My First Go With A Batea Pan Yesterday. Interesting Design And It Is Works Great On My Flour Gold.

[John-Edmonton]

First trial run panning with the batea pan. You constantly have to keep the pan moving to allow the gold to drop out the suspension of pan concentrates. If you put in 3 shovel-full amounts, you have to periodically break up the material compacting in the center of the pan until the material is worked down to a more manageable amount. It's fun pan to use. Did I do well? You be the judge. I haven't a clue.

I managed to get to the river between showers today. It's kind of nice not hauling around a highbanker and all the other bits of equipment to operate it.

The pan is quite large, however, when allowing it's shape, size and weight, it is surprisingly easy to maneuver in the water side to side, back and forth plus circular motion to create a vortex.

Hey.....it worked!💓

Took me just under an hour to do 10 pans. I am a newbie and still need to work on my batea skills. 

[Valens Legacy]

Great job on the pan and you did a very nice job at getting the gold.

A few more trips with that pan and you might be as good as your sluice.

Good luck and stay safe out there.

[jasong]

I wonder if you could use a smaller one with a transparent bottom as a quick exploration tool. Pan it down in 10 seconds, look underneath to see if there is gold in the cone bottom, and then dump it out and move to the next sample spot. 

If that worked, and there was a way to replicate it's effectiveness while dry, that would be a heck of a useful tool for prospecting, I have to bag up samples and pan them at the end of the day right now since most places I work are dry, and it's laborious having to transport the samples around. 

[Valens Legacy]

2 hours ago, jasong said:

I wonder if you could use a smaller one with a transparent bottom as a quick exploration tool.

Grandfather and I tried that once and found that the flour gold had to be knocked off other items before we were able to see what was in the pan.

After about 6 pans we just stopped looking and finished what we started.

Wish it were that easy as it would help here in Illinois.