The best way to start out a new year is with the discovery of some placer gold! Since January 1 isn't really the best time to be out prospecting and digging for gold in this part of the world, I decided to crack open one of the new "Official Holloway Bar Gold Panning Kits" and see what's lurking in the kit's kilogram or so of Holloway Bar gold panning concentrate.
All of the parts of the Official Holloway Bar Gold Panning Kit are shown in this picture. Purchasers will receive a 14" plastic gold pan, a 10" plastic gold pan, a grate that sits on top of a 5-gallon pail that you can use to separate out some of the larger rocks when you're just working with a shovel, a gold magnet used to help separate out the gold from the black sands, a plastic sniffer bottle that can be used to suck the gold and black sand out of the pan for later processing, a pair of tweezers and magnifying glass to help extract the gold, and two of gold vials. The kit also contains a DVD that explains a little about the area we're in and its history, a certifcate of authenticity verifying where the concentrate comes from, and last, but not least, a sturdy plastic bag containing about a kilogram of panning material from the Holloway Bar Placer Mine on McDame Creek.
We make the concentrate for the panning kit right on the McDame Creek property out of a mixture of materials.
To make sure you get gold in your pan, we layer the bottom of the plastic container with valuable concentrate out of "The Wizard" gold plant and sluicebox.
We then dig some raw ore out of the source materials for the gold plant. This has been moved from the ore pit and de-rocked, but otherwise hasn't been processed.
This material might contain a nice gold nugget (in addition to the gold from the concentrate). We top up your "adventure kit" with the raw ore to give you a chance at more gold.
I've filled my container about 2/3 full with water, and have the pan and container of ore ready to pan to see what riches await us... This is the fun part of the adventure.
Gold miners say that "Gold is where you find it", and that's a pretty accurate statement. Many men and women have spent their lives chasing this elusive, yellow-coloured metal and all have their favourite theories as to where the gold is hiding. We're hoping it's in the pan!
Now, plunge the pan into the water! You'll notice that the water gets muddy quickly. Gold is a lot heavier than most other metals - and is even heavier than lead... In this early stage of panning, you're just trying to mix up the material so that the gold detaches itself from any surrounding materials and finds its way to the bottom of the pan. The pan is acting like a big grinder to mix up all of the materials.
