Small Mining Operations
Conductive Minerals and Your Metal Detector
August 2014 by Chris Ralph
...most prospectors don't even think about the conductivity of minerals, but there are some that do conduct electricity to a certain degree, so metal detectors will respond to them.
High Sulfidation Epithermal Deposits
They tend to be big, coming in large to extremely large sizes. They can also be amazingly rich and produce huge amounts of very high-grade ore.
Small-Scale Hard Rock Mining With Water Recycling
Once I have established the presence of gold in the sample, I collect five-gallon bucket quantities of the rock material for processing back at my shop.
What About Palladium?
Palladium may well be an underexplored element and therefore an opportunity for prospectors and geologists. This is because they are often less than obvious and other than the native metals, a chemical analysis of samples is required to identify PGM-enriched rocks.
Prospector's Guide to Rock Breaking and Blasting
The holes were overloaded with explosives, but I didn’t know it. I was just a green mining engineer fresh out of school and told to watch as the experienced miners set the charge.
Reality of the Klondike
I saw gold this summer. The kind of gold that I haven’t seen since ‘81. The kind of gold that rattles in the pan. The kind of gold that would start a stampede—even in 1898.
Our Readers Say
Extracting & Smelting Your Gold
Unfortunately, not all the gold that we prospectors find is pretty, or appealing to the eyes. They are not all nice, bright, shiny nuggets with lots of character that carry high collector value.
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