Prospecting & Detecting
Are There Any Good Prospects Left?
November 2013 by Chris Ralph
This type of thinking will get you discouraged pretty fast, and soon all of your mining equipment will be found gathering dust in your garage.
Coprolite—A Prospector's Tale
Gold nuggets come in all forms, but I never expected that dinosaur nuggets would too, and at a decent price.
Gold in the Slate Creek Basin
In some areas these channels were thousands of feet wide, and just figuring out where you are in some of these diggings is a challenge.
Buyer Beware! Counterfeit Metal Detectors
When I was recently in West Africa, I got to see and play with my first, phony, Chinese knock-off metal detector.
Procuring Mine Owner Permission at a Mine Site
The first experience involved an overgrown gold mine operated during the 1880s. A razed mill adjoined the mine and could be glimpsed from the isolated public dirt road I was traveling.
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.
Prospecting and Mining Old Mine Sites
In some places valuable ores can be found within the waste material of mine dumps, sorted ore piles, and detrital vein matter at the surface. Though many of these old mine sites can be an excellent source of gold, not all are created equal.
Selenium, Mercury and Suction Dredging—Studies Contradict CA State Water Resources Board
Federal and state regulatory agencies often cite mercury and methyl mercury in our waterways as a major factor for further restrictions on placer mining, and on suction gold dredge mining, in particular. However, these regulatory agencies are minimizing selenium and its neutralizing effects.
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The Bawl Mill
• Ask the Experts
• One Potato, Two Potato...
• Proper Placer Sample Processing
• Strategic Metals—Part I
• Dry Washing to Capture Fine Gold
• Ophir—Possibly the Best Kept Secret in Alaska!
• Southern Oregon's Illinois River—A Lesson in Sharing
• Using Sucker Guns to Find Gold
• Making Adjustments to Catch Fine Gold
• The Subsurface Suction Dredge
• A Few Thoughts About Successful Nugget Hunting
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices







