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Pans!

I don't know how many times people have come up to me and said, "All you really need is a pan to find gold." Technically that's true. All you really need to find gold is a pan. At some time, even with machinery, you will probably pick up a gold pan. Maybe not at the start, but more than likely at the end.

However, gold is a numbers game. The more dirt you process, the more gold you will find. Unless you hit the Mother lode, and are digging nuggets of gold. You are dealing with something much smaller. From flour to flakes to pickers. (Sounds like a double play team in baseball. “5-4-3 Double play!” I can almost hear the PA announcer.)

That’s where machinery comes into play. However, this isn’t about machinery, it’s about pans. Probably since the dawn of time, or at least when man first discovered gold, there have been gold pans. Sluices made of gold, were discovered in King Tut’s tomb. I would imagine there were gold pans made of real gold as well. But even before that, most likely pans were made out of slices of a tree trunk dished out. Wood has one problem, it swells, shrinks and cracks. So maybe the first real gold pans, as we know them, were made during the Bronze age.

However, where you find relics from gold rush times, you will find wooden pans. They could be turned out on machinery run from water wheels driven by long belts. Someone had a bright idea to go to the maker of a Knights armor and turn out gold pans. These would have been made of iron, as a Knights armor were iron plate. Eventually steel came into play, and I’m sure steel gold pans followed.

A mixture of steel and wood pans have been found from California to Australia. The Chinese prospectors are credited with introducing the riffle to the Gold pan. And you can still see a form of it today in modern steel pans. Prospectors really like steel gold pans because it served two purposes. First, of course, it was a gold pan. Second, it was their dinner plate. The pan could withstand heat, they ate off of it, cleaned it up and go back to prospecting. Maybe old time prospectors were the original , “Multi-taskers”?

Back in the mid-70’s, 1970’s that is, I’m not THAT old! I started with pie pans, which I liberated from my Mom’s cupboards. (Liberated sounds so much better than just helped myself, without ask asking. IE: Stole!) I had already been bitten by the Gold bug at age 10. However, I had no clue on how to actually find gold. (My first discovery was Pyrite, that I thought was gold.) I met a couple of guys prospecting the Whitewater River in Southern Indiana. They both had steel pans with grooves formed in the sides. They had found these in the back of “Popular Mechanics” magazine. (Might have been “Popular Science.” It’s been a long time for my memory.)

They are the ones that told me to,, “go get your Mother’s pie pans.” They had a wooden homemade rocker box lined with Shag carpeting! (This was the 70’s.) Back then, I didn’t know anything about flour gold. I thought all gold were nuggets, or at least pickers. So, I’d sift through sand from the river looking for gold I could see. I pretty much never did.

Fast forward to today. Today we have gold pans, still in steel. However, now there’s copper and the most one used are plastic. Plastic has opened up a world of new shapes, sizes and colors. (Again, another Triple Play team?) Today’s modern plastic pans come in round, square, rectangle, triangle, hexagon, U-shaped, to name the popular ones. And just about every color. Blue, green, red, black, purple, maroon, white and pink! Blue and green are the most popular, followed by black. Green and blue will make your gold stand out as well as your black sands. Black pans will make your gold “pop” out, but will hide fine black sands making final clean up difficult. The other colors, have their fans. I like blue, maroon and red for final clean ups.

Green is the most popular, but if you suffer from color blindness, then you want to stick with blue. Blue pretty much is still blue, throughout most color blindness. However, green can show up as various colors, including shades of yellow. They also come with various sizes of riffles. From no riffles to quite large riffles.

Sizes. Plastic pans range from 10” to 16”. Again, typically, bigger pans are used to work off the dirt and gravel and smaller pans are used for final clean ups. 16” pans can be a hand full, especially loaded with dirt and gravel. 14” can be as well, but is still easier to work off. 10” pans you can use one hand, but you’re limited to the amount of over burden you can work off at one time.

