All Articles
Basic Geology for the Independent Miner—Part II Recognizing and Understanding Rock Formations (Petrology)
February 2006 by Chris Ralph
Rocks are an aggregate formed from the accumulation of minerals. Minerals form under various conditions, and when the minerals come together in mass, they form rocks.
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.
What's Left Behind
I love to see old-timer workings while I am out detecting for gold. For one thing, it assures me that gold came from there. Second, it tells me gold should almost certainly still be there.
The Bawl Mill
• No end in sight to tax and spend
• Leadership or sinking ship?
Placer & Lode Gold Deposits
Even though there are many varieties of gold deposits, prospectors often refer to two general types: placer and lode. Some lode examples include...
Exploring Iron Oxide Copper Gold Deposits
The excitement over IOCG deposits began with the discovery of a monster deposit at Olympic Dam in Australia in 1976. The discovery was accidental as the operator was searching for strata-bound copper deposits.
Eastern Arizona: Gold and Base Metal Deposits—Part I
Arizona is well-known for its copper-gold porphyries and massive base metal-gold sulfide deposits such that primary gold deposits in the state are often overshadowed.
Using Rock Formations to Your Advantage
Over the past twenty or more years, the traditional “seat of the pants” science of using mineral identification tables as a means to identify common ore minerals, their associated rock-forming minerals and rocks, has slowly become a lost art.
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The Bawl Mill
• January Issues Delayed For Weeks As USPS Searches Their Facility
• The Rocks That Burn: Is Oil Shale the Answer?—Part I
• Feds Move Oil Shale to Front Burner
• The Circle Goldfields
• New Montana Board Moves to Halt Mining
• Newmont Looks to Ghana
• PLP President Intervenes on Behalf of Dredgers
• Samuel Franklin Hunt Nevada’s “Rio Tinto”
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
