I have been collecting concentrates in painters buckets around my parents mountain acreage with the long/lat written on each bucket for reference (it's a large area), do I need to prepare these concentrates for panning (beat with a hammer?) and/or use with a spiral panning system? some are sand with loose rock and other are quite muddy, just wondering. thanks to anyone who replies.

Hi rubinscube,

It sounds like you have been taking samples that you'd now like to concentrate down to see what is in them. Great job by the way of keeping records for locations with each too.
Crushing won't be needed unless you have samples of vein/bedrock ores, for those type samples you would want to crush them up before panning.
For creek samples (placers) though you shouldn't need to crush the samples, just classify them down to probably 1/4" minus size using water and then you should be ready for panning.
We have some panning tips on our plans and tips page if you need them too.

Spiral pans, blue bowls, or hand panning which ever you choose should do the job. I'm sure there will be a few others who will have some input for you as well.

Happy panning

CP

Several ways to do this.
For efficiency sake, I would......
1. Use screens and rinse-classify it, so you are left with nothing larger than 1/4" to work with.
2. Run all of your 1/4" (and smaller) material through a hand sluice in a stream or a recirculating sluice at home if you have one.
3. Take the concentrates obtained from the sluice and....
--- a. classify them again with the screens (down to minus 100 mesh if you have the capability)
--- b. pan, Blue Bowl, or Spiral each classification separately for best results (Blue Bowl is my personal choice)
4. Put gold in bag, saddle-up, go to town, purchase hot bath, vittles, and go to the haberdashery or saloon.
--- a. play poker at saloon with anything leftover.
5. Repeat process until gold supply is exhausted.

... that's how I'd do it.

thank you very much for the reply an the link to the tips, I am glad I didn't have to crush the rocky stuff in a pot

thank you for the simple yet discriminative reply, I really enjoyed your informative post with the photos in your living room.

Thanks! Now that it's summer, I've moved the cleanup operation outdoors. Although this morning (June 13) I woke up to a snowstorm! Yucky day up here.
Good luck with the samples!

From the description you gave I would say "samples", but not "concentrates". Concentrates are the next-to-end result of panning or sluicing.


I suggest that you keep the buckets separate, and start recording notes in a notebook with the coordinates for the samples. Next, screen them down and record what you see- red mud, blue mud, mud with sand, stuff like that. Unless you know much about geology and rocks, going into much detail won't help you any. I suggest getting a 1" screen, and make a screen using window screen (IIRC anywhere from 16 to 22 mesh).


Then screen it down and save the rock for later examination. Then pan the screened material.


Screen it down using water and a screen, then pan it.


It's a tough question to answer because there are so many different things that come into play.