Prospecting & Detecting
Buyer Beware! Counterfeit Metal Detectors
August 2013 by Chris Ralph
When I was recently in West Africa, I got to see and play with my first, phony, Chinese knock-off metal detector.Hard Rock Milling: A Matter of Scale
Most prospectors understand placer mining a lot better than hard rock mining and don’t realize the amount of work that goes into processing different types of hard rock ore.
Revisiting Old Haunts
I had some success following this premise this summer, finding a few nuggets in places I think I overlooked in the past.
Detecting A Trashy Area
Some prospectors would have assumed it was another shotgun shell, but in this case it was 17.6-pennyweight nugget!
Old Dog(Fighter), New Trick
Then it occurred to me that the drywasher was designed by an engineer. Gotta love engineers! Those slide-rule geeks always tinker with gravity, angles, curves and flow.
Habits, Procedure, and Where Is The Gold?
In my early days of nugget hunting things were fairly simple. Just headphones, a pack, a detector and a small pick were all I needed for my search for great wealth.
Panning for Gold on Canyon Creek
I was able to remove the gravels with the assistance of a crowbar and I scooped them up with a garden trowel. This gravel contained over a pennyweight of gold and there were several 2-grain and 3-grain pieces…
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.
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The Bawl Mill
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• Common Mistakes of the New Detectorist
• The Pearce Mineralized Area, Dragoon Mountains, Arizona—Part II
• Mining for Gemstones and Mineral Specimens
• Fighting and Winning Without a Lawyer
• The Essentials of Dry Washing
• Fortymile, Alaska Prospecting Adventure
• Court Says Emergency Rule in California Unjustified
• Sampling Placer Stockpiles
• Lower Prices Bring Layoffs
• Prospecting Research
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
• Underground in the Original 16-1 Mine
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