheers James 101

The old over greedy gold pan trick

I found that if theres going to be any gold loss that it happens in the early stage!
Not sure how you blokes go about this stage?
Apart from the initial hands in episode, I still include some of my old panning style, combining the quick quarter'ish rapid turns to raise the larger rocks, stratifying with the circular motion, then straight into the sideways slish-slosh method!!

Not sure if it's just me, but I find the circular stratification in the early stage gets the gold to the bottom much quicker!?!?

Penny for yu thoughts

The guy in this video pans very much like I do. The trick as you have pointed out is to let the water do all the work. Cheers mate

https://golddetecting.forumotion.net/t3959-separating-gold-from-black-sands#62092

That blokes a card alright

My post was more in regards to the greedy pan scenario of unclassified material

someday wrote: That blokes a card alright

My post was more in regards to the greedy pan scenario of unclassified material

Sorry mate i miss read your post. The greedy pan scenario {grin} yep we all done that at one time or other . But at some point in your prospecting career you start thinking how much gold can i get from this spot in a 5 hour stint. So how I handled that question was to limit my pan to just one shovel full of wash. After each pan I would count the gold in the pan say if there were 20 fine specks and if that was a consistent number over a number of pans I would know I will get around a gram or a bit better depending on how I worked during the day. When I started doing this the greedy pan scenario disappeared.

Cheers
James 101
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