# Type of pan for beginner?



## patnor1011 (Mar 5, 2009)

There are quite few members here interested or experienced ingold panning. What type will you recomend for beginner?


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## Richard36 (Mar 25, 2009)

I would recommend a 12 inch Klondike pan with the riffle traps inside. Make sure that it is one with depressions , not just ridges. The ridge type do not work as well. I have panned for a long time, and could probably hold my own with the best of them. My point being that I have tried out allot of pans. I prefer a 16-18 in. pan of the variety that I described as my personal pan. It provides me with the best recovery of fine gold. It works extremely well for coarser material. Sincerely; Rick.


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## patnor1011 (Mar 25, 2009)

thanks a lot... I have ordered two... Cant wait till get them. With that gold cd I got Ill have pretty busy summer....


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## Richard36 (Mar 25, 2009)

You are welcome. I hope that you find some this spring and summer. If you or any one else have any more questions, post them and I will do my best to give Clear, Concise, to the point, answers. Hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely; Rick.


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## blueduck (Apr 11, 2009)

Gold pans are kind of specific to the user, what works best for me may be something completely different than what works for another fella or his wife.

I sell 12 inch pans to most beginners cause they tend be easier to handle, though if you read most books they will recommend the 14 inch pans.

I learnt on a 16 inch metal pan, no riffles back 30 years ago and it took me about 4 months of panning practice sand to keep my lead fishing sinkers in every time i switched to smaller pieces [i started with nice size and worked down to fly fishing sinkers] paint them with a orange or pink or high visibility paint and you can watch as they appear as you get used to using your pan, when you can keep the lead in the pan, you know you wont lose the gold, cause lead is 11 times as heavy as water and gold 19 times...... 

A pan is for taking samples, you cannot move very much material in a day, the best people working a pan could move a yard a day, a very long day, if you have really good gold bearing gravel you might make gas money, not like they did back in the 1800's near here with pans running $500-600.00 per pan from a glacier deposit. sample the gravel where you want to work, and get a set of classifiers, I personally like to use an 8 mesh for the fine gold we have here, but if i am running the Le Trap Sluice I will classify to 2 mesh or half inch although it can handle a one inch rock, I prefer not to over load the sluice, I can run a five gallon bucket in less than 10 minutes from classifying to the sluice in beach sand, about 15-20 minutes if i am diggin in the larger materials and having to work harder and brush off the larger rocks [gold sticks to rocks]. 
The Le Trap sluice works wonders for the new prospector, it is easy to set up and easy to clean up, and set back in the water and run again, I tend to clean it up more often and run the concentrates through a spiral wheel after screening to common sizes 8, 12 [usually just pan the 8's and 12's], 20, 30, 50 down to 100 mesh and running each size, a person can also pan out each size without using a wheel and then keep the the blacks and run them though a mercury amalgamation contraption like a motorized mortar mixer without paddles and a rubber insert .......yes mercury is dangerous so learn how to use it before you just try it out cause someone like me said I use it.... its only dangerous if it aint used correctly and if safety precautions are not followed like any other procedure.... danger from mercury is not quite as bad as some people project the idea.
So saving the blacks after screening down is something you might consider, then learn a couple of different methods to use to recover the final little pieces [generally acid costs outweigh recovered metal and that is why most of the prospectors who do recover fines use the mercury and a mercury press to recover the gold from that process, and reuse the mercury to recover more fines].

N E How more to the point of our story and back onto the subject of pans.... my favorite pan ive been sing for some 15 years now is the 14 inch Garrett gravity Trap, it just feels right, thought he Keene 12 and 14 are very close to the design and feel, my 8 year old loves his 12 inch "Gold Saver" pan, and I know folks who like the Trinity pan. Alan Trees from Riggins has designed a new pan with a long raceway and you can see it on his site gold dredge builders in a video, it really takes som getting used to, and though i only used the small version one day [he donated a few to the club to try out and get a feedback from] i am sure if a person started out using one all the time they could get the hang of it and really test the materials they are sampling. 
A natural progression is gold pan to small sluice to larger stream sluice to hibanker, to dredge, and with each type of step up a person moves more material and recovers in the end more gold [or at least that is the idea] but no one recovers it all, the more material a person moves the more fine gold escapes in the mix for the most part, bringing us back to wanting to use the pan and screens and sluice to move less and recover a higher percentage for our efforts..... lots of dollars spent yearly on other folks machines and inventing or building ones own, some work, some work better than others, and the circle continues, but in all if a person aint having fun, they need to get a new hobby!!

