SPRAGUE MINING
Basic panning instructions
Place a small amount of material in your pan – maybe 1/4 to 1/2 pan full at first.
Submerge the pan just below the rim and shake side to side or around and around fairly
vigorously. Be careful not to wash a lot of material out of your pan while doing this. The
old and other heavy material (black sands) will work their way down to the bottom of
your pan while the lighter and valueless materials will rise to the top. You will repeat the
process often during your panning with the goal to keep the gold in your pan last. This
method is often called “stratifying” the material.
Tip: don’t be shy about getting your hands in the wet material to break it up. You want
to be sure to rinse off any large rocks and break up any clay balls or roots. Clay balls
are gold robbers - break those up.
Next, raise your pan out of the water but keep the material in a semi-liquid state. Tilt
your pan forward with the riffles or “traps” facing away from you. Start shaking slightly
so that the gold has a chance to settle in the forward and bottom part of your pan but
not enough to cause any material to wash over the side. Be sure your material is always Now you should have your forward edge of the pan just in the water. Start moving your
pan slowly up and down in the water so that the water itself is washing off the lighter
sands and gravel. Don’t try to pour the material off – doing this will cause your material
to “lock-up” and your gold will be lost. Keep the material semi-liquid and continue to use
the action of the water to wash the lighter material out of the pan until you see the
darker more heavy material coming to the surface. Sweep just a little material off each
time – don’t get a huge tidal wave going in your pan or you are sure to lose your gold.
When you feel it’s time to re-stratify the material go ahead and bring the pan back and
shake it up again finishing with a slightly forward angle. Remember you can never do
this too much – keep the gold in the bottom of your pan. Try to shake your pan for at
least 10 seconds at first to be sure to get all the gold back down to the bottom. After
shaking the pan again you should see the lighter material coming up. Continue
sweeping this material out of your pan with water slowly.
Tip: Re-stratify more often than you think is necessary to make sure the gold stays put
in the bottom of your pan. Heavier materials are often comprised of iron and are darker
than the lighter weight blond sands making it easy to know when to re-shake. Re-stratify
your pan whenever you see the dark material coming up. Go slow – you are outdoors
so enjoy your time! As you get further down in the material of your pan you will see the heavier material turn
darker and darker and it will be increasingly more difficult wash this material out. Resist
the urge to wash the water in harder. Continue sweeping the material out little by little
until you have almost just black sand. Luckily gold stands out well against this dark
background. If you start to see gold flakes in the heavy sands it’s time to re-shake your
pan again.
Tip: most novice panners stop panning with far too much material in their pans. Work
your material down to almost all black sand (a few tablespoons at most) before bringing
the pan back to look for gold.
Back and forth, round and round, or side to side motion- it’s up to you! As you continue
to prospect for gold you find as many methods to panning as there are gold panners.
Whether you shake the pan from side to side, use a circular motion, or maybe a little
nervous twitch it matters little – whatever you are comfortable doing. After a while you
will find your muscles will develop a memory for your technique and you will sink into a
habit which you can continue to perfect. Your panning will become swifter and your gold
losses will become smaller.
Tip: whatever method you use try to keep it smooth and rhythmic. Trying to wash the
water in and out at the same rate each time will help control the contents of your pan.
Periodically bring your pan all the way back flat (level) and re-shake so your gold will not
creep too far forward in your pan.
in a semi-liquid condition – add more water if needed. Use a magnet to quickly separate the gold from the black magnetic sand concentrates.
Place the magnet to the bottom side of your plastic pan and move it in a small circular
motion with the pan slightly tilted. This will quickly remove the gold from the magnetic
black sands.
Final Tip: you can use a sniffer (snifter; snuffer bottle) to quickly suck up any gold you
see. A snifter bottle is a small flexible clear plastic bottle with a small tube attached to its
end. Squeezing the snuffer bottle creates a vacuum inside, and submerged gold from
the pan can be easily sucked up through the tube and saved by releasing the bottle and
moving it around the edges of your pan showing gold. However, because time is often
limited at the river, I recommend you use your time to actually dig, pan and find gold –
use the time at home to finish the clean up and separate your fine gold from the black
sands. Take your black sands home with you where you can pan in a controlled
environment – go over each pan several times with a catch basin underneath to be sure
you got all you can. Use a wetting agent like “jet-dry” or detergent to break the surface
tension of the water and keep the very fine gold from floating.
We wish you much luck in your gold prospecting. We are always happy to help our
customers in any way. Feel free to email us with any questions about gold prospecting
or if you have an interest in buying natural gold nuggets we'll help you find some at a
great price.

use a metal detector and look for quartzite deposits.