The most basic form of gold prospecting is panning. Although seemingly the slowest method of prospecting, panning is a necessary skill to learn because it is needed for all placer mining operations large and small. When sluicing or dredging you will need to use a gold pan to process the concentrated materials at the end of the day. You cannot be a good prospector without mastering gold panning, don’t worry though because it’s easy to learn and it’s fun too! Panning is the foundation of all placer mining skills. In fact some people enjoy just panning and never graduate to faster methods like sluicing.

Basic Gold Panning Kit

What basic tools are needed for Gold Panning?

• Gold Pan
• 1/4″ Classifier
• Small digging tool
• Sucker Bottle
• Crevice Tool
• Small Crowbar
• Bucket

Here is a picture of my basic tools:
When you pan for gold what you’re really doing is using the pan as a container in which to separate light materials from heavy materials. Heavy materials being gold, iron, lead and sometimes platinum or gems. Light materials being sand, pebbles and sediment. After filling your pan with water or holding the pan in the water, start shaking the pan in a circular motion in order to cause the material in the pan to be suspended and sort of float or move freely within the water. If you are doing it correctly you should be able to take your other hand and poke one of your fingers easily through the material and touch the bottom of the pan without much effort.

The most important thing at this point is to learn how to move the dirt and water in the pan from a settled state to a state of suspension. When you have reached this state you have made it possible for gravity to do the work of sorting the material for you. Gold is 19 times heavier than water and will quickly make it’s way to the bottom of the pan as it is the heaviest in the pan, the lighter material will make it’s way upward. It takes longer to reach the bottom if the material is dense and full of black sands which are heavy also. As you practice panning you will get a feel for the material you are panning and you will be able to judge how long to agitate the material before your ready for the next step.

Sometimes it can be hard to agitate the material into a state of suspension especially if you are panning concentrates from a sluice or dredge. You can use one of your fingers of your other hand to kind of stir the material and get it moving as you are shaking the pan. Once you have the material moving, slow down a little if possible because too vigorous movement may keep the finer gold from staying at the bottom of the pan. Initially you should only need to agitate the material 30 seconds to a minute before attempting the next step which is removing the lighter materials.

Now that we have agitated the material in the pan and settled the gold to the bottom we need to remove the lighter materials. There are many different methods however after much testing I have found that gently washing the top out the side of the pan a few times, re-agitating and repeating this process works great. Slow down once you start seeing black sands. Once you start to see gold, get out your gold sucker bottle and suck it up! Keep in mind that many people like to save the black sands and pan them again later or even crush them as some gold can be stuck in the black sands.

Many people practice their gold panning skills by filling their pans with dirt from their yards adding a few BB’s, small pellets or even tiny fishing weights, counting them before and afterwards making sure you are not losing any when finished.