Gold Panning

[TheMikeness]

Hello all!

 

I've heard a few mentions before that Stefan used to do gold panning, but when I searched on this forum for gold panning info, I found very few actual references to this. I was wondering if maybe considering the price of gold going through the roof, people wanting to be their own boss, people wanting something to mine after Bitcoin hits its maximum number of coins, people driven out of a job due to the state being lousy, or maybe just wanting to have a cool hobby to talk about at social gatherings less cerebral to talk about than deep philosophical topics, maybe it might make sense to either cover this a bit in its own podcast, or perhaps link to some suggested resources for this sort of thing.

 

If not, I have in the last few days spent significant time making a short playlist on YouTube of gold panning/mining/prospecting related videos that I found helpful and plan to try out some time, but as I have no actual experience in any of this, I have no sense of what might be practical and what might not, etc. Incase someone might find these useful at least, here they are:

 

Videos so far that I've found interesting:

 

Basic intro of panning equipment, process involved, and tips:

 

Crushing quartz to check for gold:

 

Panning technique:

 

What a chunk of rock containing gold ore looks like, for reference:

 

What gold ore looks like in rock formations, for reference:

 

Illustrations of how to locate gold rich locations in creeks/streams:

 

How to locate gold rich locations in creeks/streams for panning:

 

How to locate gold rich deposits in red dirt in arid climates:

 

Cool custom sluicebox, might be the ultimate equipment for rapid high volume gold panning:

 

Gold extraction with Borax instead of mercury/lead:

 

Melting fine gold into "miners' buttons" (using furnace and lead):

 

 

Happy hunting!

[TheMikeness]

Less practically, here is a video that describes the geology behind why gold can be found where it is today in the Earth's crust:

(part 2 segment 2),

(part 2 segment 3)

 

(part 1 and part 2 segment 1 talk about that it comes from red giant supernovas out in space which is not all that relevant, so I didn't link them here)

[aerocabin]

This forum has some interesting related discussion from active prospectors and miners:http://gpex.ca/smf/index.php

I've spent a few hours reading the posts there over the years, and there are quite a few members from Alberta, but mostly in Edmonton and Red Deer.

Have you done any prospecting? I like to go rockhounding, not looking for anything in particular except for things that catch my eye. I think I found coal once.

[TheMikeness]

Thanks for the link I'll check it out. I've never panned or prospected before myself, basically I just got the idea to do some brief "YouTube research" on gold panning on the weekend, and since it was so informative and interesting I ended up spending half the weekend on it. I think I'll probably buy a beginner panning set off Amazon and dip into the Bow River and see what's up though, but of course I'll have to look into the regulations first. I've always wanted to do some metalworking so if I ended up getting into this somewhat, it somewhat meshes with that, which is good.

Who knows, my parents have a cabin in the middle of a large swath of largely pristine area surrounded by tons of lakes and streams in north western Ontario, so if I go out there on vacation for 2 weeks this year I might just take some panning gear there and try it out there too.