TOOLS

The equipment of a goldpanner needs : boots - shovel - hoe - sieve - batea - canalina. Hoe – Shovel - Sieve: The hoe and the shovel are used to remove the biggest pebbles and the sieve to clear the stones, with the diameter bigger than a centimeter, from the sand. In Italy are rare the rivers where it's possible to find pieces of gold bigger than that misure. Batea: with this word are called different containers with different shape. Its content is the auriferous sand plunged into water shaked with strong roteator movement. high specific gravity of gold(*1) makes the small gold straws sink toward the bottom of the batea. Little by little you let the material on the surface be washed away by the water, till it just remains on the bottom the most heavy materials as a dark and dark-red send. This process will continue untill on the bottom of the batea will remain nothing but the gold!

(*1) A cube of 10cm./side weights: if of gold km. 19,3 - if of lead kg. 11,4 - if of iron kg. 7,9 - if of quarz kg.2,7.

Canalina: identified on the shore of the river the Aurifera zone once one proceeds to wash the sand to concentrate his content made of gold with a tool which is called canalina. It consists of a board with two banks that is arranged in the river and which the water current is directed toward building to his sides a little dam. With a shovel the sand is slowly poured to the beginning of the canalina and water which comes fast drags all the light materials contained in the sand, while the members weighing (lodestone, Ilmenite, garnets and gold) deposit in the perpendicular grooves to the flow of water which are weighed upon the bottom of the canalina. This operation is called smoothing and is the proceeding, exploiting the different speed of fall of the particles when is dipped in a fluid, that allows to separate a substance from a mixture. The canalina is taken away to the end of the day by the river and the material which has remained in the grooves (said concentrate) is put in the Batea to recover the gold. Many of the rivers are rich of iron ores and at times a magnet helps this member remove from the concentrate shortening of very much the operations of recovery of the gold.