Prospecting & Detecting
The Highs and Hazards of Desert Prospecting
June 2022 by Dan Stanton
We hit on a good spot the last time we were at this location and we made up our minds that we weren’t going to let hurricane-like winds stop us.
Tips and Tricks
Many suggestions had some pieces or parts that would work some of the time, but Dredger Dan’s suggestion was, in my humble opinion, the cleanest, cleverest, and most dependable.
Jim Madden's Gold
Maybe we could find a few pieces of ore from that tunnel? It was worth a try. The old timers didn’t have that stamp mill for looks, so we set off to get some samples.
Detecting Clay Seams
Because the old timers were so good at locating the better paying deposits—most of them along clay seams in this particular area—it makes good sense to try and locate these clay lines at old mining sites.
Tips for Cleaning Gold Nuggets
I pulled out the nuggets I had worked on previously and looked at the size of the wire basket that the items to be cleaned are placed into. It looks much like a miniature french fry deep fryer.
Tips for Detecting Nugget Patches
Prospecting Underground: Use Caution
In underground placer work, the contact point of the bedrock tunnel and the gravel is a very weak point and always has to be timbered. The bedrock here is thin, fractured, and the gravels loose from many years of oxidizing.
Crumb Hunting With A VLF Detector
Chris got a nice target signal on the edge of rising bedrock, but still in a low, but washed area. After breaking up the bedrock, he recovered several pieces of gold amounting to almost three pennyweight.
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The Bawl Mill
• Why The Paper Change?
• Ask The Experts - When do I use detector discrimination?
• Ask The Experts - Is gold found in limestone?
• Ask The Experts - Can pyrite crystals be the same color as gold?
• How to Use BLM’s New Mineral and Land Records System
• A Short But Productive Hunt
• Blast from the Past: Jeff Casserly Tells His Own Story
• Old Dog(Fighter), New Trick
• Talking Metal Detectors with Brent Weaver of Garrett
• Strategies for Detecting Heavily Pounded Areas—Part III
• EPA Recommends Against Reissuing Permit for PolyMet Mine
• Just Feel The Heft of It
• Proposed Nebraska Mine Has Sizeable Deposit of Rare Elements
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
• Melman on Gold & Silver
Free:
Introducing ICMJ’s New Owners: Josh and Sherrie Reinke
• Legislative and Regulatory Update
• PLP Update
