Prospecting & Detecting
Achieving Accurate Metal Detector Discrimination
December 2019 by Chris Ralph
Your odds of going home with gold will be higher using the discrimination mode, even if you might have misread one of the targets you rejected.
Proper Assaying of Placer Samples
The whole purpose of sampling mineralized ground is to measure the values in a small volume of material that would be representative of a much larger volume of similar material. The key word is representative. Chemical and fire assaying will not accurately represent placer deposits by themselves.
Hunting for Hardrock: The Basics
Exposed veins and outcroppings can be a great source for gathering good gold ore for processing. Veins and outcroppings do require a lot of work to free the ore from its earthen grip, but this labor can be very rewarding.
What Have You Got to Lose?
It’s accepted knowledge that wet methods will recover more fine gold than dry methods and processing the gravel as a whole will get more gold than only using a metal detector. The question is how much more?
Alaskan Gold Adventure
In Chicken I had my first experience with the famous Alaska blue clay, sometimes called the blue layer. The blue layer is where the best fine gold was to be found.
Prospecting Hard Rock
We panned out maybe three gold pans of the material and we were shocked at the gold that was there. This rock appeared to be rich.
Nevada's Lithium Boom
When prospecting for lithium, after confirming for macro attributes through research and field work, including examination of surface geology, the main tool is an accurate lithium assay.
Selectable Frequency vs Multi Frequency Detectors
I like to think in terms of “conductive mass” because it is a combination of both the conductivity of the metal and the size of the target that determine how a detector sees conductivity.
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