Prospecting & Detecting
Bedrock Nugget Hunting: Tools of the Trade
January 2018 by Jack Geck
As a guide to those who are thinking of taking up this activity or those who currently practice this trade, I have created a listing of the primary tools and equipment I use when nugget hunting.
Diamond Prospecting in Indiana
My first personal experience with placer diamonds was on a gold prospecting trip in Indiana about 8 years ago, when a fellow prospector was cleaning his gold concentrates.
So, Where's The Gold?—Finding Gold Detectors Miss
We decided to run a detector over each piece. If we got a decent signal we placed the piece into a high-grade pile and the rest went into another pile to be worked on later. This high-grade pile wasn’t that large—maybe 25 pounds...
Dry Washing to Capture Fine Gold
There may be lots of smaller gold I cannot hear with a detector, but it looks just fine in my pan once it is out of the crevice.
Moving The Big Rocks
The anticipation of finding out if the system of snatch blocks, shackles, chokers, anchor points, and the strap binding the massive slab of rock in the bottom of the river would even budge an inch was weighing on me.
The Winning Hand
The operation and techniques employed are highly successful in producing free gold with minimal work involved while maintaining an environment protection process through the use of recycled water and a settling pond.
Detectors: Past, Present and Future
Detectors were invented long before I was born, but it was in the 1960s when they started to become an item popular enough to power a fledgling industry. The key development was miniature transistor technology replacing the old fashioned tube technology of the 1950s, making lightweight, affordable detectors possible.
How To File A Mining Claim
Filing claims is actually quite easy, though there are a number of pitfalls that you should watch out for. Over the years, I have made just about every mistake you can with a mining claim, and have learned a few things to watch out for along the way.
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