So, there you have it. Most small scale prospectors have many pans in there inventory. Lately there seems to be 1 - 2 new pans coming out every year. They always seem to have their supporters and their opposition. Like I always say, it’s what works best for you. I always seem to end up buying the new ones and trying them at least a few times.

Until next time, this is the old prospector.

Good Hunting!

If you feel that you have mastered your metal detector, or at least feel really comfortable using it.  Let your Law Enforcement know that you are willing to help if they ever need it.  Why you ask?  (Go ahead and ask why.)

Law Enforcement from time to time needs help.  Usually, there will be at least one officer with a metal detector on the squad.  However, if they are trying to find a stray bullet, or other item, one detector can't cover all the ground very fast.  That's where you come in.  Send a formal letter to the Chief of Police, the Sherrif and even if there is a State Police barracks in your town to the head Officer in charge.  Let them know that you are more than willing to help if they ever need it.  Years ago, I even included a nice photograph of some of my finds.

I'll give you a case in point.  There's a man I was introduced to, who bought a Side Scan Sonar system.  He had visions of using it in the Summer searching the lake he lived on for sunken motors, or just general treasure hunting in the lake.  He went around to the Marinas, and asked if he could put up a flier offering his services for items lost in the lake.  One Winter day, he got a call from the local Sherrif's office.  One of the Deputies had remember seeing his flier and wondered if he could help them out.  He readily agreed and loaded his equipment on their boat and went in search of what they were looking for.  (I'm sorry, I don't remember what it was, but he found it.)  The divers went into the frigid waters and retrieved it.

Now, not only is he called into help the local Sheriff's Dept.  But the Police and and State Highway Patrol.  All season, they call on him to use his equipment.  There was a missing girl and the State Highway Patrol presumed that the might have drowned in the lake.  They found her car parked near the water's edge.  So they called him in to start his search.  He laid out his grid pattern, and soon were searching the lake's bottom for any sign of human life.  They even had a boat with Cadavor dogs in it searching.  The dogs got a hit out in the water and he was called over with his Sonar.  It wasn't the missing girl, but it was a car.  Probably had been there for 20 years resting on the bottom.  The dogs were going crazy!  The car was pretty far out into the lake, but the divers were able to hook a cable to it and with the help of a crane, drag it to shore.  Inside the trunk was the remains of another woman, long since passed away.  They never did find the missing girl.  I'm not even sure that they found out who was locked away in the trunk of that car.

Don't you think that he has built up a good repore with the Law Enforcement Agencies?  I'm not saying you will find Jimmy Hoffa, but you maybe able to find a key piece of evidence!  Please note:  I would not do this if you just got your metal detector. 

Early this Summer, I wanted to search a Grade School that had been closed.  I pulled up with my van and metal detector.  In the parking lot was a Deputy Sherrif's car.  Not sure what the rules are in the town, I decided to go to him and ask if there was a problem if I searched the school grounds.  I also handed him my business card.  "Treasure Seekers International".  It has my name, web-site, address even my e-mail on it.  I told him who I was and that I wanted to search the school grounds and if there was a problem with that.  He said that since the school was abandoned, they didn't like anyone to be on the grounds, due to vandalism.  I expained that I wasn't there to cause any problems, and thanked him and I was ready to leave.  He told me that he had about an hour of paperwork to do.  That it would be alright it I searched while he was there.

I thanked him again, got my machine out of my van, and proceeded to search.  I was really hamped in my efforts due to the long grass.  (It was over a foot high and very thick!)  After about 30 minutes, I hadn't found a thing.  So I decided to pack it in.  I went back to his cruiser and expained to the deputy that the high grass was making it very hard to search and almost impossible to dig.  I thanked him and told him that I was going to go.  He handed me back my business card, and I told him to keep it.  That his Department should feel free to call me if they ever needed an area searched.  Now I don't know if they ever will.  However, if they do,  I'll be there.  (I'll also bring all of my machines just in case I run into long grass again.) 

