AY Honors/Gold Prospecting/Answer Key

1. Create a list of equipment used for gold panning. Describe each item and tell what it is used for. The list should include at least the following.

a. Gold Pan

A gold pan is typically a round pan with a flat bottom and conical sides. Modern gold pans are made from plastic and have riffles formed into one side. Gold panning is the simplest way to prospect for placer or flood gold.

A plastic gold pan with built in riffles is your best choice since it is lighter and won’t rust. Green or blue pans are somewhat easier to use than black pans since it is easier to see the black sands against green or blue than it is to see them against a black pan. A pan with a wide bottom will be easier to use when separating the gold from the black sands than a pan with a narrow bottom. For beginners stick with a basic pan and leave the pans with multiple sets of riffles, or non-round shapes alone. A pan full of material is heavy so for pathfinders an 8-10 inch pan is probably best. For adults start out with a 12-14 inch pan. Pans are available in sizes up to 17 inches but a 17 inch pan is very heavy when it is full.

b. Classifier

A classifier is a screen that is used to classify material to be panned. Classifying material is the process of separating different sizes of material. Usually a classifier is used to remove large rocks prior to panning. Classifiers are available with screens having holes from 1/2 inch down to 1/100th of an inch in size and are identified by the size of the holes in fractions of an inch. So a number 2 classifier would have 1/2 inch holes while a number 100 would have holes that were 1/100th of an inch in size. For panning the usual sizes of classifier used are 2, 4, and 8.

A cheap classifier that is very useful for classifying wet or damp material can be made using a roll of 1/2 or 1/4 inch hardware cloth. Take the hardware cloth and cut out a section large enough to make a cylinder that just fits inside your bucket with about an inch of overlap at the seam. Using the wire that held the roll of hardware cloth together, sew up the seam. Cut a number of 2-3 inch slits spaced evenly along one edge of the cylinder. Cut out a piece of hardware cloth that will just fit inside of the cylinder and secure it to the bottom of the cylinder by bending the flaps formed by cutting the slits under the bottom. Sew the bottom piece to the flaps using more of the wire from the hardware cloth. You should now have a basket that fits inside your bucket. You will want to wrap the top edge with something like cotton rope to protect your hands. To use the classifier fill the bucket with water and then swish the classifier full of material in the water. The small material will be rinsed out into the bucket and the remaining material can be discarded.

c. Snuffer Bottle

A snuffer or sucker bottle is a plastic squeezable bottle used to suck up gold or black sands from the bottom of the gold pan. The snuffer bottle has a straw through the opening. This straw lets you squeeze the bottle without worrying about the gold inside squirting out through the opening. If you have a large enough snuffer bottle or if you have more than one, consider just sucking up all the black sands and taking them home to cleanup later. You will be able to pan much more material if you don’t stop to clean out just the gold from each pan.

For cleaning out the gold from the black sands a small plastic eyedropper is useful to suck up just the gold and drop it in a vial.

Glass vials are very nice for displaying gold, but they will break if dropped on a rock, use plastic vials when in the field.

d. Shovel

A shovel is used to dig up the material to be panned.

e. Pick

A pick is used to breakup hard packed material.

f. Bucket

A bucket is used to haul material from the location it is being dug out of the ground, to a location where it can be panned. 5 gallon buckets are popular because they are readily available and most classifiers are designed to fit on top of them. However 5 gallon buckets have one big disadvantage, when they are full they are very heavy, and they are almost always filled too full. 3 gallon buckets with the same size opening as a 5 gallon bucket are a much better choice.

g. Trowel

A trowel is used to dig material from locations where a large shovel will not fit.

h. Pry bar

A pry bar is used to move large rocks to allow you to get to the material underneath them. Other items that might be used for this are pulleys, winches, or come alongs.

i. Rock hammer

A rock hammer can be used to break up rocks so that they can be more easily moved.

j. Crevice tool

A crevice tool is a thin piece of metal with a narrow scoop on one end. It is used to dig material out of very narrow crevices between rocks. Purpose made crevice tools can be purchased, but you may have something around the house that will work just as well. Likely candidates are old flat screw drivers, hub cap removal tools from cars you no longer own, or just a piece of metal rod with one end pounded flat.

k. Drinking water

Prospecting is usually hard work, often in the hot sun. Staying hydrated is very important, and you almost certainly shouldn't drink the water from the river or stream you are panning in, so you should always have drinking water available.

l. Other possible items.

Other items you might want with you include

• Sun screen
• Food
• A canoe yoke and short straps. (This makes a wonderful bucket carrier.)
• Dry change of clothes.
• Small towel
• Water shoes or waders
• Backpack, to carry all your stuff in.
• Knee pad
• Etc, etc, etc...

2. Define the following:

a. Pay dirt

Pay dirt is material containing high concentrations of gold.

b. Quartz

Quartz is the second most common mineral on earth. It is a crystal made of silicon dioxide and is often found near with gold. Finding quartz does not mean that you will also find gold, but if you find gold there will almost always be quartz nearby. Lode gold is usually found mixed in or around quartz veins.

