How do you prospect for gold?

Answer 1

Gold is a heavy metal, so when panning or even using a dredge just use the movement of water to wash away the lighter rocks all while being gentle enough to let the gold sink to the bottom.

How do you prospect for gold?...

Some common methods of prospecting are panning and sluicing. Use of a pan and a sluice are the most affordable to acquire. Purchase a pan that is around 10 inches in size and start testing gold bearing areas near the river. A good addition to a pan is a grizzly. Use of a grizzly will allow only material that is able to pass a quarter or half inch mess. Depending if a larger amount of material is to be panned a sluice will be best to use, also. Buy a shovel, a crowbar, a 5 gallon bucket, a grizzly to fit into the 5 gallon bucket, a sluice and a pan.

Do not dig directly in the river. Instead dig along the sides where there is no free flowing water. Make use of the crowbar to pry out the larger stones first. Fill the bucket up with water and place the grizzly in the bucket. The bottom of the grizzly should sit in the water. After removing enough stones shovel up the material and place in the grizzly. Shake the grizzly around until all the material has passed into the bucket. Material within the grizzly should be looked over for gold bearing material. None there, toss it. Fill up the bucket with enough material then shovel into the sluice and allow the water there to separate the material. When the bucket is empty wash any remaining contents through the sluice. Add clean water back into the bucket. Remove the rug from the sluice and clean in the bucket of water. Any material still in the sluice wash into the bucket. Being that there are still small rocks use 1/4 inch screen to remove them. Get the pan and place some sluiced material in it. Pan out the lighter material until only black sand begins to appear. Panning through the black sand will show if any gold is there. Isolate it in the pan and siphon it up with the bottle. This method of prospecting is placer mining. Dig deep enough and around the really big rocks and you will be able to pick them up with your fingers and not a siphon bottle.

If one is to dig in the river, then I suggest detouring the water and skimming the surface. The reason for this is to get at the fine gold that is deposited from the rains and flowing river. The gold will be mostly surface bound and follow the black sand. Use of a metal detector like the White's GMT should be able to follow the black sands which can be marked and later retrieved. If the river cannot be detoured, then build a suction device simular to a bait pump and vacuum it up.

Update to the use of a grizzly, aka classifier: There is a method of use with a sluice box that a grizzly of sorts can be added to the sluice itself. This addon has to be fabricated specifically to the sluice being used. Interestingly enough, a flat plate with small holes works best. Use of angles failed because of rocks dropping into slotted areas and blocking the flow. Being that some sluices have a funnel it is necessary to add a plate there too. This type of sluice can be found as a Cal Sluice. My old Keene with Hungarian riffles still works and I tried to update it and failed. A Cal sluice is very expensive as compared to others, but I have seen it work.

Answer 2

Prospecting for gold typically involves using a gold pan or sluice box to separate gold from sediment in rivers or streams. You can also use metal detectors to search for gold in soil or rocks. Researching areas with known gold deposits and obtaining the necessary permits are important steps before prospecting.