The Process of Surface Gold Mining

Panning

• Panning is an easy, low cost gold extraction technique that is popular with tourists and amateur gold hunters. When panning, sand and gravel that may contain gold are placed in a wide, shallow pan and submerged in water. The pan is then shaken gently and whirled, which causes the gold, which is heavier than other rocks, to sink to the bottom of the pan. The rocks and sand are collected from rivers that are thought to contain gold deposits.

Dredging

• The use of a gold dredge is not strictly a method for surface gold mining. Rather, dredging is used to collect large amounts of material from the bottom of a river that may contain gold. After the material is gathered, it is sorted further -- via panning, for example -- to separate any gold that may be present. Dredges originally used mechanical means, such as large steel buckets, to collect the material to be sorted, but today, many modern gold collectors use suction power to collect material from the bottoms of rivers.

Sluicing

• Sluicing also relies on the principle that gold is heavier than just about every other rock surrounding it. To separate the gold by using sluicing, a structure similar to an aqueduct is created and water mixed with sand and gravel that's thought to contain gold is sent along in the channel. These channels have small ripples in the bottom of an appropriate size so that lighter material is carried along by the current while heavier material, such as gold, drops out of the current and becomes lodged behind the ripples. After it is lodged, the gold is picked out of the channel by someone who is monitoring the sluice.

Byproduct Mining

• Another method of surface gold mining involves sorting through the byproduct created by other forms of mining, such as copper mining. Miners may use dredging, sluicing, panning or other methods to help sort out gold from the other byproduct. Mines may do this processing themselves if there will be enough gold found to make a profit. Other mines make byproduct piles available to tourists, who are then given an opportunity to pan for gold.