The worse that a Law Enforcement Agency can say is, "No thanks". 

Until next time.  This is Charlotte49er saying, Good Hunting!

I've been busy gathering up pictures to download to a digital frame to hang up at my store.

One of the photos I scanned and downloaded was of me, diving with my Garrett XL 200 Sea Hunter. I know, the XL 500 was a much better model. The XL 200 was only made like one year, but when I bought it in the mid-80's I didn't know it. All I knew was that I heard Mel Fisher, yes THAT Mel Fisher, said that the Garrett Sea Hunter was the best metal detector he had ever used. The photo was from the late 80's.

This story deals with the early 90's. I was scuba diving off the Florida Keys. It was a Dive Vacation that I found through 'Skin Diver' Magazine. I took along my Garrett Sea Hunter since I was going to be searching for sunken treasure. After some orientation the first day, we actually dove around 2 that afternoon. In an hour of diving, all I found was junk.

I said that this was a ghost story, so I guess I should get to it. That second day we dove, I was we, as there were myself and five other divers. I was the "old man" of the bunch. (I'm always the oldest. LOL) I was at about 40-45 feet underwater searching with my Sea Hunter again. My attention was firmly planted on the sea floor beneath me. About 20 minutes into the dive, I was between 2 rock outcroppings. My Fellow divers were out of my line of sight.

I large shadow passed over me. It was long and I looked up, but didn't see anything. At 45 feet there is still some light filtering through from the sun over head. At first, I figured it was one of the other divers. But as I popped up over the rocks, they were scattered over the area. I passed it off and continued my treasure hunting. When we surfaced and regrouped at the dive boat, I asked if anyone else had seen the shadow. Of course, we joked about a Mermaid to a shark to a cloud blotting out the sun. (The cloud actually made the most sense, except it was long and narrow. And there were very few clouds in the sky.)

I never did discover what the shadow was. Neither did I find any sunken treasure. I did have a great time diving, a little drinking and kicking back with a great group of people. Not to mention, anytime I could trade my shirt and tie for swim trunks and polo, priceless.

Good Hunting, Brian (Charlotte49er @ Gold Rush Guys)

For though’s of you gold prospectors things to look for when locating or discovering an ancient riverbed gravels to harvest for the weekend gold prospectors. Might be common sense to some, but to others.. it might be helpful!

Gold prospectors moraine tips

For the weekend Gold prospectors this glacial rock, mud and gold materiel may have been pulled off a valley floor as the glacier advanced foreword or it may have came off the valley rock walls as a result of freezing and thawing wedging or landslides. Moraines may be made of deb-re in size from silt-sized genealogical flour to huge boulders. The debris is mostly sub-angular to rounded in shape as it is ground up by the weight of ice. Moraines may be on the glacier’s surface or left as piles or sheets of debris where glaciers has melted.

Glacial drifts in the Midwestern and North Eastern United States. These areas were previously not widely known for gold occurrences, but after increased attention they have surprised a lot of people with the amounts of gold now been recovered.

To give a little background, understand that during the ice ages, (both Wisconsin and Illinois stages), the glaciers acted like giant bulldozers pushing enormous amounts of rocks and (gold bearing) gravel down from the sources in Canada many states were completely covered by the glaciers and (left with) moraine (gravel) deposits in bands (see moraine deposits, maps of Michigan, etc.). we also show the Moraine terminus (Southern extent) in all of the Midwestern and northeastern states certain states have incomplete (NY, PA, NJ, MN), or no specific (NH, VT, MA, CT, RI, ME) Moraine information by researching state or regional glaciation books (. Available at college geology apartments or in state geological surveys), you can then determine more specific Moraine deposit locations. Another way of determining moraine locations locally is by simply locating area gravel pits.

read the rest here and video at  http://prospectminingforgold.com/glacial-drift-gold-prospectors-tips/