>>1406785I personally use speed-panning techniques to work as much dirt as possible:
I set one empty 5g bucket on the bank of the river by where I'm panning.
I take my other 5g bucket and put the 1/4" screen on it, and then shovel dirt into the bucket through the screen until it's full.
Then I haul my bucket of screened dirt down to the bank. I fill my pan about 3/4 full and very quickly pan it out, scooping pebbles out by hand. Once I'm down to cons I refill the pan and repeat the process. I do this 3-5 times depending on the yield, not spending more than a minute or two wetting, shaking, and panning each load.
once the pan is almost half full of good cons I swirl the pan and snifter out the foxtail. Then I bump the pan and get any leftover colors, usually the big stuff that didn't settle well Then I dump the remaining cons in the empty bucket to sort again at home and start on my next pan full. I can run through a ton or a yard of gravel pretty easily in 2 hours this way.
once I'm home I spoon the cons into a flat plastic cake tray and run the magnet over them a little at a time. I toss the black sand and repan the remainder for whatever is left.
Depending how far my dirt source is from the river I can screen and pan anything from 2-4 tons of dirt like this in a fairly relaxed and casual day. Of course that's not enough to make a person rich by any means, it doesn't even pay minimum wage. But I move a lot more dirt and find a lot more gold than someone that's digging, screening, panning, and sorting one at a time. If a person pans long enough they'll work out a similar routine eventually.
