When I am testing a new property, my go to pan is my Garrett SuperSluice pan.
I like the deep riffles and the wide bottom. I have a blue minelab pan I use for areas with less black sands/heavies and I have a 12" black estwing pan I bring when I am backpacking into a site. I prefer the blue falcon pan for cleaning concentrates.
What's your preferred pan?
sebo, prospectorjared_bc, cuporphyrydaddy liked this thread
Personally I love the blue proline pan !!!!... the riffles arent too agressive , definitely better for someone with a bit of experience.
If you are just starting out i would recommend the Garrett super sluice pan due to the extremely aggresive riffles !!!
wh_ore_prospecting, prospectorjared_bc, cuporphyrydaddy liked this reply
Proline all the way! They offer a good variety of colours, light weight, nearly impossable to break, they wear well, wide base for washing back gravels. I also find that with the thinner lip, they can be used in shallow water. Which comes in handy when your only water source is a puddle.
cuporphyrydaddy, sebo liked this reply
I really only use my super sluice when in the wild but have a smaller cheapish what I think it is a Stansport 10" that i picked up about 10 years ago (tried a few pans but didnt get much into panning until about 2 years ago), that I use for cleaning up with at home since it fits nicely into my 10L tote i have around. But I will admit I have not really tried any other pans yet.
cuporphyrydaddy, sebo liked this reply
I prefer the pan that has the most gold in it!
Garrett Super due to its ruggedness and multi use, although for "production" panning the various flat pans or betea types are quite handy!
cuporphyrydaddy, sebo, pickaxe liked this reply
I use a number of different pans, and each have their place.
8 inch pan (black) - fits a dollar store colander (8 mesh aka 1/8" or so) for quick and dirty test pans that are light, easy on the hands/wrists/arms, and allow me to get information quickly.
Gold Claw Production Pan (black) - in my experience, it works better than a Garrett Super Sluice in areas with very heavy black sand (e.g. the Fraser River). The side-to-side motion with the Gold Claw keeps things fluidized, and some hand stirring here and there helps fine and flour gold settle to the bottom while enabling a fast production speed. When you get into a rhythm with this pan, the production speed is very fast.
The loss rate is slightly higher with this pan than the Garrett, but there are things you can do to reduce losses - e.g. don't use the side with the fine riffles, just dump cons into a bucket. Also, when panning down cons, use a capture pan beneath, and re-pan at the end of the day to catch another few percent of lost gold.
Garrett Super Sluice - fast panning speed balanced with excellent capture for larger sample volumes. This is probably the most accurate and fast pan for placer sampling or assay purposes. For mineral I prefer the small black pans (like Keith from Hard Rock University on YouTube - an excellen resource by the way).
No matter what pans you choose to use, I hope they are heavy with gold!
-Pickaxe
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