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| Working with Placer Gold
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Where to seek and how to process placer gold.
Placers can be classified into several types such as stream placers, eluvial placers, hajada (desert) placers, glacial stream placers, eolian placers and beach placers. If in a small operation, the stream placers is found to be the best or easiest working. Since a stream placer transports gold by water and you have panned out a few small pieces or flour gold in a gold pan, that’s when you start working back up stream. This is a rule, whether a dry wash or one running water. This article will be talking about dry panning in dry country from southern California and next door southern Nevada.
Placer gold is usually found close to bed rock since it is almost 5 to 6 times heavier than the rocks themselves and will tend to drop along the bottom or bed rock. It also stands to realize that if you have discovered small powder, fine or flaky pieces of gold, start moving back up the erosion, sampling along looking for any larger pieces. Check all cracks and riffles as you go. You may be finding black sand which is interesting but don’t hang your hat on thinking gold must be right there. Black sand weight is in close to minerals of the higher specific gravity, but is at least a good sign to look closer any gold.
In panning, the objective is to concentrate the heavier materials by washing away the lighter. Fill your pan about three-quarters full of the gravel and pick out the large rocks and gravel by hand, then break up any clods or clay pieces in the water. Raise the pan edge to the top of water and tipping it just slightly away from you and start moving it with a circular motion combined with a small jerk of the pan and stirring off the mud and light sand as it will float off the edge. This is continued until the heavier materials remain, which would include your gold, black sand and any other materials which have a high specific gravity.
You should have a bucket or large container to pour your concentrates to save until you have accumulated a large quantity. That’s when the fun starts, picking up the larger pieces or nuggets that you can see, by hand.
In regular panning, unless you have come across a lot of very fine gold, you should be able to pan everything off leaving your gold. If you find that you have a rather heavy pan full of good concentrates, that’s when you want to start looking at other methods of cleaning gold. But take caution and find someone who has worked with mercury in amalgamating their gold.
A qualified person can take the balance of concentrates and amalgamate with quicksilver (mercury). Be aware that mercury is a poison and even thru pores in your skin. Use carefully about handling or accidentally rubbing it on your hands or arms. It’s vapor is also highly poisonous if inhaled. Just use mercury as recommended. This would require retorting the amalgam, which is another only experienced person should handle.
The easiest way is to pan for any small or large nugget (s) and forget the leftovers that you can’t pickup with your fingers.
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