So go have fun, may your pan shine with the heavy metal always!

William
North Central Idaho


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## Richard36 (Apr 11, 2009)

Rock on William. Good post with a lot of common sense. I started out with a metal pan with no riffles in it as well, and was hating life with the frustrations of poor, or no recovery. I quickly moved on to the plastic pans with the riffle traps and multiple textured side wall. I have not looked back since. I have a dredge, but seldom use it, I find myself sluicing stream sediments, and panning the recovered heavies to recover any Gold within it. Look for cinnamon, or brownish red sand and gravel while panning. The material is usually soft, (3-1/2 - 4-1/2 on the Moh's scale of hardness), usually has a fair amount of heft,(high specific gravity), and almost always has a high concentration of invisible micron Gold. I have found a couple of creeks in my area that contain this material. I assayed it, and it assayed out at 3+ oz. tn. Gold. I have read stories of people finding this material, and it assaying out at 30 ounces per ton. Thought that I would pass that information along. Thanks again for adding a good common sense post. Sincerely; Rick.


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## deserdog (Apr 11, 2009)

I have been a gold panner since 1968, and started on a metal pan, then switched to the Garret Gravity Trap when they came out. Favorite round pan now is the 14 inich proline. 

If I am going to be running a pan all day, I will use either a grizzly gold pan or a Le Trap gold pan. Both are much faster at concentrating material than a round pan, and both will recover gold you can barely see. 

I can go through a 3 1/2 gallon bucket of material with either my grizzly gold pan or Le Trap pan in between 5 and 10 minutes. In many places, either of these pans will out perform a small sluice, both in the amount of material processed and in the amount of gold recovered.


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## blueduck (Apr 12, 2009)

I have not tried the Grizzly Gold Pan out yet after buying one from ole Deserdog a couple months back, the fellas who have them around here tell me they will get the fine gold but you need to be wading in water cause you get really wet using them, ergo i am waiting til warmer weather here in Idaho to try it out.

and as far as the le trap pan goes< my digging partner has one and he likes it but wont use it cause its heavier than the round pans..... i tried it only one time and i just could not get the swing of it in the back and forth motion it takes to operate it, and i kind of think that the new pan Aln trees has just came out with is similar, but at least it has a round end and a long raceway and it is 200 mesh texture so a person dont have to rough it up with sandpaper before they use it to catch the micro fines, just wash the mold release out of it before ya use it out in the creek, river, lake or wherever you are washing gravel at.

After reading the post on the Alaska forum by "Steppe", who is also a member here, about the pans all over the world a person has to wonder why we here in the several states tend to kling to the little pans we have grown so fond of as "the only way to pan", I found his post there very interesting, as well as the followup posts. What i found really intriguing before that was the artcle by a fell who has now sonce long past on about the use of the top of a 55 gallon steel drum in the central and south america states with an indent hammered into the center of it, those "little" fellas there [compared to my bulky size] can move 4-6 times of material that I could with my biggest pan, let alone my little 14 inch preferred pan..... its all in the mount of material you have to move to recover the number of pieces that adds up, if you could get those little pans that would bring you comparable to the $500-600.00 that they found in Florence Idaho in the 1800's [that is per pan, and would be like 25-30 ounces of gold per pan it was that rich and claims were only 6 feet by 6 feet] then whatever you used as a pan of any size would be be alright, but i know of nowhere in the world currently that there is that kind of deposits left to dip into..... though earthshakes happen daily and anything is possible.

I like trying different pans out that other folks have bought, but i seem to always return to my favorite..... maybe cause its comfortable, or i am just hard headed...... and who knows, my new favorite may just be the Grizzly pan i bought this spring..... or late in the winter!

Gonna go check to see how deep the snow is on the claim today, even if it is Easter Sunday, a drive is always better than staying in town around people.

William
North Central Idaho


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## markqf1 (Apr 12, 2009)

You can certainly get alot opinions about preferred gold pans.
As a beginner, I would focus more on my technique than any specific pan.
Once you've mastered the art, you'll be able to do a fine job with almost any type of pan. It's worth mentioning that research has shown, that the blue colored pans show up the color gold the best.

I have a couple of different 14" pans and I like both the large and small traps.

Use some bb's or birdshot to practice a little, and in no time you'll master it.
Good Luck!

