A Generous Lesson on Detecting Bedrock

May 2019 by Jack Geck

The signal I was hearing was coming from a vertical bedrock crack on the bank of the creek. I removed my backpack, took out my crevicing tools and started to clean out the crack when I saw a glint of gold.

Ask The Experts

May 2016

• Can I get advice on a hard rock property in Calaveras County, California?

Weathering, Erosion and Placers

April 2017
The big interest to prospectors thinking about the effect of erosion is not what might happen long into the future, but what they might find in the rivers later this summer when the water levels go down.

Metal Detecting Old Hard Rock Mine Dumps

May 2018

The type of mine dump that is best for metal detecting are the ones that consist of mixed sizes of rock and are located near some sort of excavation, commonly a shaft or adit. Sometimes the piles located along a trench dug by the miners can be productive as well.

Study Confirms Mercury Levels Safe in California's Gold Country

July 2013
While the Water Board documented the selenium levels in fish and noted they exceed the levels of mercury, they have yet to acknowledge the numerous scientific studies that show selenium effectively neutralizes the effects of mercury.

WWII Vet & Prospector Still Going Strong

July 2011
Lately I’ve been having success utilizing two types of detectors in succession. The first is a pulse induction (PI) detector with a blanket-style antennae, and I follow it up with a very low frequency (VLF) detector.

The Essentials of Dry Washing

August 2013
Most dry washers have a feed rate adjustment. It needs to be set so that the material flows evenly over the riffles and does not bury them.

Fine Gold Panning Without Using Mercury

March 2012
The technique I will describe is a much safer alternative and it works. It’s a fine-gold panning technique that eliminates the need for mercury amalgamation of most placer samples.

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