Prospecting & Detecting
Desert Prospecting Yields More Than Just Gold
June 2020 by Joe Chmiel
This wash was not far from where I once dug a half-ounce nugget, so I knew there was gold in the area.
The Mystery of the Grand Summit Mine
I didn’t follow-up on this opportunity at that time, as I already had as much on my plate as I could handle, but the potential for this property has never left my mind.
I Finally Made It to Northern Nevada
After a while I got a very nice signal and out came a sweet kidney-shaped bit of gold weighing about three grams.
Following the Clues
It took me awhile before I finally got a nice mellow signal. My nugget turned out to weigh in about two dwt (pennyweight). Over the next few hours, we all picked up a few more nuggets apiece.
Late Fall Drywashing
Part of the good thing about this spot is that it is not that far from my home in the famous Virginia City mining district. Not everyone knows this, but the first discoveries around that area were gold placers.
The PIGMI—a DIY Crevice Tool
I’ve had great success using it to gather gold from crevices. I’d like to share the design with all of you gold miners reading this article and hope that you get as much satisfaction building and using it as I did.
Placer Gold Deposits in the Western States
…to see the huge differences between the gold production amounts of the Western States, let’s look at the gold production—both hard rock and placer—of these 13 states up to the present.
Prospecting With a Detector: Lessons Learned
That is the course and intention for this article—to wander through some of the lessons I have learned in my thirty-two years of metal detecting and prospecting.
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