Mark


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## glorycloud (Apr 12, 2009)

Man, wouldn't it be cool if someone would do a "lazersteve" type video on gold panning for us all!! I am such a visual learner and I bet there are a lot of folks who are as well. We read what you say and we stay confused but if you show it to us pictorially, WE GET IT!!!

Blessings to the one who does it for us!!!!


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## Irons (Apr 12, 2009)

A plastic kitty litter box works great. Shake and bake, baby.


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## Richard36 (Apr 12, 2009)

Yeah, Right Irons! A kitty litter box?


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## Irons (Apr 12, 2009)

Richard36 said:


> Yeah, Right Irons! A kitty litter box?




Pour off the float from the corner. You can buy them anywhere.

I've been meaning to build a cascade unit one of these days.


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## Richard36 (Apr 12, 2009)

I suppose that it would work, but I would not bank on it for anything smaller than BB size material. Yes the principle of specific gravity is in place, so the heavies would settle out in the lowest point in the pan, but gauging the discharge over the side of a corner for recovery of fines might be tricky.


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## deserdog (Apr 13, 2009)

I just wish the le trap was douible endede, with riffles on both ends. sorta like a giant grizzly pan. 

Both the le trap and the grizzly are amazinlgy fast, and very easy to use. I sorta use the same motions now on the le trap, and then take a quick look in the black sands for color when I am sampling.


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## Richard36 (Apr 13, 2009)

I have not tried either of those designs. Of all the designs that I have tried, my favorite is the "SP-14 SUPER PAN", by "KEENE ENGINEERING".


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## patnor1011 (Apr 13, 2009)

Well as it was said I am into learning proper technique. I went to two small creeks-rivers close to where I live. They was identified in that gold cd. There was gold found in them but in very small quantity. It says 5grains or less. I choose them becouse I want to try to learn to work with pans - to get feeling for them. There is another river with small nugets and reported 35 colours in pan but I want to go there later when I will be more skilled with pan and with sluice too. Just dont want to be dissapointed when Ill be there and using bad technique not to find anything. Anyway I like this becouse it keeps me out in nature and if there is gold in ireland I am sure that Ill find some someday.... 

What I did these two times: I went to place where I took my showel and I dig as deep as possible in places under or behind boulders, small watterfalls etc. All that went to bucket throught 2 classifiers and I was left with sand-gravel size like sugar. All that was brown-red colour. I have noticed some yellow dots but I think that it is not gold as they are not shiny and appeats to be light. They are rolling in pan very freely so it wlii be some sand or something like that. I still have bucket full of that concentrate from my last trip and I need to pan that. I cant wait till Ill get my sluice it will be easier to process more material while out.
There are pics of pans, say mini-hand-manual-dredge, #20 (24"x 6"Sluice..... That is for start, when and if Ill find something Ill consider to buy some special pans...
thanks for all comments.


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## blueduck (Apr 13, 2009)

We who use products tend to be prejudice towards a certain products or brand name sometimes or against it, to check the variety that is available to the consumer for the most part, check out pages 16 - 19 in the catalog on my store website [no i aint trying to sell you anything, mostly cause shipping kills on these most of these products, but you can look to see what your local dealers can get you, though i wont turn anyone away either].

Sometimes folks choose Keene products cause they are mass produced and more people end up having them as opposed to other really decent products which dont have the volume behind them or are made on a custom basis [mostly the bigger power equipment and larger sluices] Name recognition plays a big part in choosing equipment sometimes and is not always the right choice, Keene has been around a long time and will continue to be around.... but there are better products out there to choose from in many folks eyes, not just mine, and i have nothing against them pesonally, shoot i even represent some of their products.

I know of several small firm manufacturers that have way better products, but lacking the advertising dollars, they struggle along and eventually go under or just dont buld the best of their lines any longer due to very high cost and limited interest [Honcoop comes to mind with his big triple power sluice shoveling box]. 

My personal preference for a stream sluice is the Canadian built Le Trap [page 42 of the catalog if you want to read about it] like in the picture where i was using one in a very small stream last fall. light in weight at about 4 pounds a person can cart it in over the mountains and through the woods a long ways without getting tired. and it is easy for folksnew to gold prospecting to learn to use.


The Alaska Forum Pan thread is really a decent read, and a couple folks may recognize a couple contributors here that post regular there.

William 
North Central Idaho uSA


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