So right now I wanted to touch on a topic that’s kind of fun and interesting to me, and that is, you know, what are my favorite gold prospecting tools, what do I like to use and why? Again, going back to our theme of answering the big WHY?
Well, my favorite all time tool for prospect and of course is good old gold pan. Let me pull this thing out here. So when you have a pan, you can use it to do all kinds of stuff, but primarily use it to, to find gold when you’re actually out prospecting and looking for unique places that might have some gold. The other thing you can use it for is finishing, which is what you do when you’re done with a major amount of black sands and gold concentrates. You’ll use a pan to finish it out. You see this all the time on gold rush, but you know, that’s really the best tool because it’s a very simple, simple gravity sluice.
Ideally, I like these ones that have, like, this one is a Super Pan, by Keene. But, you know, the idea is it has a series of ridges on one edge to catch the coarser placer gold and rocks and hold them in there so they don’t rock on out as you’re doing your panning shaving process. But I liked that riffle feature as well as having a kind of a rough area. If it doesn’t have a rough area, you can certainly make one with some 60 grit or 80 grit sandpaper. Just kind of rough up these plastic pans. You always want to scrub out all the junk with some soap and some steel wool or, or a copper wool brush and just rough up the edges before you use it because the oil in it will actually take fine gold and float it right down stream. It’ll stick to the gold and then make the gold lighter than the water because of its thinness of the flour gold.
Just light enough to make it float up and out of your bowl. And away it goes. You won’t catch any fine gold that way, so don’t do that. The other thing I like about these ones is they have a fine ridge down at the bottom here that catches the smaller gold when you’re working with fines and black sands and it kind of holds it in there so you can kind of work them in a very simple shaving motion, I typically go to that as quickly as possible because really a lot of the rocks and stuff, the little pedals and things you’re catching aren’t going to hold any gold. Now you can look and inspect as you go to see if you have a nugget in there, but once you don’t, you need to peel those pebbles and rocks out because they will tend to kick out the finer specks of gold and the small nuggets this rock for example, would just kick out anything smaller than it in any gold. That’s about half this size, which is a pretty big piece of gold, would just get kicked out like a cue ball. So that’s a tool I like to use a lot.
Another favorite of mine is a quarter inch classifier sieve. You know, I like to use sifted input into my gold pan when I’m processing because it makes things go faster, especially if i’m in an area where has a wide variety of rocks and pebbles mixed in with a finer concentration of gold, anything quarter or less, and so you may as well sift that stuff out. Again, pull it to the side, dump it out as quickly as you can and once you dump those things out, you can take a metal detector to anything like that that comes out of quarter inch or larger. And and you know, it’ll show up on a detector like squawk. So you just take a small handheld detector and go over it. And if there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.
That is the tool I like to use a lot because it will make your gold panning go faster and more efficient, more effective. And of course my third most favorite tool of all, not just for gold prospecting for but for geology and prospecting in general is a good old fashioned Estwing ™ rock-pick. You can pick up these at, you know, at a metal detecting or a prospecting store, you can pick them up a geology or rock lapidary kind of store where I can get them online. That s wing makes the strongest one. This one’s quite old, you know, it’s been in the family for a long time. Heirloom stuff. Uh, I typically paint mine, you notice the stripes here, their particular iridescent colors. And the reason I do that is I pick this thing with me when I Dredge and uh, if it goes to the bottom I can easily spot it, but it also helps me identify my tools from the next guy over. If you use a unique pattern of colors. So it’s worth doing that, you know, total cost run around with the spray can for a day and you’re done actually two spray cans in this case. So, uh, that’s a tip that I give you just because it’s something I like to have those three tools.
I can go out and prospect all day long and the total cost there’s $25. Well, this one (the rock-pick) probably not, as low as $25, there’s probably 25 or 30 bucks for the pick itself, 50 bucks can buy all those tools. You can get a good Gold Pan with $12 for a good one, so you might, you might think about what it takes to get going and the answer is go pan and a little trial garden trial, uh, that I didn’t have here, but that would help. I can use the Gold Pan and my rock pick can just scoop into the thing with the rock pick, just taking the pick, drag it across the surface and move the gravel and things into the pan and a way we go. Because that’s something you just kind of get the hang of doing with practice.
And one of the things that I will give you a caution on anytime you prospect, if you’re really just doing a small site survey stuff, pack it light, go light and move fast. Get as much done as you can. So that means a shovel, a small shovel, a spade, a bucket. This equipment I just showed you and that’s all you need. You can move through a canyon, you can rock climb up and down, rocks and so forth, especially if you have a little light day pack that you can carry this effort, attach it to your good to go and you have your lunch to boot.
So that’s another tip from Prospector Jess, a catch you again tomorrow. I hope you’re having a good time prospecting.
This is a great, great time and this weather is going to bring a bunch of gold down, so get ready. We’re going.
So goodnight and good prospecting Prospector jess, over and out, hunting4gold.com – Come visit us.
Ps. More on placer prospecting tips here – https://Sourdoughminer.com/20-20/
