Batpan test

LOL! U guys really crack me up  By all means, do get a Batpan; after using it, you'll wonder why every prospector doesn't have one. And go get your own volcano lair...this one's MINE! MUAHAHA!

'Splanashun for BA's missus: it's for a good cause- to help the East Rwandans. If you guys can help BA think of more reasons, please do chime in.

Xav, it's not a bear  . The grizzly is the mesh screen that fits on the pan. Think of it as a classifying device. You can see it in the first photo of this thread. The sides of the grizzly are encased in rubber, so you won't scratch the pan. Scoop your material onto the grizzly, smaller stuff falls thru, remove grizzly and pan away.

Here's something I discovered when working ultrafines (and it's not on the instructional video):
Please refer to the photo in reply #2. Note that the ultrafines are laid out in a crooked line above the groove, and not in the groove itself or in the vertex. Now there will usually be some blondes of almost-similar density and size to the gold. If you just leave it all in the vertex, there's a lot of work to separate them.

I slowly rock and tap till most of the ultrafines are gathered together, then tip the pan so that they flow along the groove. I then tilt the pan slowly to the side, letting the water slide off along the textured surface, not along the groove. The textured surface of the pan will hold onto the ultrafines, hence you see that crooked line of color. Wet a finger and swipe them off. It sure cuts down on picking the color out with a needle. Mind you, there will still be some needle-picking work to do, but much less so.

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		Quote:			Posted by BitburgAggie_7377
	Dang it......I'm trying hard to resist watching the video.   I KNOW that if I give in, I'll also give-in and buy one of those little gems (especially since the price is so reasonable) then I'm going to have some 'splainin' to do to Mrs BA.

30 minutes of uninterrupted begging used to be called foreplay. Not it's for buying something you simply cannot live without. Life's not fair, mate.

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Actually I plan on playing the guilt card and reminding her that a) we bought her a new (2012 with only 1,300 miles) Jeep Liberty last week and b) she's the one that get's to wear all the gemstones so I should have a little toy too.....and at least it isn't another book 

BA

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Ran out of material to pan, wasn't in the mood to sledgehammer more. Decided to grab a few buckets of sand from the beach and see how things panned out (literally).

1st bucket was from the water's highest point during storm season, the logic being that the heaviest particles would have enough momentum to get thrown up farthest by storm surges, and would also have sufficient mass to resist being sucked back down as the waves retreated. I may be wrong on assuming this scenario, am not familiar with beach mining.

Anyways, the attached photos are of panning the first 3 handfuls of sand from this bucket that I dumped into the Batpan. Photos aren't very good, my camera does poorly in macro mode especially when the subject is still shiny with moisture.

In the first photo you can see the black sands trapped by the Batpan's magnetic pads, and some color was trapped along with the black sands.
The 2nd photo is of more color with other heavies in the "secondary" vertex of the pan, for lack of a better term. That's the point where 3 grooves meet near the edge of the pan.

In case you were wondering, my heart is still going thumpa thump as I type. This beach has gold! And the stuff is really really tiny. I'm thinking it's time to bite another bullet and pony up for a Gold Cube, hoses, bilge pump and lead acid battery. Shoveling sand sure beats sweating like a navvy breaking rocks. What do you guys think?

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		Quote:			Posted by GoldDigger1950
	I drag a lawn chair out and sit in it while I pan in the ocean water.

Think I'd be quite happy in that kind of scenario. Half an ounce of gold a day from doing what you love in pleasant surroundings is a most excellent result!

Ran 15 pans from bucket #1, with each load of sand weighing approximately 750 grams, and I saw a pattern. Now I know that the presence of black sands does in no way guarantee the presence of gold, but every pan that had a certain concentration of black sand stuck to the magnetic pads also had an appreciable number of specks of color. In pans that produced thin lines of black sand, little or no color. Time to go price Gold Cubes and the shipping cost.

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