I regularly get inquiries along the line of: “Hey, I found this rock, and I think it might be gold ore. How can I tell?” Prospectors are always on the lookout for gold-bearing rocks that may be the source of any nearby placer gold.

After a short time, the tailings pile can get very large, and can actually block the downstream end of the sluice box.

Most placer equipment is really made with gold in the 30 and larger mesh sizes in mind, though if carefully used can often get reasonable recovery down to the 50 mesh size.

I understand that a person without geological knowledge could be daunted reading a geological publication. You can pick out the good stuff from a geological publication without a lot of geological knowledge.

There is a material processing principle widely used in large milling operations to improve recovery that is poorly understood by most of the micro-mining and prospecting community...