Panning

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Pans

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Gold panning evolved world-wide since man first found and prized gold. A variety of styles of pans have evolved. In the United States the traditional pan is of steel, shaped as a frustum of a cone with a broad, smooth flat bottom and gently sloping sides, and may be smooth or have a few small parallel ridges that form concentric riffles about the pan. As sturdy plastics became available, other designs were developed, usually differing in that a part or all the rim has deep, specially designed riffles that the manufacturers claim "make panning easier and prevent spills of gold" or to save finer gold colors.
 

The pans come in a variety of sizes. The traditional, "standard" pan is 16-inches in diameter at the lip, the bottom is 10-inches diameter, the pan is 2½ inches deep and the sides slope 40 degrees to the bottom. This pan, level full, holds about 20 pounds of gravel.​

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How to Pan

 

Gold panning is like bicycle riding-easily learned but hard to describe. It is most readily learned by watching, but following these suggestions you can teach yourself and soon begin to pan well:

1. If panning in a stream or lake, pan where the water is shallow but the pan can be held and shaken under water. If in a stream, the water must be only gently moving, so that the contents of the pan will not wash out. Ideally the water will be four to six inches deep, so that the pan can be rested on the bottom.

2. Panning is most comfortably done sitting on a rock in the stream, holding the pan between the knees. Some panners will hold their knees far apart with their arms and the pan between them. Other panners will hold one arm and the pan between their knees and one arm reaching under a knee to the pan. The first position is easier with a "half size" pan; the "standard" pan requires the second, especially if the panner is small. It is less comfortable to squat beside the stream, leaning over to pan. Knee-high rubber boots are a plus, and fishing waders are good for working and squatting in foot-deep water.

3. If panning away from a stream or lake, work over a washtub or other container of water large enough that the loaded pan can be submerged and, ideally, manipulated in it. This not only facilitates the panning but prevents having to pour water into the pan, permits filling the pan higher, and provides a trap for the tailings if desired.

4. The pan should be filled about level full or a little less. Avoid heaping it with gravel. In some cases a sieving screen or "grizzly" can be used to eliminate coarse rock or woody material from entering the pan. Common screen sizes are one-quarter inch to one-half inch.

5. Throughout the panning operation you will be discarding portions of the material in the pan. You should watch this material and examine any fragment that has an unusual shape or color or is unusually heavy. With good fortune you might find a nugget or a gold-bearing fragment of vein quartz.

6. Submerge the pan in water and stir the gravel with your hands to wet it thoroughly. Wash any wood, plants, cobbles or large pebbles so that sand adhering to them drops into the pan and then discard them. If the gravel contains clay, work it so that the clay becomes suspended in the water and can be washed away. If the gravel contains clay lumps, these should be worked between the fingers until the clay "dissolves." Continue until the gravel is free of clay, the water in the pan remains clear as the pan is shaken and the wood, vegetation, cobbles and most of the pebbles have been removed.

7. Keeping the pan level, move it in strong twisting motions, clockwise and counterclockwise, so that all the gravel becomes suspended in water and the heavy materials can settle to the bottom of the pan. After, say, ten​ motions remove the pebbles and granules from the surface. Repeat and continue until the larger fragments have been removed.

8. Alternating gentler side-to-side and circular motions, gradually tip the pan forward so that the surface of the gravel rises to the far-side lip of the pan. Continue agitation, letting some surface material wash over the edge, out of the pan. Level the pan again, repeat the twisting motions until heavy grains begin to appear at the outer edge of the pan. Again let some surface material wash over the edge. Continue leveling and tipping until heavy grains appear on surface near the pan lip. These grains are usually black, less commonly red, other colors or clear, but in any event different from the common sand grains in the gravel.

9. When dark, heavy sand grains appear, level the pan and shake it with side-to-side motions to suspend all the grains in water. While suspended, the dense grains can settle and the lighter grains of common rock minerals rise to the surface. Tip the pan forward until the gravel surface is at the lip. Gently raise and lower the pan in the water, tipping it forward slightly, so that the motion of the water rolling down washes the lighter grains on the surface out of the pan.

10. Continue this, from time to time leveling and shaking the pan again, until most of the grains of light minerals are gone and dark, heavy mineral grains begin spill out of the pan. At this stage some panners will lift the pan out of the water and dip it back in instead of just agitating the pan up and down in the water. If the common sand fragments are coarse or if there is little dark, heavy sand, combine a gentle forward and backward motion with the up and down movement to aid the water in moving the common sand fragments from the pan.

11. The pan now contains a heavy mineral concentrate with a few fragments and grains of tight, common rock minerals. Usually the amount of concentrate is small-a few spoonsful-and best cleaned as follows: remove the pan from the water, leaving only a small amount of water in the pan. Tip the pan so that the concentrate and the water lie in the angle between the pan bottom and side and gently swirl the pan so that the water moves in a circular path around the part. The water will wash the concentrate, and the movement should be so controlled that a concentrate "trail" forms along a part of the bottom edge of the pan. Doing this, the light minerals come to rest at the front of the "trail" while toward the back the minerals become progressively heavier.

 

​Gold is heavy and, unless you have the very good luck to find a nugget, you will not see it until you have
panned down the gravel to a heavy, usually black, concentrate. Fine yellowish fragments you may see before that stage are probably a variety of mica and almost certainly are not gold! Among the heavy minerals that work to the bottom of the pan, both gold and pyrite have yellow colors, but distinctly different ones. Most placer gold is a true yellow, becoming pale as the silver content increases, but pyrite is a brassy yellow. If you will hold a piece of gold jewelry (14 Kor better) beside a piece of pyrite you will immediately see the difference in colors, and you are not likely to confuse them afterward.