Gold panning is the most manual technique of retrieving alluvial gold from river gravel. The pan can only hold a small amount of gravel, this is why its use is limited to sample for gold to see if the area is worth further exploration with bigger equipment.
Wide, shallow pans with gold catching rings pressed on the inside are filled with sand and gravel that may contain gold. Water is added to the pan and then pan is shaken, water goes between all the bits of gravel and sand causing them to be in temporary suspension in the water. Gold is much denser than stone thus falls down to the bottom of the pan, sorting the gold from the gravel and other material.
Then the pan is submerged on and angle in the water, lifting it out of the water causes the top lighter material to wash out of the pan, repeat this a couple of times then submerse in water and repeat shaking to make sure the gold drops to the bottom of the pan again.Repeat this procedure until you only have a small amount of material left.
You should be seeing quite a bit of black iron sand at this time and hopefully gold.
When you just have iron sand and gold left, put a small bit of water in and swirl it around gently so the water goes around the pan. What should happen is that the iron sand gets slowy washed away in the direction of the water leaving gold behind. At this point use a sniffer bottle to suck up the gold.
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