Gold Panning

Gold panning is a simple process of mining for gold using a pan. Unlike intensive mining operations, gold panning requires very little equipment. As long as you have a pan and the desire to find gold, you can pass the hours panning in a creek in search of gold. It is never too early or too late to learn how to use a gold pan, but gold panning takes practice and patience to keep the gold from washing out of the pan.

There are many different ways to work a gold pan. You can spend hours watching YouTube on how to use it and be completely lost. Do not worry, when we take you out on the creek, we will show you two main ways that will help you put gold in your vials.

Depending on how much time we have to spend on the creek, you will have to make a decision to practice panning out each mesh size or take them back to camp and them run on our Shaker Table. No matter which way you go, we will show you how to pan out the gold from your black sands. If you stay at our cabins, we have a stock pile of concentrates that you can practice your panning skills on. Once you have your panning down, we will test your skill with some Rich Alaska Beach Gold.

Sluicing

Sluicing is the use of a "sluice box" in a creek or river to separate gold from gravel.

A sluice box is a metal, wood, or plastic channel that has "riffles" and other devices in it to catch gold. The sluice box is placed in the water with the entrance of the box upstream, so water flows through the box.

We started out small sluicing for fine gold, but now we run about fifty to sixty gallons a day of black sands. Fine gold recovery for us is not just running one type of matting. We break up our two foot by 10 foot sluice with miner moss, four types of rubber matting, two types of carpet and our raised metal holding it all down. When we are running indoors and don't want to make a mess, we run with a header box. As long as our sluice isn't building up with black sands, we know we have good water flow. After we run a good amount of material, we then take the concentrates to the Shaker Table and after to the Miller Table.

Gold Shaker Table

A Gold Shaker Table name speaks for itself: it is a table that uses vibration (shaking) to separate gold from the sand and ensure that you get every ounce of it.

We use a Rp 4 Shaker Table and, just like most all of our other equipment, we classify, classify, classify. The Rp 4 that we use can handle material up to 18 mesh, but the 30 mesh is better. The 50 and 70 mesh works the best on the table. If we put our glasses on, there's no problem running 100 to 200 mesh. We have found that when we run the same mesh size, the gold makes a straight line at the top of the table; then all you have to do is take your sniffer bottle and suck up a straight line of gold. This will also save you a ton of time from having to separate that gold once it mixes with all the other concentrates. If you repeat this a few times, you won't have very many cons to deal with on the Miller Table. Overall it is saving you a lot time.

Miller Table

The Miller Table does a great job of separating your gold from the black sands. It uses a concept of running slurry down an inclined plane allowing gravity and friction to separate gold from the lighter materials. It is just a flat piece of material set at relatively shallow slope where you deposit heavily concentrated material washed by an extremely thin layer of low velocity water. In scientific terms it would be called a gravity separation unit since it operates on the principal of stratification and gravity settlement where the lighter materials are moved away from the heavier materials faster by the action of water flow.

We made our Miller Tables with a jack to raise and lower the table to get the right height and a valve to adjust the water flow. Rule of thumb: the finer the gold - the flatter the table and the slower the water.

Classifying

Classification (sizing of material) is one of the most important steps in gold recovery. It is necessary to increase the amount of smaller particles of gold that you will trap in your recovery system.

If you want to effectively recover finer particles of gold, you must first separate them from the larger-sized materials which are being washed through your recovery system by a higher-velocity flow of water. The small-sized material can then be directed to a milder-flow of water over a shorter set of riffles. Using a even milder flow of water over lower-profile riffles, you can classify much finer sized gold for recovery.

It is important to figure out what size mesh to classify to. If you have a claim and have run a lot of dirt and have panned lots of concentrates you will know what size gold you are producing. But if you are new to a creek you might want to run a bunch of material, then sluice all concentrates at 1/4 mesh. After you sluice all your material down, you can pan it fairly fast. Once panned out and no color found we drop to 18 or 20 mesh. We repeat these procedures until we hit color. Once we get color we go back to the mesh prior to hitting gold. Then as we run material on the creek we know what mesh to classify down to so we're not picking out nonproductive material. Once back at camp, if the material is larger than 20 mesh, we will classify at least to 20 mesh; if there's a lot of black sands we will go to 30 mesh. This helps move concentrates on the Shaker Table.

