The Kress Gold Pan

Patented in 1957 by  the late Mr. Bruce Kress of Idaho.
His nephew James gave me this pan and he held onto the only other one that we know still to exist.
These pans were manufactured by a sheet metal shop in Clarkston, Washington. Besides the unique classifier screen, the pan has a very shallow draft. Today's pans have a 45 degree angle draft but this pan is only half that. The reason for the shallow draft is that the pan did not have to be tilted much to back wash the heavies, thus keeping the gold from washing out. You'll also notice that there is a blank border in the classifier screen where there are no holes. This void allowed the gold to be retained behind the void.

The holes in the classifier screen are 3/16" as this pan was specifically designed to work the flood gold of the Clearwater River here in Idaho. Not much chance of finding gold that wouldn't fit through the holes.
You don't work this pan in the conventional manner.
After placing a shovel full of material into the pan, the pan gets worked vigorously side to side working the heavies down through the classifier plate. It doesn't take long for the gold to drop through the holes so 15 or 20 seconds of action is all it takes.
This is when the process departs from our conventional pans. With the back of your hand, you sweep off everything above the classifier plate. No questions asked...just sweep off the overburden. Next, place another shovel full of material in the pan and repeat the above process. After a half dozen repeats, you'll notice that the entire area under the classifier plate is solid black sand and gold. At this time, you can now revert to the conventional manner of panning or remove the classifier plate and dump you super-cons into a container for home processing through a blue bowl or gold wheel.

Here's some gold that I recovered using the Kress Pan. There's a tiny little creek just about 20 miles up the road that produces some nice gold and I'll be visiting it some time before the end of May. I'll be using my Kress Pan again as you can work 5 times the material with this pan as you can with a conventional pan. This is due to the time you save not having to pan down to a tablespoon of cons with each pan. Dump a load of material, shake, sweep and repeat.
(click any pic for a larger view)