Learn Gold Panning

This instructional video features Freddy Dodge, a mining expert and one of the stars of the hit TV series “Gold Rush.” Freddy, his brother Derek Dodge, and their family have been prospecting, panning, and building mining equipment for decades.

Freddy offers the fundamentals on: collecting and classifying material for panning; how to work the lighter materials from the pan without losing any gold; and even how to properly collect fine gold in your vial. Freddy’s brother Derek and his daughter Nikki offer additional demonstrations and tips on how you can become a better gold panner right away. 

Learn Gold Panning

Arizona gold

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Gold panning is a simple process. Once a suitable placer deposit is located, some alluvial deposits are scooped into a pan, where they are then wetted and loosed from attached soils by soaking, fingering and aggressive agitation in water. This is called stratification; which helps dense materials, like gold, sink to the bottom of the pan. Materials with low specific gravity will rise upward, allowing these to be washed out of the pan, whereas materials with higher specific gravity, sinking to the bottom of the sediment during stratification, will remain in the pan allowing examination and collection by the prospector. These dense materials usually consist of black sand with whatever stones or dense metal particles that may be found in the deposit that is used for source material.

While an effective method with certain kinds of deposits, and essential for prospecting, even skilled panners can only work a limited amount of material, significantly less than the other methods which have replaced it in larger operation. Pans remain in use in places where there is limited capital or infrastructure, as well as in recreational gold mining.

In many situations, gold panning usually turns up only minor gold dust that is usually collected as a souvenir in small clear tubes by hobbyists. Nuggets and considerable amounts of dust are occasionally found, but panning mining is not generally lucrative. Panning for gold can be used to locate the parent gold veins which are the source of most placer deposits.

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