Gold Concentrates

You will almost certainly have at least a very small quantity of gold concentrates if you are panning them from a suction dredge cleanup. There is also the possibility that it may be a heavier sort of gold and will settle easily through the black sand, or it could also be lighter fine gold that is, and can be quite difficult to save. Whichever way, you could hurriedly give the pan a few enthusiastic shakes and plainly spill off the top or surplus part of the concen­trates, and you would have without any doubt whatsoever trapped the largest part of the gold behind the sharp 90 -degree riffles. On the other hand, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to the prospector who has experience, furthermore, if you were to attempt to demonstrate your velocity and proficiency on the experienced prospector’s dredge cleanup, you would in most probability get a shovel over your head. Gold is just too precious to throw back into the bed of the stream, particularly after all the hard work of getting it out. 
It is always a wise thing to position another pan down under the water and let your discards or tailings fall into that pan if you are panning a dredge cleanup. Doing this makes it easy to check over and again whether you have lost any gold or not. After a few sessions that you will have practiced with the "Gravity Trap" pan you will, on the other hand, gain the confidence that this is not necessary anymore.
Make sure that there is a sufficient amount of water in the pan to cover the gold concentrates, either by dipping some in or keeping the pan under the water. Let us remind you to never forget this basic fact of gravity: gold will not sink rapidly unless it is in liquid suspension. Start using a gentle, side-to-side movement to settle the gold. This side-to-side movement will produce a small orbiting of the contents due to the fact that the pan is circular. This motion which is slightly orbiting is very helpful at this stage, but if you rotate it excessively or too much it would just cause the gold to roll forward excessively fast and the gold will escape the riffle traps due to the fact that it did not have time to settle down deep enough. The moderate motion which goes from side-to-side will definitely cause the gold to sink speedily down at the back of the sharp riffles. On the condition that you do not turn out to be careless and intro­duce any pitching or tossing movement into your proceedings, the gold will surely remain trapped there securely. You may possibly observe the fine gold or with the practice BB's at a very slow pace settle deeper as you go on with the shaking of the pan. Permit the material which is lighter to slip out of the pan little by little, but never and by no means whatsoever permit the gold (or the BB's, if you are practicing) to escape.