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Ask The Experts: How to remove precious metals from lead?
August 2010 by Thom Seal, PhD, PE
I have a large amount of precious metals, gold and silver, mixed in with lead. Cupelling is expensive. What method can I use to extract the gold and silver without cupelling?From the Editor
You will find a few articles in this issue that you wouldn’t normally expect to see in the Journal. Don’t fret—we’re not changing our focus, but the time seemed right to address a few pressing topics.
From Hand Sluice to Dredge
Gold prospecting in Virginia: Like most prospecting greenhorns, I entered the gold prospecting hobby with a pan, a shovel and a hand sluice. It was January 2007, and I had just stumbled upon the hobby of gold prospecting while researching...
Our Readers Say
Personal letters from our readers.....
Preserving the True History of the Ivanhoe
My partner had the contacts and it wasn’t long before we had an agreement in place and the company had a geologist on site. I recall a time when he was getting the lay of the land, so to speak, and he broke off a rock sample and inspected it with his magnifier.
The Fire Assay of Fly Eyes
Colorado-Utah-Wyoming oil shale was first reliably discovered to contain gold and silver by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in the 1920s. Although most of this vast shale resource, up to 1,000 feet in thickness, contained nil or barely detectable values, many brown shale samples fire assayed here over the past thirty years have yielded up to 0.02 ounces per ton (opt) Au and 2.0 opt Ag.
Utah's Crescent Creek Placers
The Crescent Creek placers are considered to be one of Utah's few commercial grade placers, but they are marginal and difficult to work at a profit.
Small Mine Selective Blasting
Drill holes in a mineralized vein often penetrate hidden layers of poor ore which, after blasting, end up diluting the production quality. Disseminated gold ores carrying two ounces per ton may be identical in appearance to adjacent vein material...
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The Bawl Mill
• Legislative and Regulatory Update
• Commercial Placer Mining With Jigs
• Ask The Experts: Bench Top Crushers
• How to Properly Ground Balance to Find the Most Gold
• Authorities Search for Lost Treasure Hunters
• Alaska Geologist Survives Grizzly Attack
• The Guaniamo Diamond Area, Venezuela—Part II
• How California Became the Golden State
• The Rocky Bar Mining District, Idaho
• Mining Stock Quotes, Mineral & Metal Prices
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The Jenkins Mine Project—The Golden Rules of Science
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• ICMJ Again Matches Funds For PLP Donations
