The Art of Gold Panning.

johnedoe

johnedoe

Bronze Member
Jan 15, 2012
1,489
2,242
Oregon Coast
Detector(s) used
White's V3i, White's MXT, and White's Eagle Spectrum
Cleangold sluice & prospectors pan, EZ-Gold Pan, and custom cleanup sluice.
Primary Interest:
Other
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johnedoe said:
The only problem with the magnet method is your material has to be dry..... Really dry.

Here is another good video from Doc....

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Not so true. If you use a strong magnet to pull the already-classified material up thru clear water, the gold doesn't come up. I've done that literally hundreds of times. I do always dry my magnetically separated material and then reseparate (sp?). I sometimes find 1-2 specks, often none at all.
 

KevinInColorado said:
Not so true. If you use a strong magnet to pull the already-classified material up thru clear water, the gold doesn't come up. I've done that literally hundreds of times. I do always dry my magnetically separated material and then reseparate (sp?). I sometimes find 1-2 specks, often none at all.
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Send me your magnetite..........:laughing7:
 

johnedoe said:
Send me your magnetite..........:laughing7:
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LoL not a chance. Lately I've been running it thru a little bench top rod mill to release hidden gold.

Teach me more...What do you like to do with magnetite?
 

I rerun it thru my cleangold sluice and attempt to capture the super-micro-fine stuff, the stuff you actually have to have a pile of to be able to see it unless you use higher magnification.

Also I use it to charge the system before I get started shoveling sand, that way the sluice starts out hot right away.

It would be interesting to run some of your cleaned black sands just to see if I could catch anything you missed.... If you missed anything.

Have you been getting any results with the little rod mill?
 

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I too drop my panned out material from my cons (everything other than the super-heavies in my sluice the next time I go out. Give the sluice a second chance at catching anything I missed (which I know ain't much).

The rod mill works but I'm trying to upgrade it to work faster by adding more rods. I'm on the road a lot right now for work but this weekend I'll be home to work on the rod mill. There is a separate thread on the details of it but here's a pic of the output. Keep in mind here was zero visible gold before rod milling and the input was +30 magnetic sands.

ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1446031135.874509.jpg
 

KevinInColorado said:
There is a separate thread on the details of it but here's a pic of the output. Keep in mind here was zero visible gold before rod milling and the input was +30 magnetic sands.

View attachment 1228579
Click to expand...

You mean this thread... http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/panning-gold/456622-simple-solution-fine-gold-recovery.html ... Yeah I think I am familiar with it... :laughing7:
You might also re-read this, particularly the last 15 or 18 pages...... http://www.geology.gov.yk.ca/pdf/141114_Nov1014_Grinding_for_Gold_Presentation.pdf
By the way.... your results there are looking pretty good.
 

Gezzzz I can pan a whole lot of cons in the time it would take to watch all of them videos. It takes so long to pan the way that most people pan.

As usual we do things the fast and efficient way!

A small hole in the bottom of a pan! Cover the hole with your finger, stratify, remove your finger and the gold drops out! So much faster than panning all the stuff that you don't want from the top!
 

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chlsbrns said:
Gezzzz I can pan a whole lot of cons in the time it would take to watch all of them videos. It takes so long to pan the way that most people pan.

As usual we do things the fast and efficient way!

A small hole in the bottom of a pan! Cover the hole with your finger, stratify, remove your finger and the gold drops out! So much faster than panning all the stuff that you don't want from the top!
Click to expand...

That's kind of a neat little trick......:thumbsup:

My panning only takes a couple minutes as well.

By the way most of those vids are only 3 or 4 minutes long with the exception of one of the series if I remember right.
Of course Doc's vids are always epic productions.....:laughing7:

Also those vids are there for the green panner's..... It gives them a good understanding of proper panning , after that they can make their own shortcuts once they have a foundation.
 

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The BIGGEST thing I have found on the art of panning is PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOUR DOING!
 

johnedoe said:
That's kind of a neat little trick......:thumbsup:

My panning only takes a couple minutes as well.

By the way most of those vids are only 3 or 4 minutes long with the exception of one of the series if I remember right.
Of course Doc's vids are always epic productions.....:laughing7:

Also those vids are there for the green panner's..... It gives them a good understanding of proper panning , after that they can make their own shortcuts once they have a foundation.
Click to expand...

Nothing against the videos or the people who made them. I'm sure there are many who will pan much better because of the videos but we like to do things in the fastest and most efficient way.

We do little to nothing that most others do. There probably isn't any others who do what we do.
 

johnedoe said:
You mean this thread... http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/panning-gold/456622-simple-solution-fine-gold-recovery.html ... Yeah I think I am familiar with it... :laughing7:
You might also re-read this, particularly the last 15 or 18 pages...... http://www.geology.gov.yk.ca/pdf/141114_Nov1014_Grinding_for_Gold_Presentation.pdf
By the way.... your results there are looking pretty good.
Click to expand...

Yup, very familiar with Clarkson's recent work. That was one of my inspirations. I'm not up to his recommended 40% filling with rods ( of the milling container) but working toward that.

BTW: He hasn't published any dry running results but running dry is faster and quite effective in my experience. We are ALL STILL LEARNING :-D
 

chlsbrns said:
Nothing against the videos or the people who made them. I'm sure there are many who will pan much better because of the videos but we like to do things in the fastest and most efficient way.

We do little to nothing that most others do. There probably isn't any others who do what we do.
Click to expand...


Sometimes ya just gotta think outside the box. If it works, well that just means more gold in your poke......:thumbsup:
 

KevinInColorado said:
Yup, very familiar with Clarkson's recent work. That was one of my inspirations. I'm not up to his recommended 40% filling with rods ( of the milling container) but working toward that.

BTW: He hasn't published any dry running results but running dry is faster and quite effective in my experience. We are ALL STILL LEARNING :-D
Click to expand...

Well that's good then. I still believe one should stick fairly close to the original concept.... Yes I'm eluding to the use of threaded rods, Which I do not think have any validity, and I consider an utter waste of time and resource .... other than that .Hey. go for it.
 

Time and resources involved are free for me. Increases in knowledge (what works AND what doesn't!) are priceless!
 

KevinInColorado said:
Time and resources involved are free for me. Increases in knowledge (what works AND what doesn't!) are priceless!
Click to expand...

Well.... It is your time and resources..... neither of which are free and ..... Time..... well there is a resource that is not recoverable. So use it wisely.
 

When under water, you can watch the black sand actually drop non-magnetic material as it jumps to the magnet. Also you can separate grades of magnetite by how they jump.

A Grade. Jumps through 1/4" or more through water and then jumps the air gap to the magnet.
B Grade. Will pick up within 1/8" of water or sticks to magnet on contact. Brownish colored.
C Grade. Will not stick to magnet but will waver in the magnetic field as magnet moves over it.

I could probably clean it more than 4 times, but by the 4th cleaning there's just a sparse layer of non-magnetics left and any gold that might be there is "God's Gold." The A grade magnetite is then dried and sold to a blacksmith who makes his own steel. B grade is cleaned and stored as I might be able to sell it. C grade gets run through the miller table and stored as it may still have gold in it.

Most A grade magnetite can be lodestone grade. Once it's in a strong magnetic field, it tends to clump into strands and act light. Some of these clumps will float on garnet sands.
 

With an N52 Neodymium magnet some of the "C" grade material might even "stick" if brought within light contact..... maybe?....:icon_scratch:
 

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My method of separating the magnetic materials out is done wet. First I get everything down to one corner of the pan. I try to avoid letting the magnet actually touch the materials so it's drawn through the water to the magnet. Then I drop it back into the pan on the other side. Once I've done a bit this way, I fan it out a bit and pick it up once more without touching it with the magnet. This gives everything a double wash (first and second pickups) and when I pick it up the second time it goes into the storage container. Whatever is left after the second pickup gets shaken back into the main body of materials. I've checked the magnetics with my microscope and have found gold in them that's peeking out from a coating of magnetic materials. That will in time be crushed up and re-worked but since it's time consuming I save that for during the down time that I can't get new materials to run for whatever reason.

Very good videos and I'll be having Jan watch them a few times so she can get her panning down better. I disagree that panning is an art. I feel it's more of a science since we are dealing with the physics of specific gravity.
 

johnedoe said:
It would be interesting to run some of your cleaned black sands just to see if I could catch anything you missed.... If you missed anything.
Click to expand...

I've reprocessed some of Kevin's cons, and believe me, there is
so little (if any) gold remaining that it's just not worth the effort.

Whatever process he uses certainly gets the job done..:occasion14:
 

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