Hints and Tips

This page is meant to provide Prospectors with inexpensive or no cost hints to aid in prospecting. If you want to submit a Hint or Tip, send it to the GPAT Webmaster. You will be given credit for every submission used. Let me know if you want your E-Mail Address included in the credit.

CONDITIONING YOUR GOLD PAN:

Is that new gold pan giving you fits? Are you watching fine gold slip right over the riffles and out of the pan?

What most people don't realize is that new plastic gold pans have not been conditioned for panning. When the pans are manufactured there is a wax residue and possibly some oils left on all plastic pans thanks to the molding process. Keene Engineering Company recommends cleaning your gold pan with the solvent acetone and fine steel wool, but using Simple Green cleaner is a safer alternative and works just as well. Keep cleaning your pan until the water in it wets the bottom and sides and doesn't bead or puddle up. Try it! It works! (If you use acetone, please follow the cautions on the container. It's nasty stuff.)

From an article by Chris Blana in the July 1998 Washington Prospectors Newsletter (10/29/98)

PLASTIC BUCKETS STUCK TOGETHER?

I recently acquired several used plastic buckets from a restaurant and when I got them home. They were stuck together so firmly I couldn't pry them apart. Not only was the normal "Plastic Bucket Suction" at work, but these also had food residue that was adding to the problem. After fighting with them for a while, I started thinking instead of working, and came upon a solution.

When air is heated, it expands. I put about 4 inches of very hot (out of the tap) water in my bathtub and placed the bottom bucket in it (had to hold it in place, wanted to float away), within seconds the buckets just popped apart

Submitted by the Bob Macomber (10/29/98)