Have you ever wondered what it feels like to mine for gold? In the 1800s, over 300000 people traveled to California just to experience that feeling and gain a chance to strike it rich during what was likely the most prominent gold rush in American history, even leading to the settlement of California. Lets know what is pay dirt.
The time of gold rushes is long past but that doesn’t mean you can’t recreate the historic fervor yourself by mining for your own gold. There are many ways to do this, but nothing beats looking for it with your own two hands, and one of the best ways to manually sort and pan your own gold is through the use of it.
Pay dirt is—as the name suggests—dirt that is likely to contain a high concentration of mineral ore within it. While several different kinds of ore can be found in it, gold is of course the most fascinating and also the most worthwhile. Nothing captures the experience of “hitting pay dirt” quite like finding a valuable horde of gold within it.
How Much Gold Is in Pay Dirt?
The simple answer is that it varies. Whether pay dirt even contains any gold at all is dependent on where it was sourced from and whether that location is known to contain gold deposits.
For this reason, it’s important to source your pay dirt from locations that have known gold deposits if you want to increase your chances of actually finding some gold for yourself. Even then, it’s anyone’s guess how much gold is in the pay dirt or whether there is any gold present at all.
The only way to ascertain this is to separate out the components of the pay dirt and see what falls out of it. If you’re lucky, you could see the glimmer of lots of little specks of gold at the end of this process but it will be a thrilling experience regardless of your outcome. You can also buy gold paydirt online for guaranteed gold.
Why Pan With Pay Dirt?
Gold pay dirt isn’t likely to make you rich any time soon but there are definitely plenty of reasons to try panning it.
As an actual source of gold, pay dirt can help you to refine your panning skills more effectively than if you were to try panning for gold yourself. This is because most pay dirt has a small amount of gold added to it to ensure that every batch contains at least a little.
Unless you’ve messed up somewhere in the process, panning will liberate this gold from the pay dirt and you can practice your technique using it. This ensures that if you do want to continue panning as a hobby, you’re less likely to miss any gold nuggets that do cross your path due to bad panning techniques.
Gold pay dirt also offers a great experience for families or groups, however, and this is why this mix of minerals really becomes a great deal. Anyone who has children knows that they can be very disheartened if they don’t get what they want. Pay dirt is a great way to teach your kids how to pan for gold and allow them to enjoy the process with a little reward at the end.
It can also add some suspense and competition to a panning group comprised purely of adults, however. The amount of gold that any one person can find is largely random and this can drive the competitive spirit and make a fun group activity unforgettable.
How Do You Pan for Gold Using Pay Dirt?
Gold panning is rather challenging for beginners and that’s what makes it fun. Using pay dirt for your gold panning can help you to hone your technique while ensuring that you will find gold at the end if you perform the process correctly.
You will need some specialized equipment before you can start, however. Gold panning requires a set of panning bowls, filters, and a large bucket of water to use for the whole process.
Panning bowls contain ridges that help to trap heavier materials and this is what will actually allow you to separate the gold out of your pay dirt. This works because gold is one of the densest, heaviest materials you can find in dirt and other materials will be carried away by water much more readily leaving only gold behind.
To separate out the gold yourself, you will need to saturate your pay dirt thoroughly in the bucket of water, then filter it to remove much of the larger rocks and other worthless objects. When you get down to the finer dirt, you will then need to switch purely to your panning bowls.
Use a rocking motion to gently take only a little water into the bowl and let it carry away the very top layer of dirt, then check the contents of the bowl. Repeat this as many times as it takes until you begin to see the glimmer of gold.
If you’ve never tried gold panning before, this could be the experience that creates a lifelong hobby for you. At the very least, gold can definitely help you feel the excitement of a gold rush for yourself.