In selecting a gold pan, there are many styles and sizes to choose from. I personally like the Garrett Gravity Trap pan. It is 14 inches in diameter and has some built in riffles that really help to catch the gold. Gold pans larger than this tend to be really heavy when filled with dirt and can wear your arms out really fast. Gold pans smaller than this work well for cleanups but don’t move much material. Some people like the steel gold pans, though I find that they transfer the cold straight to your hands. Really it all comes down to personal preference. Are you ready to learn how to pan for gold.
Gold Panning Instructions
When gold panning, it is helpful to classify your materials. If you don’t have a classifier, you can buy one or build one yourself. If you want to save some money and build one, I have described how to do this in another article. If you want to buy a classifier, then Garrett has one with 1/2″ holes that sells for around $10 while Jobe and Keene make a variety of sizes for around $23. I prefer 1/4″ as it will let most gold nuggets fall into the gold pan and any that stay in the classifier are easier to see.
Classifying really helps to speed up the panning process as larger rocks really take up a lot of space and just add weight to the gold pan. So lets, get on to gold panning. Fill the gold pan about 1/2 to 3/4 full with classified gravel/dirt that hopefully contains some gold. Submerge the entire gold pan in the water so that the gravel can get wet.
Run your fingers through the gravel to make sure that the gravel is completely saturated. If there are dry spots, it will prevent the gold in that area from settling to the bottom of the gold pan and you will likely lose some of the gold. Next, break up any dirt clods and clay balls. Also, remove any larger pieces of moss or vegetation that might catch some of the gold while panning.
After everything is saturated, shake the gold pan quite vigorously from side to side. Keep the shakes short so that material moves around, maybe only a couple inches in each direction. Try and keep the bottom of the pan level. As you do this make sure that there is plenty of water above the gravel. Shake hard enough so that everything in the gold pan is moving without send massive amounts of material out of the pan. What you are doing is getting everything in the gold pan moving, not just the top layer. This allows the gold to work its way down to the bottom of the pan where it will be safe.
After doing this for 10-15 seconds, you are ready to wash the lighter material out of the gold pan. Some people like to use a circular motion, others a side to side, and others a forward backward motion. These are all personal preferences. What is important at this stage of the gold panning process is that you find a motion that allows a little bit of material to wash off the top of the gold pan with each motions, while not dumping chunks of dirt. The edge that the lighter material washes over should be slightly under water. If you are pulling it out of the water too much, you will notice that the gravel tries to clump together and leave the gold pan in a clump. You can lose gold if this happens.
After washing some of the lighter material out of the gold pan, repeat the step where you submerge the pan and shake vigorously from side to side. This allows the gold to keep settling down deeper and deeper into the gold pan. Then, begin to wash the lighter stuff off again. Repeat this process until you start to see a lot of black sand. As more and more black sand becomes visible, repeat the process of shaking and panning in shorter intervals. Once there is mostly black sand, you can swirl it around and look for gold. Some people like to pick out all of the gold at this point. As for myself, I have to travel always to find gold, to I like to be as efficient as possible. I pull out any larger pickers / nuggets and put them in a vial and then I dump all of the black sand and small gold (this is called concentrates) into a small bucket with a lid or other container so that I can do the cleanup later at home. This gives me more time to find the gold. A smaller gold pan is helpful for the later clean up.
Other times I use a sniffer / snuffer bottle to suck up the black sand and gold, but to do this you need to pan the concentrates down to a smaller amount which means you can still lose some of the really fine gold. I usually, don’t mind losing a tiny bit of flower gold because it is so hard to separate in small quantities. My main reason for using a small bucket for concentrates is to save time while gold panning.
Hope you found these gold panning instructions helpful. Happy gold panning! It is a lot of fun!