Nuggets of News Blog 

Spring is in the air, and Garrett is making it a little easier on your wallet to get out there and start swinging a new metal detector! For a limited time, Garrett is offering two specially-priced packages. Each package includes a metal detector, headphones, an AT Pinpointer, and Garrett Edge Digger. You save $134.90 on a package as compared to buying each component separately. Both packages have FREE SHIPPING, too!

Garrett AT Pro Metal Detector and Headphones. The AT Pro is Garrett's all-terrain, all-treasure, deep-seeking, professional treasure hunter's detector! This all-terrain detector offers new and exclusive Garrett technology that makes highly recommended for Coin Hunting, Jewelry Hunting, Relic Hunting, Cache Hunting, Prospecting, Ghost Town Hunting, Competition Events, Beach/Fresh Water Hunting. Select from either Standard or Professional search modes with enhanced audio features. The AT Pro was designed to work in challenging environments such as mineralized ground, high trash areas, wet and humid areas and dust. In fact, the entire metal detector can be submerged under water to a dept of 10 feet, so it's an excellent choice for detectorists who might also be gold prospectors working in streams, ponds, or shallow water off the shoreline. Includes upgraded MS-2 headphones, Pro-Pointer AT Pinpointer and Garrett Edge Digger. Details on AT Pro Spring 2021 package here.

Garrett ACE 400 Metal Detector and Headphones.  The top of the ACE family, the 400 has a new Iron Audio feature, a powerful DD coil, a higher frequency, and volume control headphones. Its advanced features make the ACE 400 powerful on coins, jewelry, and artifacts. Features a 8.5” x 11” PROformance DD submersible searchcoil. Comes with Pro-Pointer AT Pinpointer, Garrett Edge Digger, and ClearSound Easy Stow Headphones that feature padded ear pieces, 41 inch coiled cord extends to 82 inches, and 1/4 inch phone plug. Details on ACE 400 Spring 2021 package here.

Raw TV in London is the maker of the Discovery Channel's hit TV series Gold Rush. You might also have watched a spin-off, Dave Turin's Lost Mines. Dave is looking to hire a geologist with placer /hard rock mining experience to join his mining crew on that Discovery show. Ideally, the candidate will have specialized in gold mining and have experience working with placer and/or hard rock deposits. Applicants must be over 18, eligible to work in the US, and happy to appear in a new season of Dave Turin’s Lost Mine. You must be willing and able to leave home and join his gold mining crew potentially from May - October 2021.

If you are a geologist who would love to be considered for this role, or know someone, visit this link https://www.raw.co.uk/takepart/geologist-miners-wanted

Closing date to apply is April 15, 2021.

A gold pan is the simplest and most basic prospecting tool and is one of the oldest types of gold concentrating equipment. Plastic pans are recommended over the steel pans used by the 49ers. Plastic is light weight, so when you add water, dirt, and gravel to your pan, your arms won't get as tired compared to using a steel pan. And they do not rust or conflict with the use of a magnet.  Size, color, and shape are really a matter of personal preference. You might want to have a couple different sizes of gold pans on hand (10 inch, 12 inch, and 14 inch are the most popular). Plastic pans generally come in green, black, and blue. The color doesn't effect performance, but green is the most common. The bright blue cone-shaped batea is the newest type of gold pan to hit the U.S. market. Gold panning kits are often the most economical way to purchase gold pans and classifiers (often called sifting pans) and other small accessories all in one convenient box.   

The point of panning is to shake the gravels, allowing the gold to settle downward and then to wash the lighter material off the top. When all the lighter material has been removed, only the heavy concentrates will remain in the bottom of the pan, including, hopefully, some gold! With a little practice, anyone can learn to pan for gold. Buying a bag of gold-bearing paydirt to use over and over again for practice in a tub is one way to  get good at panning without ever leaving home. Gold panning “how to” steps founds here.

When outdoors in a stream digging gravels, remove big pebbles and stones from your pan before you begin.  When looking for a place to pan, look for cracks and crevices in the bedrock of a stream (bedrock is a general term for the solid rock that sits under all sand and gravel) because gold can get caught and accumulate  in cracks. Gold moves during periods of flooding and can drop out of fast-moving water into crevices. Mossing for gold is another technique that is easy to do with a pan. The green moss that grows on rocks near the edge of a stream often has a surprising capacity to catch and hold fine-sized gold. It’s almost like the matting on the bottom of a sluice (often called “miner’s moss”). Gold can get caught in the tendrils and structure of the moss and while the gold recovered from moss is tiny, sometimes there is a significant amount of it. Take the moss off the rocks from a spot close to the stream and at a level where, when the stream is in flood stage, the moss will be underwater. Carefully peel the moss off the rocks, breaking it up and washing out all the sand and silt. The material recovered from the moss can then be carefully panned out.

Gold concentrations are spotty, even in known gold-bearing areas, so sample and test often. Be sure to move on with your gold pan and don’t stay in one spot less you have good results. If you find a spot with fairly large amounts of gravel that yields good gold, then it’s time to bring in a sluice box. A sluice is simple to operate and have been used all across the world for thousands of years. After you’ve mastered gold panning and are ready to increase the amount of gravel you can process, a sluice box is your next step up from hand panning. Sluices come in a variety of sizes, most with gold-catching matting in the bottom that you need to clean up at the end of the day. Other models such as the Gold Well Vortex Drop Riffle Sluice, has no matting or carpets and uses vortex technology to catch fine gold.

The basic sluice box is set in a stream and runs off the natural flow of water in the rivers. An experienced prospector might be able to pan up to a cubic yard of gravel per day, yet you can run that same cubic yard of gravel through a sluice box in less than an hour. Surface flood-type gold or gravel bars on inside bends of streams can both be very productive with just a simple sluice. It’s not too difficult to operate because it is fairly forgiving of the surges of gravel that drop in with each shovel full. To work properly, a sluice needs a good amount of water. The simple rule is just enough water flow should be going in the feed gravels to move the material through and out of the sluice in a reasonable time, allowing only a little of the heavier materials to build up behind the riffles. With too little water, the incoming material simply piles up as the rocks stop and get stuck in the sluice box. If the flow is too fast, fine gold will be blown out with the gravels. The optimum water flow is just what it takes to keep things clear in a reasonable time — no more than 20 or 30 seconds. The riffles should not become fully buried, with the entire bed of the sluice blanketed over by gravel. For maximum recovery, the flow should be a little turbulent, yet not frothy in any way. Excessive turbulence results in poor fine gold recovery.

As with the pan, the real secret of successful prospecting is not in operating the equipment, but in the skill of finding those natural gold catches. Learning to read the river or stream and recognize the places where gold might accumulate and then sampling those places to see if you are correct is the best technique. Inside bends, behind boulders or bedrock outcrops, and inches above the stream flow are all good places that you might sample, but there are plenty of other possibilities as well. The sluice and the gold pan may be among the most basic prospecting tools, but they are tried and true ways of finding some good gold!