How to pan for gold Instruction Booklet
Gold Panning is the process of separating the gold from dirt, clay and sand using a gold pan. Gold is much heavier than water and normal sand, so when gold travels down the river it will get trapped in pockets of slow moving water. What you are doing with your gold pan is basically imitating the stream. Your goal is to get the gold trapped in the bottom of your gold pan. Put yourself in the shoes of the tens of thousands of forty-niners who traveled west in search of gold during the wild 1849 California gold rush.
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Where to pan gold The easiest way to find places to pan for gold is to go where people have found gold before, it’s not as easy as just going out and start panning in the nearest stream. So how do you know where in the stream you can find the gold? As gold is heavier than water the gold moves downstream along the bottom and eventually ends up in the sand in slow moving areas of water around bends of the stream. Other places to look for gold bearing sand is in rock crevices and wedged in pieces of wood. To conclude on where to pan gold, as a beginner you should start going to areas where people have already found gold. You can get gold maps or books telling you where gold has been found in your specific area. As you get better at knowing what to look for you can start exploring for your own gold panning sites. Just make sure you don’t jump someone elses claim, and if it’s private land, be sure to ask for permission before you start panning. 3
A brief history of gold Valued by humans for thousands of years 3000 B.C. Gold has been a desirable and valued commodity since before recorded history. Archaeologists have discovered stashes of gold jewelry dating back to 3000 B.C. in what is now southern Iraq. Ancient Egyptians buried their rulers with elaborate gold adornments, such as the gold mask, sarcophagus and amulets that were fashioned for Egypt’s boy ruler, King Tut, in the 14th Century B.C. Alchemy was a popular preoccupation for many centuries, as the most learned members of European, Chinese and Arab societies searched for a way of turning base metals into gold. They didn’t succeed, of course. But alchemists did discover many new elements in the process and laid the foundations of modern chemistry.
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The search for gold launched European explorers on some of the most ambitious and ruthless overseas expeditions. Spanish Conquistadors plundered and ravaged the Incan and Aztec societies of the New World under orders from King Ferdinand to “get gold.” 1500 B.C. Gold has been used as money for at least 3,500 years. The shekel began circulating in the Middle East in 1500 B.C. The Chinese and the Romans followed with gold coins of their own. The ducat appeared in Venice in the latter part of the 13th Century and soon became the most popular gold coin in the world. Britain had its gold florins...
19th Century In the 19th Century, gold rushes open up various parts of the world to sudden development – including Alaska, the Yukon, Nevada, California, South Africa, and Australia. 1840s In the 1840s, British gold sovereigns and U.S. $10 gold eagle coins were both considered legal tender in Canada. The first Canadian bank notes were partly backed by gold. 1854 From 1854 until the outbreak of the First World War, Canadian currency was on the gold standard, meaning that the value of the Canadian dollar was fixed in terms of gold. It was a standard that Canada and much of the industrialized world used for much of the 20th Century – finally abandoning it altogether by 1971.
Today Currently, most of the 2,500 tonnes of gold produced each year is used for jewelry. But as much as 20 per cent finds its way into such industrial applications as telecommunications and computers, where the metal’s high electrical conductivity is prized.
Gold Mines of Ontario
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How to Pan Gold in 8 Steps Panning gold is something anyone can learn to do, it’s basically divided into 8 easy steps. 1. Filling your gold pan Fill your gold pan ½ to ¾ to the top with the sand from your kit. A good idea is to pick out rocks before you start panning, just make sure the stones you are throwing away aren’t gold nuggets! 2. Finding the Ultimate Gold Panning Spot You should find a spot along a stream where the water flows just enough to carry the silt away from your gold pan. Try finding a place where you can sit, like a rock or a log. Squatting will get tiresome if you plan on panning for a longer while. 3. Submerging and Crushing the Gold Bearing Material Submerge your pan under water and work the content with your hands, breaking it up and removing any large items. Gold can stick to large rocks, so wash them above your gold pan before you throw them away. Don’t worry about losing any gold in this step, remember that gold is heavy so it will sink to the bottom while the other stuff floats away.
