Prospecting & Detecting
My First Carolina Nugget
September 2019 by Ray Mills
On my weekends off I spent many hours dredging the Second Broad River from Cane Creek Road up to the headwaters. I used a three-inch dredge with air and graduated to a five-inch with air.
Sampling for Success—Part II
The first and most important thing of the sampling process is to try to be as unbiased as possible. There is a natural tendency to select rock that looks the best—even unconsciously.
All About Trommels and Screens for Placer Gold Recovery
The right speed accumulates only the heavy materials and allows all of the lighter stuff to flow through. This optimum speed is dependent on the size of the gravel you need to move through the system.
Prospecting and Mining Old Mine Sites
In some places valuable ores can be found within the waste material of mine dumps, sorted ore piles, and detrital vein matter at the surface. Though many of these old mine sites can be an excellent source of gold, not all are created equal.
Huge California Nugget A Hoax
Sanders claimed he used ground-penetrating radar to survey his private property in Nevada County, California, and uncovered the chunk of gold with a backhoe when he was following up on one of the anomalies found by the radar.
How to Research Prospecting Locations and Mining Claims
If you are interested in researching mining claims for any purpose, you will first have to decipher the BLM’s LR2000, a Rube Goldberg database seemingly designed by a 1980s Soviet-era computer hacker.
A Golden Summer
His take of gold was pretty close to what mine was—about a quarter of an ounce. We had just gleaned about half an ounce of gold in just twenty minutes.
How to Stake Your Own Claim—Researching Mining Claims
Once you have determined that the land is locatable, the next step in the claim research process is to determine if the land has already been claimed by a previous locator.
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• A High Country Patch
• An Update On The Father's Day Gold Discovery
• Exploring The Historic Rand Mining District, Southern California
• Disturbing Trend: Federal Judges Disregard Mining Laws
• How to Refine Silver—Pt I
• Step-by-Step Crevicing
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mom Finds 3.72-Carat Yellow Diamond
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
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