You should be using always the same quantity of material when testing for gold

This is one Garrett Prospecting Gold Pan full and leveled with classified soil from a tailing heap.

The soil was first classified for particles larger than 8 mesh, to find out what percentage of larger gravel is in the heaps.

Then it was classified for particles smaller than 20 mesh, as I did not want to test for gold nuggest larger than 20 mesh. I know they do exist in these heaps from other tests. And I am fine with it. There is no point in searching for few nuggets in large volume of material when testing the heap for gold.

What we actually want to determine is the quantity of black and and number of fine gold particles that may be captured.

Those fine gold particles are simply smaller than what an eye can see. To pan them down is not an easy task, and is time consuming.

That is why we are using special methods to solve the problem and within 5 minutes we know if the tailing heap contains gold and may even estimate how much gold can be there according to the number of counted fine gold particles.