New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Phosphoric acid?

After the acid rinse well, dry and apply some cooking oil to stop the rust returning.

If you use it enough it wont have a chance to go rusty. The abrasive action of the gravels will see to that. If you want to stop it rusting between trips then dry the pan and rub some oil on it. Alternatively get yourself a plastic pan, they last for ages I had one for years untill I droped a big lump of wood on it and it broke. Now I dont have one at all because I gave up using a pan.

some good points on when to use or not to use a metal pan or a plastic pan.

the old timers preferred metal as it showed the gold well. they left their pans out in the rain or 'blued' them in the camp fire as pointed out by jw.

when i say the old timers preferred them i guess i'm talking more of modern day old timers as the pioneer miners had no choice as plastic ones weren't in existence.

myself, i prefer plastic as it is light. unless you have discovered gold next to a road you will have to lug various gear into a gold producing spot. keeping the weight down is essential.

a good trick is to drill a hole in the rim of the plastic pan. drill it opposite the riffled side. you can then attach the pan to the outside of your pack with a carabiner. easy access for when you need your pan and no more wet pack insides.

one downside is that plastic can crack. plastic pans are extremely durable though and unless you are rather rough with your pan it shouldn't split. at $8 a pop it isn't too much though to acquire another. a mate of mine managed to stand on his the other day and crack it.

which reminds me of the second downside to plastic. it floats. be careful when throwing your pan on the riverbank as they tend to hit a rock and bounce back towards the channel. if a good flow is present you may see your pan float off down river.

as for the fine gold floating off i don't think there is too much between the plastic and metal pans. after a while the plastic pans 'rough up' and do hold the fine gold well. i had a plastic pan where a very fine speck of flour gold somehow got stuck to the plastic pan. by stuck i mean you could roughly run a key or screwdriver over it and it wouldn't budge. it was well wedged in a very fine groove in the pan i think. it was a good way of knowing which pan was mine when out with several mates on the river. as there pans were little used and i prefer to use a well broken in one. nothing like a few gouges in the plastic to help catch the gold.

Like this one. My new pan is not so new anymore. Somewhere there is GOLD dust in amongst this bit of rust. Been sitting for a while, guess i should clean it up.

what about a squirty bottle with diesil and give it a spray when ya finished and dry

Interesting reading and so I decided to put in my say - I like steel pans but then again I am a traditionalist...and they dont break when you accidently fall on them or drop a rock on them!

My pans seem to get rusty very quickly but that does not mean to say that I dont look after them. I do not believe in fire bluing though it might work IF the item is immediately dropped into a big container of oil when it is 'fire blue hot' - This is a practice I do when I am fire bluing gun screws and have had quite some experience in fire bluing objects and if I dont drop them in oil then they can tend to rust.

My old gold mining partner who would be well over 1000 years of age now had a perfectly shiny pan - no rust, not a bit. He was typical of the old time miners - his father was manager of the Sandhills Gold Dredge at Skippers and his grandfather owned a huge sluicing claim at Skippers - and the secret for having a pan that did not have one speck of rust on it as long as I knew him - He used it, he dried it after use and he put it awya in a dry place - pretty simple - when you follow these rules who needs to use oil, fire blue or any other means to attempt to keep it shiny.

The two things that kept it shiny was use and keeping it dry - it is moisture that promotes rusting - deprive it of moisture when it is not in use then how can it rust?
My pans have rust because - I leave them outside, I leave them in the back of my truck, I dont keep them dry, I leave wet gravel in them overnight - and thats a no no if you want to keep it shiny. Care and common sense keep them shiny. If you guys are like me and a bit slap happy then like me your pan will get rusty!

Edited by user Saturday, 12 May 2012 8:33:41 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

There's one in every crowd. :)

No guarantee but try this...

Soak the pans in vinegar overnight. Then sprinkle powdered salt over the areas you want rusted, and spray hydrogen peroxide solution* (from the chemist or cleaning section of supermarket) onto the salt.

That should work :)

Don't get it on your skin (unless you want to blow away your pimples) and keep it away from your eyes.

NB. I am not a chemist nor play one on TV.

rust isnt shiny its kinda flat in appearance, it was hard to see the gold in the bottom of a shiny pan, i have a black plastic pan also and I agree its great/my favourite but in order to see the gold in my shiny steel pan I prefer it to be rusty, the colour of the pan doesn't worry me too much its more the sheen of it its either that or if when they heat them up / "blue" them does that takes the shine off them? sliver is closer in colour to gold than a matt/flat brown

Thank you for great photo JW.I like big steel pans because they hold a large amount of gravel and seem to allow more efficient panning as the gravel appears to slide around more easily-maybe I am mistaken. What I do not understand is that when I tried heating the pan to red heat it did turn dark blue but also large patches of rust appeared almost immediately.