A couple of buckets, a shovel, a small finishing gold pan and a Rotapan go with me everywhere in my travels around Alaska. I want to introduce and offer to you a piece of equipment I truly believe to be unique and exciting. I have seen many different gimmicks over the past 25 years and haven't really run across anything that wasn't old technology with a new twist. The inventor has combined the conventional principals of grading, agitation and gravity into one compact light weight unit. Gravel is shovelled into the top removable bowl, then oscillated by hand, which grades the gravel through a built-in sieve.
Oversize material is discarded by lifting the bowl from the spindle and tipping out.
After grading, the gravel, gold and gemstones fall through to the lower settling pan, where it is agitated to allow the heavier gold and gemstones to settle to the bottom of the retention pan. The lighter waste gravel is expelled over the outer lip of lower pan, the pail is emptied and refilled with water, and the gold concentrator replaced on rim and is ready to continue. The prototype of the Rotapan was first developed for gold panning. We then tested it fo r sapphires. Sapphires and rubies weigh four times less than gold but twice as much as average gravel.