How do you clean-up the concentrate? Whether you use a dry-washer, dredge, high-banker or just a sluice,
you must first reduce the bank material down to a concentrate. The concentrate is a mixture of brown sand, black sand and
gold. The pay off, however, is when you remove the gold from the concentrate and place it in your sample bottle. Panning
is the simplest method of accomplishing that. Just like the old timer shown panning here.
You will find out that panning to removing the gold from the concentrate will be the most fun part of the whole prospecting operation.
When you take out small pieces, or flakes, they are called “pickers”. If you pick a piece up, drop it back into the pan and you can hear
it land on the bottom, it’s called a “plinker”. If it makes a really louder sound it’s called a “plunker”. Finding any of them is very exciting,
especially your first plunker!!!
You will never forget the thrill you feel the first time your pan looks like the one you see here. And the really neat thing is,
that even after 30 years the thrill has never gone away!!!
If you have a tremendous amount of concentrate to clean-up, you might need a panning wheel like the one shown here.
You can leave it run and throw some more in occasionally, while you do other things. Removing the gold from large amonts
of concentrate can be a time consuming part of the process. Unless you hit a hot spot with your dredge, you probably will not,
at first, have large quantities to deal with at one time.
There are publications available on PANNING techniques. One of those publications is
“The Basic Technique Needed for Recreational Gold Prospecting” PANNING - Volume III in “The GREAT AMERICAN SERIES” of e-books on gold.
