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Equipment used in Gold Panning

The most basic equipment used in gold panning would be a shovel, garden riddle and gold pan, as well as suitable clothing for working in rivers, such as chest waders. With just these basic items anyone can learn the rudiments of gold panning.

Gravel from the river bed is shovelled into a garden riddle which is nestled in your gold pan. When the riddle is about half full, hold the riddle and pan together underwater and shake to get all the small stones and sandy materials down into the pan. Once you've done that, empty the stones from the riddle back into the river and pan out your sample.


Panning concentrates using a 14 inch goldpan

Other equipment could include a bucket, gravel pump, underwater viewer, snuffer bottle and patio weeder. A gravel pump is a homemade hand operated pump made from plastic rainwater downpipe, a metal rod, a handle and a tennis ball or stress ball. As you pull the rod up by the handle, gravel is sucked up into the tube and you can then deposit the gravel in your garden riddle.

Wetsuit jackets and neoprene gloves for working in colder water may be necessary when gold panning in early spring or late autumn. In winter, drysuits with thermal body warmers are crucial to withstand the cold and protect you if you fall in. Dry suits, however, are expensive and require constant maintenance, so for this reason gold panning remains very much a summer hobby for most.


Gravel pump in action. Winter gold panning is only recommended if you have suitable clothing like drysuits and thermal body warmers and know how to look after yourself in the countryside during the winter months

Gold Pans

Modern plastic gold pans come in three basic sizes - 12 inches, 14 inches and 16 inches. Books could be written on gold pans but all you really need to know is that the big 16 inch gold pans are for shifting lots of gravel quickly while the 12 inch gold pans are used more for cleaning concentrates. A good way to work is to use your riddle with a 14 inch or 16 inch pan and then slough the concentrates into a small 12 inch pan for panning out later. This method saves time. A 14 inch pan is a good all rounder which will do both jobs adequately and isn't so difficult to stuff into a backpack as the larger 16 inch.

One thing to look for when buying a pan is not to buy pans with ridges that protrude from the rim, rather look for pans with grooves cut into the rim. These are far superior for trapping gold while panning out your concentrates. Gold pans also come in a range of colours - blue, green and black - but gold seems to show up adequately in any of them.

Underwater Viewer

An underwater viewer, or shuftyscope as it's come to be known, is the next single most important piece of equipment you will ever have in your kit. Gold being just about the heaviest thing in the river always finds its way into the cracks and crevices in the bedrock. It would amaze you to see where gold gets trapped. Without an underwater viewer for a clear look at the bedrock, you're going to miss the best gold. Once you've shifted the overburden and you're down to bedrock, your underwater viewer becomes indispensible.


Being able to see the bottom clearly is necessary for finding gold stuck in cracks in the bedrock

Viewers can be made simply by cutting the bottom off an old coffee tin, fitting a round piece of perspex made to fit and sealing it with mastic or some other waterproof sealant, such as aquasure.


Using an underwater viewer to examine a crack in the bedrock

Snuffer Bottles

There isn't much point seeing small pieces of gold jammed in cracks in the bedrock if you can't get them and that's where a snuffer bottle comes in very handy. This is another indispensible piece of kit and they come in all sorts of sizes and designs. You can also make your own for nothing. Drill out the centre of a pull up water bottle nozzle that will fit onto a Barrs IrnBru bottle, insert a short length of 6 mm aluminium tube and glue it in with steel glue or some other heavy duty glue and then seal it with blackwitch or aquasure. It has to be the IrnBru bottle as it just seems to have more return spring than other fizzy drink bottles. Other squeezable plastic bottles such as tomato sauce or salad cream bottles may work well too.

When the bottle wears out, buy yourself another one and screw the top onto it and you're off again. It can be a good idea to tie a lead weight or other anchor to your snuffer bottle by attaching it with a short length of twine tied round the neck to prevent it floating off if it falls in the river.

Other Equipment

Most gold panners have an assortment of 'tools' they've either collected or knocked together themselves, which all have their uses. A small pry bar, for example, is handy for prising up small stones or rocks, a geologists hammer can be useful for knocking small stones out of cracks and patio weeders are excellent little tools for scraping out sediment from cracks in bedrock in the hunt for those elusive nuggets. Remember, you have to carry all this stuff, so keeping weight down is a major consideration.

Sluices, if permitted, can be useful, especially if there is a group of you working together. Some Estates and land owners don't allow sluices so ensure you find out beforehand before using one. However, most gold panners can shift more gravel using a riddle and a pan than they ever could using a mini sluice so don't make the mistake of thinking a sluice is an easy road to quick riches, they're not. In fact, if too much water is going through your sluice or it's set at the wrong angle, you'll probably lose more gold than you take home. Avoid home made sluices. Commercial sluices, like the popular Keene sluices, are highly technical pieces of equipment, designed on modern computers and tested by experts. Gold is valuable so don't risk losing your gold by running your paydirt through home made affairs knocked up in someones garage unless you know what you're doing. A good way to test a sluice is to have a container picking up what comes over the end of the sluice and then panning it to see if you're losing gold.


Gravel is gently trowelled from a bucket into a sluice where the gravel is washed through and gold is trapped in the riffles