High Banking

A power sluice, sometimes called a Highbanker or Hibanker, is a piece of gold prospecting equipment that uses a pump to force water through a sluice box to mimic the natural flow of a river. Gold bearing gravel is shoveled into the hopper box and washed over the classifier screen to remove waste gravel and pieces of rock that are too large to go through the sluice.

We classify twice, the first time is when we shovel our pay dirt into the hopper which is equipped with a sprayer and grizzly bars where the material is classified. The second time is when we clean out the boxes. Depending on what claim we are on will be the decision to classify with 18, 20 mesh or 30 if we are on the beach.

Sniping

Gold sniping is a rough-and-ready method you can use to find gold flakes and nuggets in rivers and streams. Sniping could be one of the most important step in finding out if the area or creek you’re in holds good gold or not. It's not a way to move a lot of material. We use it to test a small area that we are getting set up to work in. Also, if you can read the creek or benches, it will make your sniping more successful.

There are a lot of remote areas that could hold some nice gold and is open to the public, but you'll never know unless you do your research and make that journey. Like the old saying “Nothing ventured - nothing gained"

If you look back at all those lucky gold finds they all have one thing in common: they were either out on an old creek bed, flowing creek or some hill-side dry wash. The bottom line, gold is where you find it. So, do your research, find a place that your gut is telling you to try and make sure it's not someone's claim. If it is claimed, you can find out who owns it and ask them if you could do some sniping. Once you have found that special spot you want to try, grab your back pack and put a few of these basic snipping tools to work. With a little hard work maybe you will be the next lucky prospector to find that once in a life time nugget.

Mossing

Mossing is the process of recovering gold from embedded moss from the rocks in a river or creek. Once you've found a good location, the next step would be to find moss that is located along the water's edge. If you are on a creek in a steep canyon that floods the rocks, the moss on the bedrock above the creek should also have gold.

A good way to extract gold from the moss is to begin by allocating an area of the river in your mind to moss, and creating a sort of "Sluice Box". Search for a spot where the river would most likely slow down if it were to flood, and collect the moss. There is a high probability the gold would drop in this area.

Begin by cleaning the rocks top to bottom, removing moss one foot at a time exposing all the cracks and crevices in the surface. Using small sniping tools, clean out the cracks and push material further down into larger crevices or another patch of moss. This way ensures you collect as much material to use for separating gold out later. Larger cracks can be cleaned out with a crevice sucker. Once satisfied with the collected samples, allow the moss to dry off, shake off the dirt and debris, and burn the moss in order to pan out the ashes exposing the trapped gold.

Dredging

Dredging is an excavation activity typically done underwater in rivers or creeks with the intent to gather as much bottom sediments as possible. It can either be conducted with proper equipment in chest waders and shoulder gloves, or in a dry suit with snorkel or air supply when working fully submerged. Bring some hot cocoa, because the water here will be 36 degrees Fahrenheit!

When on land, it is a good idea to use Gold Vacs, as they are a great way to thoroughly clean in between the cracks of the bedrock. It is wise to try using the vacuums first, becoming comfortable with removing all possible sediments, before continuing to work in the water.

Gold Detecting

Gold Detecting is a method of finding gold hidden away underground using a metal detector. If the sensor comes near a piece of metal, it will be indicated by a changing tone in earphones, or a needle moving on an indicator. Usually the device gives some indication of distance; the closer the metal is, the higher the tone in the earphone or the higher the needle goes.

The simplest form of a metal detector consists of an oscillator producing an alternating current that passes through a coil producing an alternating magnetic field. When setting up detecting for the first time, we will show you the details of ground balancing, iron discrimination and which coils to use for detecting.

Besides a good metal detector, it is important to acquire a good set of headphones. For finer control of audio feedback, there are headphones available with dual volume control, regulating each ear separately. We recommend using a set like ours, the Detector Pro Gray Ghost with VLF, or the Detector Pro Black Widow with dual volume control.