Prospecting & Detecting
Swing and a Miss
July 2014 by Chris Ralph
A very good baseball hitter might get a hit roughly one time out of every three at-bats, but for prospectors often the results are much sparser and it may take many trips before the prospector hits a home run.
Persistence Leads to Over a Pound of Gold
I have figured out over the years that the winning combination is hard work, persistence, knowledge, and a little luck. This leads me to describe one of my best finds ever, a “honey hole” of placer gold, if you will.
One Potato, Two Potato...
Normally the detector he was using would sound off with a definitive high-to-low tone when passed over a piece of gold, which distinguished the gold from the many high iron content "hot rocks," but this one was different...
What Equipment Do I Need?
Getting started in prospecting often requires the purchase of some equipment, but one can spend as little as $10 and be finding gold or spend thousands and also be finding gold—yet you will probably have many more opportunities and possibilities with more and better equipment.
Mud Men: Pocket Miners of Southwest Oregon—Part I
Rocks and minerals associated with clay seam gold deposits in southern Oregon are often in sedimentary rock units at least partially metamorphosed into argillite. They are also associated with mafic volcanic rocks, basalts and gabbro that...
The Basics of Permitting and Bonding Your Mining Operation
With the recent surge of interest in gold projects, it’s about time to revisit a subject that strikes fear into the hearts of small-scale miners: Permits.
How to Beat the Heat--and The Bedrock
The pit was a classic one—exposed shale bedrock with all the material being washed out one end of the pit. Within a few minutes I had a nice mellow signal that was in open ground.
Underground in the Original 16-1 Mine
These days they employ the use of metal detectors and carefully scan the shattered rocks, hoping to hear that sound we detectorists love to hear.
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