Just thought I,d run this past the experts. As a newbie tried my cunning idea in the clutha the other day. No gold but heaps of ironsand on my in pan disc…and the
magnet underneath. Sorting the wheat from the chaff. Any thoughts??
Its a great idea but the black sand tends to gather the gold together as well. I tried it years ago though not with a pan as they were all steel back in the day.
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Hi there Flanders. Have I missed something here. What is it you were trying to achieve? The magnet will attract the black ferrous sands & while gold is non magnetic very fine gold can/will get caught up within the clumps of the blacks sands attached to the magnet. It is a practice used by some when panning off the remaining black sands concentrates left in their plastic gold pans to use a magnet to hover above the sands to allow them to leap up on the magnet, leaving any gold behind. In practice though the fine gold sticks to the wet sands & gets pulled up with the sands onto the magnet. Even when dry fine gold can still get caught up among the sands attracted to the magnet.
JW 
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Thanks for comments. Seems to be swings and roundabouts. Seems there’s lots of ferrous sands in some places, which being heavy are left in the pan. The magnet will get most of that into a heap. With some gold maybe. The heavier bits of gold would pan out. Leaving you to deal with the other iron/gold when you get back to camp. That was my plan. The beauty of it is once you slide the magnet off the underside of the pan, the black sand just falls off the steel disc… if its dry. Cheers all.