Pyrite

c. Pyrite

Pyrite is often referred to as fool’s gold, there are other minerals that are also mistaken for gold but pyrite is by far the most common. Pyrite is composed of iron sulfide, and can easily be distinguished from gold because it is much less dense and it leaves a black streak if rubbed across the bottom of a gold pan.

d. Blond sands

Any of the light colored material washed out of the pan while panning. Blond sands usually have a specific gravity of 2 – 2.5, that is they are about twice as heavy as water.

e. Black sands

Black sands are mostly made of magnetite and hematite. Black sands have a specific gravity of about 5.

f. Placer

Placer gold is the gold that has been eroded from the mother lode and washed down into the streams and rivers.

g. Lode

Lode gold is gold that is still in the rock before it has been eroded and washed into a stream or river. A group of lodes or veins of gold is often referred to as a mother lode. One of the best-known mother lodes is the California Mother Lode. This is a zone one to four miles wide and 120 miles long in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. The individual gold deposits within the mother lode are gold bearing quartz veins up to 50 feet thick and a few thousand feet long.

h. Nugget

A nugget is a naturally occurring chunk of gold. Nuggets can be picked up with your fingers and are usually at least a gram or more in weight. The largest nugget ever found was the “Welcome Stranger” and weighed 2316 troy ounces, it was found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia on February 5, 1869. Smaller pieces of gold that can still be picked up with your fingers are called pickers.

i. Flake

A flake is a piece of gold that is flat and cannot be easily picked up with your fingers.

j. Dust

Dust or flour gold, are tiny pieces of gold too small to be called flakes.

k. Specific gravity

Specific gravity is the ratio of the density a given material to the density of water. So a material with a specific gravity of 2 is twice as dense as water.

l. Wet and Dry panning

Panning is using a gold pan to separate gold from the surrounding material. This is accomplished by suspending the material in the pan in a fluid. Once the material is suspended in the fluid the denser material settles to the bottom of the pan. The fluid can be anything but the most common is water or air. Wet panning is panning using water as the fluid, dry panning is using air as the fluid. Wet panning is much more efficient that dry panning because gold is much denser than the surrounding material compared to water, but compared to air all the material is relatively dense.

m. Mercury (historical use) DO NOT USE TODAY

Mercury is a toxic metal that is liquid at room temperature. Since it is toxic it should be avoided, however it has often been used to pull fine gold out of black sands. When mixed with black sands containing gold, the mercury will amalgamate with the gold and you will end up with a lump of mercury containing all of the gold.

n. Troy pound

One troy pound equals .82 regular or “avoirdupois” pounds, and is made up of troy pound 12 troy ounces.

o. Troy ounce

The troy ounce is the standard measure of gold and other precious metals. One troy ounce equals 1.1 regular or “avoirdupois” ounces.

p. Pennyweight (dwt)

A pennyweight is 1/20th of a troy ounce.

q. Grain

A grain is 1/24th of a pennyweight.

r. Gold fever

What people get that causes them to keep hunting for gold. Extreme cases of "Gold Fever" have been known to cause people to do seemingly insane things such as hauling a ton of equipment over the 33 mile Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush.

3. What are the following identifying characteristics of Gold.

a. Specific gravity

The specific gravity of gold is 19.3. This is almost twice the specific gravity of lead, which is 11.3 and almost 4 times the specific gravity of black sands at around 5.

b. Color of streak

When rubbed against the bottom of a gold pan a piece of gold will leave a yellow streak.

c. Color

Gold is one of only two metals that in their raw state are not silver colored. Gold in its natural state is a yellow color. The other non-silver colored metal is copper.

4. Where are some good places on a river or stream to look for gold.

Gold is heavy so it is only moved by large amounts of fast water, like in the winter when a river is high or flooding. The gold will drop out of the stream wherever the water slows down, or where there is something to cause an area of low pressure in the stream. So look for gold on the downstream side of large rocks or boulders or in cracks that the gold may have dropped into and been wedged in place. Look on the inside part of bends in the stream. Imagine what the river would be like when it is full and look for gold where the water would have a chance to slow down.

5. Make a timeline containing at least 15 items about the history of gold prospecting from 1600 until the present day.

The timeline should probably include the “major” gold rushes, as well as any local gold rushes, and specify when they started and how long they lasted, as well as how many people were involved and the amount of gold recovered. Other items in the time line should include things like major technological developments in prospecting, examples of this include the development and subsequent ban on hydraulic mining in California, the development of square set timbers in the Comstock silver mine, or the development of steam powered bucket dredges.

6. Learn about gold panning by doing one of the following:

a. Do some gold panning. (preferred).

Most states in the U.S. have areas where gold can be located. The best way to meet this requirement is to go to an area and actually dig up the material and pan it there. It would be best for the instructor to scout the area first and find a location where there is at least some gold available, ideally there should be at least a few flakes or specs of gold in each pan.

Another way to meet this requirement is for the instructor to get some gold bearing material and then have the students pan it in some type of trough, the plastic pans available at your local hardware store for mixing mortar work well. You can also build a panning trough out of 2x10 lumber with a thin plywood bottom and line it with plastic.

You can also purchase black sand concentrates from various locations on the Internet. These can be mixed with sand and gravel from a local river or stream bank and then used for panning.

When panning don’t fill the pan completely full. It is easier, especially for beginners to start with a pan that is 1/2 to 3/4 full. You may also want to drop a small lead weight like a fishing weight into the pan. If the lead is still in the pan when the pan is down to just black sands then you can be sure that the gold is still there also.

b. Practice panning using flattened lead or tungsten shot mixed with sand (preferably from a river bank).

Get some sand and gravel, from a river or stream bank if possible, and mix in a specific number of flattened lead or tungsten shot. Tungsten shot would be the best choice for two reasons if you can find it. First unlike lead, tungsten is non toxic, and second, while lead at 11.3 is only about half the specific gravity of gold, tungsten is almost identical at 19.62.

7. Look up the following verses in the Bible and discuss them in relation to prospecting for gold.

a. Matthew 13:44-46

⁴⁴The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ⁴⁵Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
— Matthew 13:44-46

b. Matthew 6:19-21

¹⁹Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. ²⁰But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
— Matthew 6:19-21