Quick Panning

Hi Guys , How long does it take for say pin head sized gold & bigger to drop to the lowest area of the pan after the first agitation process starts ?
This is for dirt that’s got no clay problems .

Just wondering if I can get away with using the back of my hand to sweep out about 80 to 90% of the material & still retain enough gold to speed up the whole panning procedure .

Mate good question! The golden rule is if you are one largish gold hard and fast for fine gold low and slow. If you are good with a pan you should be able to gut it back within a very short time minute or two. cheers

Thanks Whiskers , that’s the answer I wanted , I’m only interested in the bits I can pick out of the pan , sure there is super fine gold showing after the final back wash but it would take too long to collect this ' plus there's no weight in it , so it’s the bigger bits for me Speed panning for sure .

Cheers
Jack .

Hi Jack, get yourself a bucket and shoot the fines into it and take it home to separate at your liesure, you may be pleasantly surprised how much it adds up.

Wayne.

Hello Wayne ,
Yep' I should collect them & when I have enough sell the stuff as rich pay dirt

Cheers
Jack .

depends a lot on location
If you were to turf out the fine gold "dust" where I prospect you'd go home with no gold at all Ever
I've moved tons and tons of gold bearing Dirt in this area for 4 pickers throw the fines out

On a different note, providing the whole lot of material in the pan is agitated enough so everything is in a fluid state, the gold will drop real quick
Not classifying, even quicker!
P.s. not classifying for a clean up, not so good, bad bad idea

someday wrote: depends a lot on location

It's in the desert , take your own water & Beer

Jack,
In the panning comps, we pan a 15 kilo bucket with between 5-8 flakes in less than 2 minutes.......
I came second in the open comp I think last year with 8 pieces in 1:45 minutes...
A lot of the technique involves doing what you are talking about...ie wiping a shootload of overburden out with the back of your hand.
My tip.....
Think you are a bit of gold.....
Where would you be right now in this pan????
Have I been shaken down enough??
Is the medium fluid enough???
Its about technique!!

Another tip though,
We always pan off, at the mine, quickly, in a drum. That drum, at the end of the week is the kids gold. They put that through their little sluice and get maybe 5-10 grams!!
OK, we got ounces, but.....that gold was 'lost' if I panned off in the creek!!

Hope that helps!!

Gold miner ' 15KG in under 2 min with that accuracy is fantastic panning , congratulations
Can see your point about technique , always the inner battle of will I get more weight by being a bit more thorough or move more dirt .

Other problem is the conditions placed on what I can do on a private property

Thanks for the good reply
Jack.

Hi Jack outwest.What I do is keep the micro gold and sand in a bucket,take it home and dissolve it with chlorine. Drop it back out with sodium metabisulphide and when have enough you can melt it back down.It does look like crap in that form but it is real gold.
It all adds up at the end of the day. Dave.

Hey Dave,
Thats interesting...
What we do, is that I dont spend tedious minutes trying to get rid of black sands.
I get the majority of the gold out and then put the rest of the 'cons'. into another container.
Now I must admit, the wife loves to sit at camp with a glass of wine and clean up what I couldnt be bothered to do!!!!
However, the black sands that are left yet again, stay in that container. Then when there is probably a fair few ounces of 'crap' in the pot, I put it in the 'blue bowl' (well it aint, I made it, but its the same...).
We always recover a fair bit out of the pot this way.
Can you give me some more info on your process??
Cheers!
GM

Let me put young Steel to bed and I will gladly fill you in Gold Miner.

No worries!!!
Just 'put my two down' an hour ago!!!

Got me interested also Dave

Cheers
Jack .

Chlorine,2or 3 good plastic jars or small tubs,sodium metabisulphite(brewers shop or hardware) and most important a pair of dish washing rubber gloves.
If you can not get chorine make it yourself.
2 parts hydrochloric acid to 1 part household bleach.Always add acids to solutions,never the other way around.
Okay,put your cons in container and pour chlorine over top till just above cons.
Shake vigorously for a while,being carefull not to splash yourself.Needs oxygen to work properly. Every couple of hours give it another shake and when you cant smell chlorine gas add some more chlorine.
Takes roughly two days depending on gold size and content,would not matter if it left in their for a week or more.
When your ready filter througn funnel with coffee filter and leave to drain right out into another container.
Now put some fresh water in other container.DO NOT use suburban tap water cause it has chlorine already in it.
Add a couple of spoons of sodium metabisulphite to water.this then becomes sodium metabisulphate.
Now pour this into gold chlorine solution and it will make the gold drop out.Leave to settle for a couple of hours,then pour most of solution off.
The grey crud you see is gold.Let residual liquid evaporate away and then these grey crddy flakes are ready to heated up in crucibal to return to solid gold.
Thats about it fellas. Dave

Hey Gold Miner,were you at the last mining day at Mareeba.I enjoyed watching the panning comp,pretty bloody fast.I was quite envious of the skills on show that morning.
Dave.

Got another one for you two.
Those black sands probably have gold encased in some or a lot of them.
If you add hydrochloric acid to chlorine you get nitric acid,pour over black sands and they will dissolve. Add a bit of water to solution and then you can plate out the gold.Only need a 6volt battery charger for a power source.Stainless sheet for cathode to collect gold on,bit of carbon rod or block for anode.

Thanks Dave , top stuff
Will have to have a go at that when I can get out next ' wish the bloody weather would ease up some .

Cheers
Jack .

shyneesteel wrote:Hey Gold Miner,were you at the last mining day at Mareeba.I enjoyed watching the panning comp,pretty bloody fast.I was quite envious of the skills on show that morning.
Dave.

Yeah mate I was there, but didnt enter in the comp last year. I had to keep going up to the mine.
Ive entered most years prior to that though.
Your'e dead right about the speed! What about those big flat pans eh?

shyneesteel wrote:Got another one for you two.
Those black sands probably have gold encased in some or a lot of them.
If you add hydrochloric acid to chlorine you get nitric acid,pour over black sands and they will dissolve. Add a bit of water to solution and then you can plate out the gold.Only need a 6volt battery charger for a power source.Stainless sheet for cathode to collect gold on,bit of carbon rod or block for anode.

Hi, "Shinee"-
Black sand is well-known for containing tiny gold; I run all my black sand (wet) thru a tumbler / ball-bearings to fracture the brittle black sand.

Question : hydrochloric acid is HCl ... chlorine is Cl2 ; if the two are mixed, where does the nitrogen ( to make nitric acid ...HNO3 ) come from?

-GoldPype ... NC/USA

Hi there Goldpype, I thank you for that. Do not know why I put that down, must have been the whiskey that night. Dave

The one thing not mentioned in this topic so far is that gold is 19% heavier in water so it doesnt take long for it to get to the bottom of your pan with enough agitation .

I came across this XP Batea pan with a 3 pronged device  in it that they call a defragmenter ,which is , in effect , an agitator for the material  in the pan .  https://www.gold-diggers.com.au/xp-batea-panning-kit

Has anyone used one of these ? An interesting concept i have never seen before.  

I personally use the 16 " Turbo Pan which  agitates the dirt when you shake it left to right and then  swirling it clockwise to shift the dirt via the riffles to the centre of the pan , but i was curious how good these XP Batea pans are . The Turbo Pan is pretty quick at agitating and processing the dirt and i wondered if this does ,too.

 You learn something every day .

The best thing to do is find larger gold, it falls to the bottom quickly.


With very fine gold with black sand I used to heat it up in steel container till it was red hot and let it cool down. When cold i would use a magnet above piece of paper and remove the magnetic rubish. The Hg method was effective but illegal now so what do I do with my 5 kilos of it