Small Mining Operations
Designing and Evaluating Placer Gold Recovery Plants
September 2014 by Chris Ralph
For this article, I am focusing on industrial production plants that can handle 10 cubic yards per hour or more and would be fed by a loader or other heavy equipment...
The Perfect Summer
Within the first 3 hours he and I had found pocket after pocket of gold and couldn't wait to tell Levi of our treasure.
A Model Mining Operation
After he excavates the ore down to bedrock, he goes over the bedrock with a metal detector to ensure he didn't leave any gold behind before he backfills the area.
Dry Washer, Wet System or Metal Detector?
I love to dry wash old nugget patches found by detector operators, and I have found my fair share of gold dry washing those areas. I have also found a few nuggets using a detector on the bedrock exposed by dry washing the patches.
The “Chuck It Out” Nugget
This was no ordinary nugget. It had not traveled very far from its nearby source, and that did mean a lot, as we were searching for the source of several such nuggets found during a gold rush that occurred in 1859.
Nice Specimen Gold Recovered in Northern California
Each specimen is carefully examined to determine if it would be beneficial or not to use an acid treatment to reveal more of the gold.
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.
To Foam or Not to Foam
George was considering filling his dredge floats with closed-cell foam, ensuring that there would be no area available within each float for flooding.
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