Reminder: Classify All Your Cons Before You Dump Them!

[Goldfleks]

I consider myself a fairly decent panner when I'm panning my cons at the river. But recently I got in the habit of not taking a safety pan when I was panning my cons down to black sands for the first time at the river. Mainly thinking if I had any heavy gold it would 100% be at the bottom of the pan and if I was losing anything it was a little fine gold and that really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Well today I was classifying down a bucket of cons from the last time I had used a safety pan maybe 3 weeks ago. Nothing in the +10 Mesh cons, as expected. I was panning down the +20 gravels for kicks not expecting ANYTHING and low and behold at the bottom of the cons, a nice little +20 picker sitting in the second riffle of my pan.

I was NOT expecting to find that. Generally when I get around to panning these cons out I only find a couple of +100 mesh specks.

I can only guess that it got flushed out of my pan during the initial panning of concentrates when it was mixed in with all the large gravels and it never made it to the bottom. Or maybe it got stuck to a larger piece of gravel and rolled out with it. All I can say is that I'm really glad I was using a safety pan that day and I'm glad I've only recently stopped bringing that extra pan to the river.

TLDR: Classify everything before you dump it. We work to hard to let good gold go back to the river.

Edit: +30 and +50 all clean, not a spec of gold. Makes me feel a little better about my panning skills LOL. Still have the +100 mesh leftover cons to pan some day, not enough of them to bother with at the moment. I'm still really puzzled about that little picker.

Also, anyone know of a good brand of magnet to use for seperating black sands? I want to start saving my magnetics to either sell or to maybe someday crush if I get ambitious. No sense throwing away something that has value, every dollar counts when it's my time.

 

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[russau]

I use a rare earth magnet in a piece of PVC pipe with a cap on it to keep the bs off the magnet. you can buy them of any shape over the net.

 

[Bodfish Mike]

I would also like to add -- pan small amounts at a time I find with smaller amounts there is more control.
If you have the patience.

 

[wildminer]

No doubt about that. I spent tonite in the shop classifing to -120 on tailings from my cleanup hibanker from a couple years ago mainly because I need the containers. Still have to do quite a bit of not optimistic panning, but it's something to do when your just hanging at home for whatever reason.Got the classified material in jars tonite, I'll pan that later after I go and get some new material. Panning tub has 3/4" of ice on it anyway. Oh yeah, I'm not finding anything like goldfleks!

 

[et1955]

Time on the river is presius , don't waste your time panning down beyond the black sands, do a quik check to see if you are on the gold and then put in a bag for later processing when you get home. Wildminer, 3/4" of ice my 12" panning tub is solid ice.

 

[Goldfleks]

Time on the river is presius , don't waste your time panning down beyond the black sands, do a quik check to see if you are on the gold and then put in a bag for later processing when you get home. Wildminer, 3/4" of ice my 12" panning tub is solid ice.

The picker I found was in the "junk" material that I usually just pan off into the river. The 1/2" flat rocks that fit through the bazooka grizzly and other large sized material. The stuff I typically just sluff off into the river and leave behind because it's supposed to not have any gold in it. I don't pan down to clean gold at the river, I process my fines at home.

Which is why I'm so puzzled by that picker in the +20 mesh gravel. Everything +50 and larger was 100% clean, not a speck. Which is what I expected, and why I'm so confused how that picker made it's way out of my pan and into the safety pan. It really shouldn't have been there. It was supposed to be at the bottom of the pan with all the other gold, and then into my concentrates bucket. Not in the safety pan that I was using that day and decided to lug home all the large gravels to process on a rainy day.

 

[placertogo]

My own research has demonstrated that magnetic black sand can actually pinch tiny pieces of gold between grains of black sand due to magnetic attraction of the black sand grains to each other. Often panning alone is not sufficient to release the gold. You have to keep working it, both wet and dry, and eventually, most of the gold will be released. Sometimes you will be panning concentrates and see gold that will sit on top of black sand. That is usually because the weight of the gold is not sufficient to overcome the attraction of magnetic black sand particles to one another.

 

[Kenmitch]

The picker I found was in the "junk" material that I usually just pan off into the river. The 1/2" flat rocks that fit through the bazooka grizzly and other large sized material. The stuff I typically just sluff off into the river and leave behind because it's supposed to not have any gold in it. I don't pan down to clean gold at the river, I process my fines at home.

Which is why I'm so puzzled by that picker in the +20 mesh gravel. Everything +50 and larger was 100% clean, not a speck. Which is what I expected, and why I'm so confused how that picker made it's way out of my pan and into the safety pan. It really shouldn't have been there. It was supposed to be at the bottom of the pan with all the other gold, and then into my concentrates bucket. Not in the safety pan that I was using that day and decided to lug home all the large gravels to process on a rainy day.

The +20 was probably stuck to or possibly stuck in a crack of a larger rock most likely.

On the other hand it may have been the river gods share?

I like to use a 10" green pan over a much larger black pan just in case. I most of the time see the gold go over the edge when I pan out the last of the little bit of black sand. Usually just a silly little floater in the end makes it out. I dump into middle of the pan and keep a mental note of how many. Easy to retrieve them out of the larger pan. Pretty much a newbie so haven't run a lot of dirt yet.

 

[N-Lionberger]

I NEVER pan my cons in the river.