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4. Shaking It Up With the gold pan just under the surface of the water, shake it left and right. This will break up the content even further and “liquify” the sand, dirt and water mix. By shaking you also begin the process of moving the gold towards the bottom. 5. Tilt The Gold Pan Tilt the forward edge of your pan downward. If your pan has riffles, as most modern gold pans have, the riffles should be pointed forward. Now, with the forward edge tilted, repeat step 4 and shake the pan left and right. This will again make the gold move towards the bottom. 6. Rinse & Repeat Now it’s time to get rid of the stuff that we don’t want in our pan. With the gold pan just below the surface of the water, use a back and forth or up and down movement that lets the water sweep away the lighter materials on top. The water should do all of the work in removing the sand and dirt. Another way to get rid of the lighter materials is dipping your pan and lifting it up, while allowing the water to transport the lighter material out of the pan. Think of a wave crashing against the beach and how the water takes with it the top layer of sand, it’s the same principle we’re using here. You should re-shake your pan once in a while as you did in step 5, to ensure that the gold stays at the bottom. Then repeat steps 5 and 6 until only the heaviest materials are left in your pan, which often are black sand and gold.
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7. Removing The Black Sand The most common type of black sand is magnetic, which makes for easy removal if you use a plastic gold pan. When you are down to black sand and hopefully some gold, carefully continue to pan all your way down to the gold. 8. Picking Up The Gold At this point you mostly have gold in your pan if you’re lucky, along with any remaining black sand. Now you can use a tweezer to pick up the pieces of gold from your pan.
Gold Nuggets
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6 80 2,500
Number of grams of gold in Olympic gold medals (which are substantially silver) Number of kilometres of gold wire that can be made from one ounce of gold Number of ounces of gold coating the windows of Royal Bank’s two towers in Toronto
Identification Guide Banded Jasper Jasper is not really a mineral in the strict sense, but a mixture of different types of microcrystalline quartz with impurities of other minerals. What clearly distinguishes jasper from other valuable stones like agate, chrysoprase, sard, or carnelian, is its opacity. Only thin chips of jasper are translucent. Banded jasper may form from layers of fine volcanic ash which get silicified and the original banding of the layers is preserved. Amethyst Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz often used in jewelry. The name comes from Ancient Greek; a(“not”) and methustos (“intoxicated”), a reference to the belief that the stone protected its owner from drunkenness; the ancient Greeks and Romans wore amethyst and made drinking vessels of it in the belief that it would prevent intoxication. The largest amethyst mine in North America is located in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
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Flour Gold The naturally occurring flakes of gold you’ll find when panning. The flakes are created by residual deposits where the gold-bearing veins or lodes are weathered. Nuggets are formed by cold welding of smaller particles and fragments in streams and rivers. Gold’s softness makes it prone to welding under impact or hammering loads, such as those produced at waterfalls and in rapids. There is no oxide surface layer to inhibit adhesion between gold flakes. So when pieces of gold hit one another under pressure, they may join into a bigger piece. Gold Bearing Ore Gold bearing ore typically consists of quartz with gold embedded within. Veins and reefs of goldbearing quartz can occur in many types of rock, for example around granites, in volcanic rocks or in regions of black slate, but in most cases these host rocks are not the immediate source of the gold.
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Emeralds Emerald is a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. The name emerald comes from the Greek ‘smaragdos’ via the Old French ‘esmeralde’, and really just means ‘green gemstone’. The Incas and Aztecs of South America, regarded the emerald as a holy gemstone. However, probably the oldest known finds were once made near the Red Sea in Egypt. In 1998 emeralds were discovered in the Yukon. Black Sand Every placer miner has to deal with it in one form or another. Once you’ve panned your way down to black sand, you’ll find it much easier to locate even the smallest pieces of gold. Black sand contains a large amount of magnetite, allowing prospectors to extract black sand using magnets as well, leaving the non-magnetic gold behind.
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