No matter how you non commercially prospect for gold, it will always come back to the gold pan. A good gold pan can make your day while a bad pan can make your day miserable. True you need to have good panning abilities and if you don’t you can order any of the countless videos that are offered by GottaGetGold, but if your pan doesn’t match your technique you are going to be sore and poor compared to making the proper selection.
When it comes to gold catching pans there are more choices to choose from than walking into an ice cream parlor, and the self discussion can be just as crazy. Ok, do I want the one with the wide bottom or the narrow bottom? Do I want recessed riffles or raised bump riffles? How big do I want the pan to be? What color should I get? Do I want Plastic or metal? Why is that one square???
When all is said and done the answer is simple. Choose the pan that is right for you and the method you use. Hopefully we will be able to help you choose the pan that’s right for you.
Let’s start with one of the hardest decisions for some people and see if we can make the answer easier. No promises though. Metal gold pans were all the old timers had and were usually made to be multipurpose. The old prospectors would pan with them, cook with them, eat from them, and sometimes do ummm, let’s just say other things with them. They are heavy, bulky, don’t handle being dropped too well and can get hot in sun faster than you can say third degree. Unless you season them they also do little in the way of snagging the gold as you pan unless they have good riffles or you are an expert panner. None the less some people prefer metal and are no longer reading this because they think I am bashing metal pans. I’m not. I fully agree that if someone is in love with their gold pan they will pan more. So if metal is what you want, than metal is what you should get.
Plastic pans come in countless shapes, sizes, depths, and are much lighter and durable than their counterparts. Not to mention, I have never heard of anyone needing to finance a plastic gold pan. All plastic pans are injection molded and so consistency is there. This means that if you get used to a certain kind of plastic pan you won’t have to worry about finding an exact match should you lose yours. However, a plastic pan never looks as good hanging on a wall as a good copper pan. None the less, for the remainder of this article we are going to discuss plastic gold pans.
Just like running shoes, there is no one size fits all in gold pans. An eight year old is not going to be comfortable with a pan bigger than they are. And a four inch pan would be more humorous to someone who is trying to pan directly from the river. A good rule of thumb taught to me at a small age was to pick a pan that you could carry with one hand, barely. If you can span your thumb over the top lip of the pan and support it with three of the four of your remaining fingers you are pretty much on the right track. Of course this only applies to round pans and if you are choosing a different shape than the choice will be best determined depending on the pan. But if your pan is too big your hand, wrist, and forearm will hurt much more at the end of the day. I personally find myself drawn to pans that are as wide at the top as he distance between my wrist and elbow.
This will not be the first controversy I have caused but it sure ranks up there. Some people like the smaller bottom because it allows for a quicker concentration of material, or because it lets the material mover around faster with less effort allowing the material to drop faster. I disagree (I know, here comes the e-mails) and I have tested this one personally. A smaller base on your gold pan means that your material has to fall into a much smaller area and therefore must be moved much more rapidly than on a wide based gold pan. A larger based pan also displaces much more water and can float much easier on the water so your saving your muscles there as well. Finally it’s easier to move your material in a liquid motion continually than it is in a small base pan. If you doubt this, buy both and put a BB in the bottom of them. Now try moving the BB to the outside creating a circular motion and see which one is easier to maintain after about three minutes. By keeping your material moving at a consistent pace you will find that your material separates at a much more accurate rate than pure speed. But in most cases, even world speed pan champions use wide bottom pans, rather than narrow bottom gold pans.
Ok, some people hate em, some people love em, some people just don’t understand what the things are about. A riffle is an additional agitation or catch in your pan that helps you not pour material out of your pan that you want to keep in. The deeper the higher the riffle or the deeper the catch the more material stays in the pan. As you can imagine this can be a good, or bad thing, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Generally most people like deep catches because when you have a solid amount of black sand in your pan you want to keep it as the last thing since gold likes to hang out with the black sand. So good deep catches or riffles will help you along as you are perfecting your panning technique.
The color of your pan is a very important factor in choosing the right gold pan for you. If you pan is metal and shiny, the reflection can get in your eyes and hurt, not to mention over time cause long term damage. Black pans or gold colored pans make seeing your black sand and gold that much harder. Choose a pan that is not the color of your black sands or your gold and you will be able to see the different colors of the material in your pan much easier and lesson the risk of sloshing a gold nugget over the edge of your pan as you get down to your concentrates.
Ok, most people choose a round pan just because they are the easiest to find. A round pan makes moving material around easier and more fluid. However, recently different shapes have hit the market. There are square gold pans, rectangular, and I have even seen triangular pans being tested. Again I have to stay neutral and go with the personal preference option. I know people who swear by the different shaped pans and believe the round pans are outdated. But I also know people who like the fluid motion of a circular pan and will never go with anything but a round gold pan. I think if your just picking up your first pan, the rounder the better. Easier to learn on and start. However if your seasoned, it may be time to consider going with a different shape just to give it a try. I always laugh a little inside when people who have never tried anything new belittle it. Personally I have an idea for a gold pan that I hope to get out on the market soon. So maybe I will be the inventor of the most dominant gold pan on the market and everyone will hate it, lol.
So whatever pan you choose, make sure it’s something that you will be comfortable with, will produce well for you, and matches your style. If you get a pan you don’t like, you probably won’t be panning long.
