Gold Pan

OK, guess a gold pan isn't high on anybody else's list, but another good use for it would be to fly it like a frisbee and snap a few photos of an alien encounter.

How about a warm water soak for dead feet?

Mix pancake batter for a crowd of 20 or so….

Berry picking bucket…

Man these things are useful…. I might just have to start carrying two.

put it in the dog pack 0oz

If you trade in your plastic pan for a metal one (they weigh hardly any more – the combined weight of a cooking pot and plastic gold pan would be more than a metal pan) you can use it for a billy/saucepan/bowl. The wider base will distribute heat efficiently and might even boil your water faster.

Emergency babtisms.

A bed pan 8^)

Makes a great dog dish for water or dog food.

Emergency snow or sand scoop.

Short of a bucket, you could move more water for dousing a campfire or (very small) wildfire with a gold pan than a BP pot.

Bailing a canoe or packraft?

I think they're HPDE. Just went out to the garage to check mine. Doesn't have a recycle stamp on it, but it sure seems like HDPE. So it should take more than 212F easier. Therefore, it would make a great pot lid for a wide variety of pots, especially larger ones. Any condensed steam would drip down back into the pot.

Oh! Oh! this is for real: when snow camping, you need to gather snow to melt anyway (and it would be great at that) and as a pot lid, it would pre-melt snow left in the pan on top of a pot of boiling water.

While I was in the garage, I measured and weighed them (because that's what we do, right?)

Small: 4.1 ounce weight and 6 inch diameter at the base, 10" at the top, 2" deep

Large: 9.6 ounces 6 inch diameter at the base, 13.5" at the top, 2.5" deep

If you've forgotten the formula for a truncated cone, that's 1.7 liters in the small one and 3.2 liters in the large one.

Our local Ace Hardware puts a bunch of loss-leader stuff up each month and plastic gold pans are in the rotation, coming up every 3 months or so. For cheap. Like $2.75 for the smaller ones and maybe $3.95 for the large ones.

My grandfather carried that everywhere with him.

He used it for everything: as a hat, for keeping his baitfish and worms, keeping his trout cold, laundry, bailing out his canoe, transporting gasoline from his truck to his boat's motor, snow shovel, basin, a lid for his baking pan, distilling water, as a seat and probably many more.