Gold Pan: The gold pan is a good placer sampling tool. A good gold panner can process about 1 cubic yard in a day. Although you can produce a fair amount of gold with the pan, it is still a sampling and finishing tool. If you have found a pay streak or a rich deposit of gold, you would be better off using a tool that can process more material in a day. Even though it is a sampling tool, a gold pan is still a lot of fun for the entire family. You will also need to pan out your gold concentrates from other gold separating machines, such as a suction gold dredge, sluice box, high banker, dry washer, etc. It is always a good idea to learn efficient gold panning techniques. If you already know how to use a gold pan, just skip to the next section below. If you want to learn how to use a gold pan, then read on!
Step 1. Put the dirt into the pan, then submerge it and throughly soak it.
Step 2. Pick the big rocks out and pull all the moss/weeds apart and get the dirt out of them, then toss them away, not too far, because you don't want to lose that nugget.
Step 3. Break up any clay or hard packed dirt until it is all apart.
Step 4. Start shaking the pan slightly and mix it up with your hand at the same time. This is to loosen up the dirt so the gold will sink down to the bottom of the pan freely. This is called stratification.
Step 5. Tip the nose down slightly and pull the pan back gently. Do this again so the top layer of dirt comes out of the pan(some people call this shaving). Some people are afraid to lose any gold, so they keep all the dirt in the pan. That defeats the purpose which is to get all but the very heavy stuff (including gold) out of the pan.
Step 6. When you see the gravel in the pan start to pack up, you must bring the pan back into stratification. Do step 4. over again and keep stratifying. When you start to see black colored sand you should stop, shake the pan back and forth until you see lighter sand come up on top again, then shave the light sand off. When you get enough sand out so that all you see is heavy black sands and possibly some gold, you are pretty much done.
Step 7. There are also ways for separating black sand so you can get to get gold easier, because there can be a lot of black sand in the pan with a small amount of gold. Black sand tends to be magnetic so you can use a magnet to get rid of some of it, but be careful not to get any gold caught up in the black sand. You can pick up a pan for $5 to $15, depending on the brand, type and size. Light plastic pans work very well after scrubbing with soap and water. The plastic oil on them can make gold dust float!
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